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London and NYC Club and Concert Listings The Ruff Guide To Brasil: Joe Davis (Far Out) Writer: Sanjiv Ahluwalia I’m in downtown Rio, in the old ‘centro historico’ (historical centre) district. I pass the multiple juice bars, pedestrian hawkers, and splendid, colonial buildings and under the brightest sunshine and bluest sky possible, I spy a record shop. Ever in search of the undiscovered groove, I’m a little disappointed to find not crates of dusty old, nay ‘vintage’ vinyl but wall to wall CDs. A pleasant but frustrating two hours later, and it's not quite yielding the stack of bossa nova classics I was looking for. An exasperated assistant, tired of endless “Do you have any....?” questions, places a couple of CDs in my hands. Instantly they satiate my fix for Brazilian classics. Warm sunshine and sweet liquefied sugar grooves resound from the discs. Lost Brazilian songs and sounds, and artists long forgotten are given a new lease of life. The thing is the sound of Brazil is not from a record company in deepest Ipanema...but a sleepy London suburb called Osterley. With the ironic and incredible feat of selling Brazilian music to the Brazilians, Far Out have dominated the Brazilian music market, rejuvenating the careers of Sixties bossa nova heroes and heroines forgotten by Brazil's public. And it all started so innocently. Joe Davis (real name Joti Jopal - his name was misspelt on a flyer and has stuck ever since), was born in the suburbs of Ealing, West London and grew up with a deep love of Black music, helped by his music-loving older brother. Joe grew tired of the commercialism of Black music and some of the new sounds dominating Black music in the early Eighties, such as electro and hip hop (though ironically Joe did work for the Streetsounds record label, a pioneering West London label based in Ealing in the early Eighties run by a Hong Kong born Indian, Morgan Khan, which helped break hundreds of Black Amercian records in the UK through its compilations). Joe got deeper into the emerging jazz scene, and despite being in his early teens went to the legendary Monday night jazz sessions at the Wag with Paul Murphy DJing in the early Eighties, as well as being a regular at Murphy’s record shop, Fusion Records, Exmouth Market in London. It was through this small and burgeoning scene that Joe Davis got to know a young aspiring jazz DJ called........Gilles Peterson. “Gilles used to DJ at a night in a pub in Richmond called “The Belvedere Arms”. There was a real mix of people, mainly West London suburban soul people. It was on a Sunday evening, and it was a nice place to go and listen to music. After a while you got to see the same faces and make friends - people like Terry Farley, Paul Oakenfold and Ashely Beadle used to go down there. Through all my time in music Gilles has been one of the nicest people, offering me support numerous times.” By turning his ear to jazz music Joe gained a love of Brazilian music. A chance meeting at a record fair would turn the course of his musical career. “I met a guy called Eric Crawford who owned a record shop in Sao Paulo in a record fair in 1985. I told him that I loved Airto and Azymuth and Marcos Valle - I had just bought Marcos Valle’s “Samba 1968” which I loved - and I asked if these artists had recorded other material. He said they had recorded lots of stuff, why don’t you come to Brazil, there is lots of music for you to discover.” Ironically, half an hour earlier Joe had met another record shop owner, this time from Lisbon, who noticed Joe buying up Brazilian records and also invited him to Lisbon to visit his record shop. “I went over to Lisbon for three weeks and to be honest there wasn’t a lot over there, apart from this guy’s record shop which I basically visited every day!! Both him and Eric were not into Black music but heavily into rock, so we would trade records. They had me running all over London trying to track down rare Beatles pressings!” Before the term 'global village' and the advent of the internet, travelling to far-flung places was much more difficult than it is now. “When I went over to Brazil, if a place had a fax it was technologically advanced! I went to Brazil in 1986, the era of the great Brazil team (Falco, Edu and Socrates etc). It was a bit radical for a seventeen year old to go to the other side of the world without knowing anyone there. When I told people I was going to Brazil they didn’t know much about the place, other than about the football and Copacabana beach. To them it didn’t seem a total journey into the unknown but let me assure you it very much was!” Arriving at Sao Paulo airport knowing no one and not speaking the language, a young Joe Davis jumped into a taxi and gave the taxi driver Eric’s address...it then dawned to him how scary the trip was! Over the course of a few weeks, Joe bought around a thousand records. He had a hunger for discovering more about the music he loved as well as having the crate diggers philosophy of finding the undiscovered. Eric, seeing Joe’s abundant love of Brazilian music, recommended a trip to Rio. “Eric gave me a list of record shops in Rio where I could continue my search. I went over to Rio and apart from hanging out on the beach I visited tons of record shops. In those days there were literally hundreds of record shops in Rio, sadly there are not so many now. I would go into a record shop and look at the backs of records for information on the artist, producers and label and listen to everything I could. A lot of Brazilian records though didn’t have this sort of information. Every time I met a musician, in a shop, or at a gig, or in the studio, I’d say I’ve got an album and the piano sounds like you playing, did you play on the album? I gained lots of knowledge by doing that.” Hit by the Brazilian bug Joe Davis (in between studying and learning sound engineering) travelled to Brazil as many times as possible. From 1990-1993 he went up to nine times each year. To fund his trips, Joe started selling records he had picked up from Brazil, though he never really considered himself a