In his most recent album, Brazilian composer and guitarist takes you to a trip with no time to return
By Aquiles Rique Reis, musician and vocalist of MPB4
The Brazilian composer and guitarist Guinga has recently launched his first solo album, Roendopinho. Recorded in Germany by Acoustic Music Records, it reveals a musician that most of us do not know, as we haven’t had the chance to listen to his compositions played only by him on the guitar. With this album, Guinga undresses his work.
Inseparable partners, musician and guitar emerge from the trust that one has on the other. Both play a brilliantly. Indeed, Guinga and his guitar put the songs in the bone. Nothing on this album is excessive; it is the result of the guitar player’s affection for the instrument.
What you hear is a great work; the extract of an inspiration that comes to light as a child generated by the love between two people.
It amazes, the fact that he never studied music – Althier Carlos de Sousa Lemos, a dentist by profession, better known in music as Guinga, is self-taught, an example that differentiated people are given the right to become great. A genius, without exaggeration.
Guinga’s guitar is enchanting. For him, a composer with plenty of leading works, it is not just creating beautiful musical phrases, hemust make them sound like they were never heard before. There’s the truth.
For Guinga, the guitarist, it is not enough simply about reversing beautiful chords and gives them air of modernity, it is a matter of recreating them with a sound compatible with the knowledge of its creator. Guinga does not seek the new, he is the new. And that’s what we find in Roendopinho. In its fifteen tracks, Guinga joins the verb to noun, uniting them like a metaphor that translates his music to the ears.
From these fifteen songs, thirteen are new and written by him alone, and only two have lyrics. The beautiful “Cambono” (Guinga and Thiago Amud) and “Lendas Brasileiras” (Guinga and Aldir Blanc) show why Guinga’s melodies always attract special verses – beauty attracts beauty. Soon, probably, the new tunes on this CD will also get lyrics written by great composers as Guinga now occupies a privileged place in Brazilian music, a place that he owns on absolute merit.
Ellegant concert for guitar is Guinga’s new album. Soloing music with a clear sound, it sometimes slips the erudite, sometimes popular.
Though he sees himself as a musician with “nothing special”, hearing the album, with songs from genres as varied as they are beautiful, it indicates that his humility seems not to authorize him to view the splendour of his work. But he leaves an astonished legion of musicians and fans that recognize the genius of his compositions: winding, full of ups and downs, often unexpected, but with small straight for landing.
In Roendopinho, you can travel the musical genius of Guinga as if you have no time to go anywhere, just going, listening…
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BRASIL OBSERVER – ISSUE 27
