Cibelle

Cibelle bubbles. Ideas are constantly flowing through her. She managed to corral a lot of them for her debut album, Cibelle. But while she hails from São Paolo, don't expect the rehash of updated bossa and samba that's the diet of so many young musicians. Cibelle follows her own path, and it has more in common with Faithless or Massive Attack than João Gilberto. Brazil is there, underlying the music in the rhythms and phrasing, but she sidesteps all the clichés to deliver a startlingly fresh album.

However, that's probably not too surprising since her start as a recording artist came with Suba. The late Yugoslav expatriate who helped push Brazilian music into the 21st century was both a friend and inspiration from the time they met.

"It was controlled chaos, "even the way we made samples. I'd close my eyes, put the needle on the record and say, "Go Apollo, record!""

"I went to a jam session one night, and I was smoking my Indian cigarettes, when this tall guy, dressed in black, not looking Brazilian at all, lit my smoke with his Zippo. That was Suba. Later I heard this crazy samba with really cool synth, that was weird and exactly what I was looking for, and it was him. A friend pulled me onstage to sing. At the end Suba said he'd been looking for a singer, and would I come to his home studio the next day?"

That was the turning point for Cibelle. Before that she'd attended music school, where she dabbled in everything ("I passed the piano classroom and I wanted a piano," she recalls. "Then I passed in front of the percussion class, and I wanted to play percussion! After that I was by the acting and mime class, and I wanted to do that - in fact, the teacher wanted me to join."), been a model, and an actress. The one constant in her life was singing.

She never thought to really do anything with it until a friend pushed her onstage at a club, and "I ended up singing all the Jobim material they knew, and they liked it, so I started going there every Sunday, and meeting all the musicians." From there, she was hooked on performing, going from club to club, jam to jam, singing a few songs at each. And then she met Suba, and it all changed. Since then she's added her voice to several records, including the latest by Celso Fonseca, and Juryamn, preparing for her debut.

Suba, of course, was no longer around to help on her album. Instead, she enlisted young Brazilian electronica wiz Apollo 9, whose iconoclastic temperament matches her own. It was controlled chaos, "even the way we made samples. I'd close my eyes, put the needle on the record and say, "Go Apollo, record!" Cibelle wrote, or co-wrote, almost all the material, pulling ideas from all manner of sources. For "Waiting," one of several tracks in English, she "recorded the cash register and the refrigerator. Next day I went to the studio, and Apollo asked, "What have you got?" I said, "Well, I've got this cash register and this fridge and I want to make a track from them." So he created the bass line, and we started jamming on top. We started adding stuff to it. We both love mellotrons, and Apollo collects old keyboards. My vocal on the record is the original demo."

It's a record very much from the imagination, although both samba and bossa do get a look in. "Inutil Paisegem" finds her covering Jobim, on a deut with bossa veteran Johnny Alf that's anything but reverent, swooning with mellotron and synthetic glistening over electric piano. The song seemed an obvious choice to her, because "I love it. That was all I needed. I was translating the lyric for a friend, realized how much I loved it, and decided to record it."

Cibelle's songs are a mixture of the old and recent. She began writing several years ago, "and some of those lyrics are on the album. Some I wrote the week they were recorded - and the same with the melodies. The whole process is really organic." And it also involved a lot of experimentation: "When you're building a track, it's like picking ice creams, trying everything. That's how Suba worked, and that's how I learned to work. It's chaotic, but nice. Everything I listen to and like, I embrace it, and let it come out in my music. I want it to be there. The music happens by itself. I have some initial ideas."

She's recently begun deejaying ("A little bit. It's more disc selecting. I can't really scratch."), a way to indulge her passion for "hip-hop, nasty phat beats, ragga. I don't think I could ever do a track like that myself, though." What she's really eager for, though, is to start playing her songs in concert.

"I can't wait to start gigging. I need musicians around me, I need to be doing music and singing or at least shaking a shaker. I need live music."

Cibelle

"It was controlled chaos, "even the way we made samples. I'd close my eyes, put the needle on the record and say, "Go Apollo, record!""

Related Articles in the 'South American Artists' Category...