“Tejo-Tietê” (Delira Música) is Chico Saraiva’s fifth album. Released in 2013, it brings again a female partnership from the beginning to the end – this time with Portuguese singer Susana Travassos. The baptism takes the names of meaningful rivers in each country, the Tejo in Portugal and the Tietê in Brazil, suggesting that such union is the feeling that permeates the whole CD.
The precise and gripping guitar by Chico intertwines with the enchanting voice of Susana. Chico’s vocals also appear on “Lua do Avesso”, composed with Susana and on the tracks “Menino do Mar”, “Tejo-Tietê” and “Pa bo txorá”, partnerships with Tiago Torres da Silva, where the composer’s soft voice meets with the sweet Portuguese accent of Susana Travassos.
In the repertoire, Chico Saraiva’s unreleased-before music in its more lyrical aspect, and classics from both countries by composers such as Villa Lobos (“Melodia sentimental”), Elomar (“Cavaleiro do São Joaquim”), Carlos Paredes (“Verdes Anos”), Alain Oulman and Pedro Homem de Melo (“Sei de um Rio”), and José Peixoto and Pedro Ayres Magalhães (in “O Tejo”). Among composition partners, besides the Portuguese poet Tiago Torres da Silva, Luiz Tatit (in “O tamanho da tristeza”), Clovis Beznos (“As horas”), Brisa Marques (“Das manhãs”) and Susana Travassos (in “A Lua do Avesso”).
Produced with sensibility and mastery by Brazilian renowned guitar-player Paulo Bellinati, one of Chico Saraiva’s master, the project has participated in different events that connect the two countries, integrating these cultures that have such close ties.
“Some years ago, a little before singing the cirro, melancholic twentieth century, I was struck by something surprising that left me stunned speechless. This occurred when some quantity of money (a little) came to me from authorial rights, generated in “overseas Metropolis”. Well, curious I opened the envelope and there it was written that someone had been singing a song of mine – Cantiga de Amigo. I kept on reading and farther below was the name of the singer: Amália Rodrigues. I was taken aback.
A short time ago I was again taken aback listening to “Cavaleiro de São Joaquim” in the magnificent and impressive voice of Susana, mezzo-melano, which steadily dives in abyssal regions without missing femininity and which merges perfectly with the limpid guitar of Chico Saraiva in this CD that I truly believe is going to please few – I lament – for the general deconstructionism, like an overpowering bedlam coming from the last century, has been imposing a new aesthetic order of the ugly, of what is not fair, let alone true. However, there is still a surviving member – amidst the stupid flock – who despite being deprived of a compass knows by observing the stars how to sail up to the Port.”
Casa dos Carneiros, at the waning and on the calends of October 2012
Elomar
“An imaginary channel connecting the waters of the Tejo and the Tietê symbolizes a new encounter between Portugal and Brazil” (…) the art produced by them is a delicacy of great sophistication and stunning result. (…) The artists thus promote the surge of a cultural bridge that no other initiative sponsored by diplomacy would be able to build.”
Beto Feitosa
“With musical production of Paulo Bellinati, “Tejo-Tietê” blends sonorous sources from here and there, bound together by ancestral melancholy, by precise navigating through the fado and bossa nova heritages, between the erudite and the popular. Those are differences that spread and flow crystalline into a sea of unique beauty.”
Lauro Lisboa Garcia