Hello, you lovely people! This Sunday 28th September we’ve got another gig! This time,
we’ll be playing at a theatre on a proper stage. And if this wasn’t enough, we’ve
invited a drummer to join us so he’s bound to give it some swing it!
What can you expect music-wise? A night of lively Brazilian
samba, mellow bossa nova and some jazz to top it up! We will have support from Retro
Velvet.
The doors open at 8pm and it’s £5 to get in. Can you spare
that much to come see us play? I surely hope so.
This is just a quick post to let you know that I will be
singing tomorrow with my other half in a cosy restaurant in London Bridge. This will be our fourth time at the venue; they clearly like us! ;)
As
usual, you can expect an evening filled with the swingy tropical sounds of
Brazilian samba and bossa nova, but also some jazz and other musical surprises.
The idea is that you can enjoy the mellow melodies in the equally melodic
Portuguese, but we’ve made an extra effort so that Brazilians and non-Brazilians
alike can appreciate the music.
The last post was about food, so
now it’s time for music. These are definitely my two passions ;)
And talking about passion, I
never told you how me and my BF met. It was over three years ago, at another
musician’s rehearsal at a London studio. He was there, tucked into the corner
of a dilapidated sofa, quietly strumming his 7-string guitar. When we first
started talking, he thought I was Portuguese. I wished he’d thought I was Brazilian
but there was no way this paulistano*
was going to take my attempted carioquês**
for truly native… Oh well. It didn’t stop us from deciding to rehearse
together with the view to maybe performing at some point. And believe it or
not, it took us three months to take it to another level, although I still
sometimes wonder whether this whole guitar trick wasn’t meant to seduce me in
the first place. Bottom of the line is: it did, both romantically and
musically; the latter is what I want to talk about.
A few guests appearances here and
there, a number of intimate shows during our stay in Brazil, a performance in
Prague… Little by little we were gaining ground. Winning London over is another
kettle of fish, so we’ve been working really hard for the past year or so and
finally it seems that all this effort is beginning to pay off. We’ve played at a few private
events, wine tasting sessions, somewhere in Soho (but the place does not
deserve attention so I won’t mention the name), and we are now getting regular
gigs. Phew.
We decided to call our duo Polka
Nova, which is a play on me being Polish and our main music style – bossa nova,
as you might have figured out, served as the main course. We mix it with generous amounts of samba,
lightly seasoned with some zesty jazz. See, I can’t even talk about music
without thinking of food! It’s mostly covers of timeless classics and
traditional songs that resonate with many Brazilians and non-Brazilians alike.
But let me stop this babbling and let you get a taste (!) of our music on your
own:
If you like it, then the next stop is to visit our facebook
page and let us know by clicking the ‘like’ button. I will love you for this
eternally. www.facebook.com/PolkaNovaLondon
And if you get so excited as to want to follow us on Twitter
as well, we are here:
I can’t believe I actually didn’t write anything for the whole of 2013! I had a few ideas but there was so much going on in my professional life that blog writing was the last thing on my mind. Originally, 'the Brazilian dream' was meant to tell the story of my time in Brazil, but my everyday life in London is still very much “Brazilian”. As my BF is from São Paulo, I speak more Portuguese than my mother tongue to the point where I’ve begun mixing them up. Not surprisingly, my mind thinks Portuguese is on the same priority level as Polish and if you woke me up in the middle of the night I am not really sure which one I would speak, given that I also teach English…
Linguistic confusion aside, musically I can’t get more Brazilian than through samba and bossa nova; the two genres that identify my singing style. So folks, here’s a glimpse of what I do, never mind that I’m revealing my identity once and for all. Anonymous blog writing is so 2013…
