In collaboration with Ishtar Music
In the Voulzy household, the driving force is the guitar. It guided the musical choices of the teenager from Nogent-sur-Marne. In the early 1960s, the guitar came in three orders: English pop, classical and Samba de uma nota so, a bossa nova gem composed by Tom Jobim, eight bars on D, four more on G, and hellish chords. ‘From that moment on, Brazilian music fascinated me’, says Laurent Voulzy, who is releasing Belem, his ninth studio album, ten tracks built around Spirit of Samba, eighteen minutes of music divided into three parts.
Going for an elegant compression of Brazilian music in the style of his Rockcollection, a declaration of love to rock delivered in 1977, Laurent Voulzy summed up the situation in the words of his long-time accomplice Alain Souchon: ‘For the heart, samba is good’. ‘Unhappy people are less unhappy’, they add, understanding that samba, and bossa nova which is a variation of it, often tells of heartbreak while laughing at it enough to get the party going.
