by Los Grammys 2023 were historical for many reasons. A Latin abrió el show con merengue ripiao y reggeaton, of course Bad bunnyand demonstrated that the caderas de Taylor Swift they have been lying: they are latinas. Beyoncé broke the record of the artist with más galardones, now she is with 32. Kim Petras she is the first transgender woman to earn one of the gramophonic classics, she recorded it with her song ‘Unholy’ with Sam Smith and Madonna appeared incognito and hardly ever gained recognition at first.
But none of these or the rest of the players from the most prestigious prize in world music probably have a story as foreign as that of ‘PASIEROS (Parceiros)’, the record of the Panamanian Ruben Blades and the Brazilian quartet MOUTH LIVRE that derotó a Christina Aguilera, Sebastián Yatra, Fonseca and Camilo in the category of Best Latin Pop Album.
A small informal experience was broadcast by Yahoo in Spanish between Latin music periodicals in the United States and Latin America, who enjoyed not knowing the production before the appointment. Tampoco has entered the radar of fans and those who beg them, including some fans of the Blades’ hueso colorado of the 70s when they entered as one of the singers of the iconic and historical orchestra of salsa Fania.
It’s very rare until you know all the things that have passed with these discos and their composites and performers.
Boca Livre, a victim of covid
To begin, BOCA LIVRE ya does not exist, it was a victim of the coronavirus after having existed for 40 years and has been considered an institution in carioca music, as if it were the denomination of the people of the city of Rio de Janeiro. None of them failed as a result of the pandemic! The problem was the position of Maurício Maestro (voz, bajo, guitarra y arreglos) and owner of the BOCA LIVRE sello sobre las vacunas.
The most clear explanation was given by Zé Renato (voice and guitar), Lourenço Baeta (voice, guitar and flute) in 2021, when they announced that they were separated from Boca Livre.
“We invited them to grab a disc and say they would have it after the vacuum. Maurício said they weren’t going to do it, and entonces the things were from their hands. He felt it was the time to look for my cycle in Boca Livre, porque no podía más”, said Zé Renato on the separation and the apoyo of his ex-partner to the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
“When it happened, after two years, he took him with him, he took me a susto, he proposed reunions. We had various conversations, because he harassed me a lot, I was shocked by the wave. Hasta entonces I had known a person, which would be another result. In these two years he intended to adapt to me, not to give it importance, to concentrate on our musical history”, he added.
“Including grabamos un disco en este clima (‘Viola de bem querer’, 2019), que estuve a punto de no grabar, Lourenço y David convencieron me. Bueno, ahora hemos entrado en la pandemic y estamos viendo cómo esta tragedy ocurre en todo el mundo, y esto ha sido la gota che ha colmado el vaso”, he concluded.
With the salieron Baeta, Tygel and the manager Memeca Moschkovich, who published a text about it in his social networks that he declared: “Zé Renato and yo we create with misunderstood ideas, we hold misunderstandings of philosophy and vital objectives. We are accepting all this situation y viviendo democráticamente since 2018. Pero ora ya no se trata de lidiar con la democracia, es una cuestión humanitaria”.
Unos pasajeros de años
The groups separate every now and then, it is certain, but here there was a problem of timing considering that the separation of BOCA LIVRE was en enero hace dos años, if it was not because Blades saved all the production for more than a decade.
Yes, ‘PASIEROS (Parceiros)’, which translates from Portuguese into Spanish as ‘Pasajeros compañeros’, se grabó en 2011 ma no salió a la venta hasta mayo de 2022, por lo que competía en los prizes de este año. Yes, so are the rules of the Grammys and the Latin Grammys. What it accounts for is when the disc is released, it is decir, when it goes on sale, not when it is produced.
When the disc hit the market, Blades wrote on his web page that he had been 56 years intending to find a disc like this.
“PASIEROS (Parceiros) describe the love, joy and respect between us, and by the art, people and music of the world. These emotions we express through the sounds of this album, which we share with us with affection.
Sin embargo, hasta ahora no se ha explicado qué provocó la demora.
A gift to the heart
There’s no doubt that it’s going to be much nicer that all the artists may have received the Grammys together. The album also features Brazilian musicians João Carlos Coutinho (piano), Jorge Helder (bajo), Chiquinho Chagas (cordeón), Jessé Sadoc (trompeta), Iura Ranevsky (cello), Wanderson do Cavaco (cavaco), Pantico Rocha and Robertinho Silva (drums) and Marcelo Costa, Suzano and Marçalzinho (percussion).
But then, it was “a gift to the heart” for Lourenço Baeta, David Tygel, and Zé Renato, who were in Los Ángeles and jointly heard the news that they held the Grammy for best Latin pop disco.
The Blades were unaccompanied but pronounced triumph in their social redes and stuck to what they probably didn’t understand as a record that was lost because fans received this coding.
“BOCA LIVRE y yo no somos un producto de la propaganda sin de lo que se conoce como “word of mouth”: el que sabe, sabe … The one that sells most is not necessarily the one that represents the best quality. Eso es lo que Try the result that we like today”.
Justamente because ‘PASIEROS (Parceiros)’ does not have new songs, therefore they are new versions in Spanish and Portuguese from previous results of Rubén Blades, and he was doing so much time, if he deserves a distinction in this magnitude. Because in these times it is difficult to find music that is not desirable – to enjoy it in the moment and relax in the forest immediately afterwards – if you like these songs that are played well dressed in any rhythm, they can be salsa, R&B and MPB (Brazilian popular music ).
