Nana Vasconcelos’s Saudades

The story of Afro-Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos stitches together histories of 1960s-1980s jazz, psychedelia, world music, experimentalism and post-punk. Based in Recife, Rio de Janeiro, New York City and Paris, Nana played with musicians as varied as Egberto Gismonti, Don Cherry, Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, Arto Lindsay, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Paul Simon, Jon Hassell, Brian Eno, Os Mutantes, and Milton Nascimento.

This book traces the 15 years (1964-1979) leading up to Nana’s Saudades (1979, ECM), an album evoking his sonic memories of Brazil that he recorded while in Germany. Saudades features berimbau, a one-stringed instrument that looks like a bow and arrow, alongside onomatopoetic vocals and the strings of the Radio Symphony Stuttgart. Daniel B. Sharp hears Nana’s playing as a counterargument against dishonest notions of the primitive just as world music emerged as a genre. With a gourd, a stick, a wire, a wicker basket, and a stone, Nana made music as complex and contemporary as the ARP synthesizers in vogue at the time.