GREEN, INdigo, YELLOW, PINK AND COAL
Marisa Monte
beauty and gratitude
by Ricardo Nunes
In the context of MPB, around the first half of the 1990s, the lack of renewal of great female performers began to be felt as never before. Perhaps even if they hadn't left earlier than agreed, Elis, Clara, Nara, among others, would hardly be able to cope with the necessary rejuvenation of our music, because they would probably already be in the well-deserved comfort of the consecration that Gal, Bethânia, Rita Lee, the last examples enjoyed at the time of a generation that needed to pass the baton. Without detracting from them, there was just the usual small and persevering second-tier team, some young singers from bands more oriented towards pop-rock, the “romantic” or the regional; here and there some promises appeared, ephemeral. A whole class of old and new producers, musicians and composers understood that MPB had already consolidated, but could see that this solidity was becoming obsolete without new and improved fruits.
Things were more or less like this when the discGreen, Indigo, Yellow, Pink and Charcoal, from 1994, by the then young and skinny Marisa Monte, put an end to that long and disheartening intermezzo. His two previous albums had been good, even great, they were critical and sales successes, but the restricted, nostalgic and suspicious “market” demanded a more robust and definitive proof. Deep down, it was just a rhetorical demand. Marisa accepted it, however, without hesitation, because she herself felt the influx of a job in which she could finally manifest her most latent inspirations.Pink and Charcoalit was the result, the gratitude and its crowning.
Brown and Antunes: ideal partners
The voice of Marisa Monte, who at first had been her boss, is not, and never was, uncontested. Especially when they insisted on comparing her to the great divas that preceded her, but Marisa felt that in her talent, reducing herself to the voice was nothing but a limitation. Despite the operatic solfeggio that propelled her onward, and which she knew how to explore so well, she had much more to offer. Marisa, although this has become less rare in the generation that would also reveal Adriana Calcanhoto and shortly after Vanessa da Mata, is also an instrumentalist and composes many of her beautiful songs, in addition to an accurate nose for finding great musical partnerships. As a matter of fact, in times of as much noise as now, Marisa Monte seems to have not neglected the faith that music is above all beauty and melodic harmony.
With Nando Reis: harmony of co-creation
Pink and Charcoalit would be an almost handmade record, without keyboards, guitars or synthesizers. Voice, guitar and percussion. And it incorporated an eclectic musical heritage in a tribute tone. The primordial thing is obviously in the unpublished and surprising songs written by four hands with a handful of inspired authors in the beginning of a solo career, such as Arnaldo Antunes, Carlinhos Brown and Nando Reis, but he makes a point of recognizing and revering his ancestry to the point of asking for a blessing masters like Gilberto Gil, Paulinho da Viola and Jorge Ben Jor.
Marisa declined the label they wanted to impose on her, she knew how to deal with the pressure of being a new Elis or something like that . And his bet yielded much more than that. From samba, to ballad, to baião, to serenade,Pink and Charcoalit was a milestone proving that yes, that our music still had something to survive on, but as long as it sought new paths and even without losing the reference of our blissful cancioneiro.
