Music around the world that few people have heard before

History is better told by its own agents. For the people who had lived and attended the historic moment, contributing to record the personal vision for humanity important facts. The pursuit of research and criticism remains valid, but need the testimony of those who had passed through the process, just to ratify the result of methodical and academic study, or to justify it through their perceptions criticism.
A memoir is an example of individual contribution to a particular period. Translates an existence, with information held in a personal history that record directly or indirectly the time of a given society. In any event, it becomes a valid registration of facts, and especially the role that the author developed in his time.
That is to receive the contribution of Zuza Homem de Mello who brings to his memoirs bookstores constructed in a different mood from the conventional, for two fundamental reasons: the first is that Zuza experienced the best moments of Brazilian Popular Music and the Jazz, The second is that his is one of the greatests researchers and connoisseurs of music of Brazil.
Born in 1933, grew in contact by radio and records, during the first great phase of brazilian music and, by opting for training musician, he had studied in the United States at the end of the 1950s, returning to Brazil, in full effervescence the Bossa-Nova. He worked as an operator of sound in the main broadcast television at the time, the TV Record, which already was preparing to house the largest cast of singers and composers, a transposition for television what the National Radio did and that led to the publication of major Festival of Brazilian Popular Music. Zuza has written: Brazilian Popular Music and sung told (Melhoramentos, 1976), A song in time (in two volumes co-authored by Jairo Severiano, Publisher 34, 1997 and 1998), Joao Gilberto (Publifolha, 2001) and A era of festivals (Editora 34, 2003). He also has been producing events of Brazilian popular music and Jazz in Brazil
Zuza, in his work, was always the right person in the right place, we can say, and his experience comes through the new book Music in the veins – Memories and testing – Publisher 34, which is, in short, the musicologist’s perception of his age, evoking memories and personal studies.
Was to be expected that a man of 74 years for his memoirs, referring to the personal facts, illustrating with music, composers and singers that marked his life, with accuracy of data, but in the perception and possibly simple. As the truism is not characteristic of the author, the book involves who reads, adding details that enrich the knowledge of this, without notice. On these pages are shown impressions of daily life of a couple in the 1950s scored by relevant facts of music, under the gaze of man, with the perception of the musicologist.
This is the player to drag musical contact with the initiation of the author, seizing the importance of the instrument he chose (the bass) is in theory, is physically, defining the instrument as the heart of the music. In his studies in the United States had the opportunity to live with great names in jazz, as his teacher Ray Brown, and he could can watch great concerts, detailed and qualified as reported in chapters The heart of Music and An Impression of Jazz in New York.
Concerning the Brazilian music, shows the excellent essay on the genesis and evolution of the dance orchestras in Brazil and its development, identifying the major Brazilian musicians and conductors of the twentieth century. Adds a chapter about the mandolin player Jacob Bandolim. Few reports can be as significant personal, as the impressive exchange of letters between the brilliant musician and composer and his friend, the singer Paulo Alberto Rossi. There is no mention of the time staff Zuza, however, there is a clear design of the music scene of the time (1943 to 1959) from seizures of Jacob, great Brazilian musician who is preoccupied with the ostracism that he could be relegated, in the popular preferences, as well as their own dramas of life.
He suggests and lists the voices that marked their interest in the radio and those which has followed his dreams and desires juveniles, such as Julie London and Peggy Lee, while he’s pointing the raising the covers of records are more coveted than its content. There is no report about any flirtation of the author, however, the chapter is an elegant analysis of the time, listing the favorite voices and bodies of the boys then.
With the same elegance describes the bitterness to hire stars of show-Bizz, as Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole, among others, to historical concerts in Sao Paulo. These concerts were televised and its records are lost, with the rebuilding of these reports, such as moments on stage as behind the scenes, like the act of a reporter that had reached with the microphone the Louis Armstrong’s lips on his arrival to Brazil, accident that almost prevented the presentation of the genius of Jazz.
Although the book, it is known, does not exhaust all the stories that Zuza had access or had experienced, fulfills the role of a work which is more essential for those who live, study and, essentially, as the author, have music in the veins.

Music in the veins – Memories and tests (avaliable only in Portuguese)
Zuza Homem de Mello
Publisher: Editora 34 350 p. – ISBN 978-85-7326-382-4