CéU [Digipak]

Performer: CéU
Distributor: Fontana Distribution

Notes: C�U: Maria Do Ceu Whitaker Pocas. The concepts of musical multiculturalism and postmodern synthesis were paid a lot of lip service in the early 21st century, but it took an album like CeU's self-titled debut to give the terms true meaning. Finding itself at the intersection of traditional Brazilian forms and urban contemporary attitude, CeU's music is a seductive aural melting pot that plays like the soundtrack to the new global village. CEU mixes bossa nova, samba, and Latin jazz with trip-hop, dance pop, Afropop, and reggae (her cover of Bob Marley's "Concrete Jungle" is one of the album's many highlights). It also blends singer-songwriter intimacy with heady, top-tier production, gorgeous melodies with street-wise grooves, and Spanish-language lyrics with a musical vocabulary as wide as the world.

At the start of the 2000s, a handful of beguiling acts emerged to revive the Brazilian styles that enchanted listeners in the 1960s and '70s. Maria do C�u Whitaker Po�as is one of the more creative of the bunch, meshing the sultry sounds of samba, bossa nova, and choro with jazz, hip-hop, and R&B to form a hybrid that is body-conscious yet sophisticated. The Brazilian-raised singer learned some of her chops in her late teens on an extended stay in New York City; she returned home in 2005 to make her debut recording with producer Beto Villares (Zelia Duncan, Herbert Vianna). The album became a hit first in South America, then Europe, and finally the States.

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