Interview with Caetano Veloso: how the album “Meu Coco” just happened

To the rhythm of the percussions of Márcio Vitor and the arrangements of Thiago Amud, names like Luana and Janaína inspired the title track of the album. “It starts with Simone Raimunda from Bahia, a very young and beautiful model I met in the 60s who now lives in Paris and whose artistic name Luana has become very common for baby girls. The other is Janaína, the daughter of a very famous actress whose name belongs to a goddess of the African religion, the goddess of the seas, in Brazil. What is curious is that the parents never knew the African origin of the names.

At Meu Coco’s first single, “Anjos Tronchos”, Veloso releases its riskiest vein, a track with rock nuances which tackles in a provocative way the technological wave and its negative effects, a subject which he was somewhat unaware of. “It’s a topic that I thought I wouldn’t be able to tackle because I don’t use it a lot, I don’t have a smartphone and don’t use social media, but then all these thoughts popped up, and I ended up writing a whole song. It’s crazy, it makes sense and it taught me a lot.

Each song has its own life, each is an honest recording spanning a range of moods with writing that remains compelling and intuitive and an ability to view moments as fresh through storytelling. Meu Coco overflowing with colors and textures, with twists that don’t follow any order. There is a Middle Eastern phrasing in “Cyclamen of Lebanon”, orchestrated by Jacques Morelenbaum, “an incurable romantic”. The peppery and funk carioca “Não Vou Deixar” (I won’t let it) refers to political oppression. “It could be a romantic relationship but was inspired by the election of Brazilian President Bolsonaro,” Veloso continues. “The day he was elected, I said the things he planned wouldn’t happen because I wouldn’t allow them. I repeated it categorically in my head: “não vou deixar”, “eu não vou deixar! Then a friend of mine’s son, who was 5 at the time, was visiting his mom and dad and heard me scream those words and said, “Daddy is nervous”, so I added that to the lyrics (O menino me ouviu e já comentou, O vovô tá nervoso ”, o vovô…). “

“Autoacalanto” looks a lot like a lullaby, a portrait of Veloso’s grandson on which his father Tom plays guitar. Other names like “Enzo Gabriel” also appear. “I have never met anyone with that name but I read in the newspaper that most Brazilian baby boys born between 2018 and 2019 were called ‘Enzo Gabriel’. I remember Enzo was in fashion. because of a famous tv actress in brazil who chose the name of her first son, then people copied this name, but i don’t know where the combination of Enzo Gabriel came from. germinated, and i found it fascinating.

There is also candomble in “Giglia”, which summons Wilson Batista and Jorge Veiga, both famous Brazilians sambistes, as well as bossa nova singer and songwriter Carlos Lyra and the great Milton Nascimento. “I had a sketch of a song, lyrics and a melody, but the melody was not defined so I asked my son Moreno to play the candome percussion, which he did beautifully, and on top of that I created a melody and rearranged the words.

“Sem Samba Não Dá”, a samba bass and sertanejo-infused melody, brings it back to its origins. “I was pretty much done with the record, then my friend Pretinho da Serrinha, a great percussion samba musician, asked me, ‘Aren’t you going to write or include a samba in your album?’ He remembers. “So I wrote a samba for him that basically says, ‘Without samba, it doesn’t flow’, and I invited him to play; he is a master. The song also features Mestrinho on the accordion, whose style is influenced by forro tradition. “He understands what’s going on with sertanejo, who comes from central Brazil, the region of Sao Paulo and Mato Grosso, ”he says. “Rio samba today mixes with these genres. The accordion is such a hallmark, so I tried to walk through it and land on a basic traditional samba chorus.

Other sertanejo musicians, those who merge it with samba and funk-carioca and Brazilian trap, also feature in the lyrics. “There are those who are doing very interesting things in the favelas of Rio,” says Veloso. “It’s very inventive. I just find it amazing. There is one guy I mention who is only 19 years old and very respected in the scene. My son Zac, who knows who is who and what is happening in the underground scene, introduced me to his music. He loves to study all these mergers, it is a visceral feeling for him.