record dealer. “Going to Brazil was a way of learning about the music. I’d find records and sell them back home to a small amount of people - mainly DJs, people like Gilles Peterson, Patrick Forge, Kyoto Jazz Massive, Nicola Conte, UFO, John Armstrong, and Takemura (interesting to note these names from the mid-Eighties who are still around today), but that was the extent of my ‘dealing’. I never really sold that many records.” Joe gave up selling in records, finding it too stressful and upsetting to see how Brazilian music had its own an elitist scene (through the ridiculous prices charged)- not enjoyed by the masses but a chosen few DJs. He set about correcting this, and through EMI compiled Blue Brazil (“they were looking for a name, I said the album was bluesy and jazzy, call it “Blue Brazil”) with Gilles Peterson in 1994 (and also working with Kevin Beadle and Dean Rudland on the series). The album went on to sell 70,000 copies and is still in print. Other compilations that Joe worked on were “Brazilica”, again with Gilles Peterson (“it was on the Polygram who had a great catalogue so it was a pleasure to do”) and Soul Jazz, who asked him to compile the highly vaunted “Brasil” album. However, it was the Japanese Sam corporation (that eventually went bankrupt) that commissioned Joe’s first compilation. “They asked me to compile a Brazilian album and also if it was possible to get some artists to record three new tracks for the compilation. It got me thinking, that if it was possible to record three new tracks why not record a whole album?” So the seeds were sown for Far Out. In 1993 Far Out existed as a dance label, as a sub-shot to the acid jazz label Dorado run by Ollie Blackwell. The first track released was “JD’s Jam” (no prize for guessing what JD stands for) which was big with American house DJs such as Kenny Dope and Tony Humphries. One of the pivotal moments for Far Out was when Joe Davis brought Joyce over for Talkin’ Loud (a night run by Gilles Peterson and Patrick Forge) at The Fridge in Brixton in December 1993. It gave music heads a chance to see someone who previously only existed on the covers of super expensive old records. Joyce received a rapturous welcome and was overcome by the crowd's enthusiasm. She was quick to tour London again, and made a gallant return to the Clapham Grand in the summer of 1994. An excellent concert and if possible, even better than her inaugural show. Again it was by chance that Joe got to meet with Joyce. “I met someone in a record shop, who knew her and gave me her phone number. She knew who I was and that there was a scene in London and was happy to play a show here.” The show was the catalyst for Joe to take Far Out away from Dorado, and release Brazilian music rather than dance music (though Joe has a great love of house music, such as Nu Groove, Masters at Work and Detroit Techno from the early days). Joe brought together a load of Brazilian artists to re-record a selection of Brazilian classics as well as new material including the Brazilian anthems Os Grillos and Para Lennon E McCartney. The album put the label on the map and set out the Far Out philosophy. “Marcos Valle was a real find. He is absolutely worshipped in Brazil, he’s seen as a musical hero as he is one of the biggest selling Brazilian singers and one of the first MPB (Musica Popular Brasil - a term for contemporary Brazilian music) artists. He is unique, a real maverick but also very shy. He left Brazil in 1976 and lived in Los Angeles mainly writing and producing for other people, artists such as Chicago, Sarah Vaughan, and Leon Ware. He also worked on soundtracks as well as working on the Brazilian Sesame Street. He recorded three albums in the Eighties, the last of which was released in 1983, but none of them did much. I was introduced to him by Joyce. He had heard about me through her and the stories of a mad Englishman buying and selling MPB records in Rio!” The previously mentioned Sam Corporation had sown the idea in Joe’s head of getting the legendary Marcos Valle into the recording studio, organised by Gilles Peterson’s ex-manager Guy Trezier. “I negotiated with Marcos on playing a version of “The Crickets Theme from Ana Maria” as that is what everyone knows him for. The musicians who were in the studio waiting to record were left dumbfounded when the demi- god of the Bossa Nova scene walked into a Brazilian recording studio for the first time in twenty years.” Joe states that he has been very lucky to work with artists who he has admired for a while and who have universally been a joy to work with. Apart from doing A & R and running Far Out, Joe also produces music with his partner Roc Hunter. Initially communication with artists such as Azymuth was via hand signals or the ‘universal music language’, but Joe is now fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, especially in ‘favela’ slang. He is currently working on music with the new crop of Brazilian singers. “After ten years of Far Out, we are only beginning to achieve our ambitions. We are still learning about production, recording and music. We are looking for the next Milton Nasciemento or Marcos Valle and we are slowly getting there. We have an exciting group of new musicians who are producing some brilliant music.” New music for the future includes a new group called Democustico (who are feature on Brazilian Love Affair 5), who are Far Out’s Roc Hunter and Gabreila and Mauro Berman. Even more interesting is the singer Sabrina Malheiros who has an album out next year produced by Venom. Far Out win points for offering a fresh, contemporary twist to the classic Brazilian sound. The essential qualities of Brazilian music are retained for new recordings; the light bossa nova grooves, the samba percussion refrain and the Brazilian joie de vivre but without being too retro or clichéd. Far Out also have an unnerving knack of, Quentin Tarantino style, bringing back to the public's attention old artists (often forgotten) - step forward Joyce, Marcos Valle and The Ipanemas." With Brazil very much in vogue at the moment and Far Out on the ascendance, the future is definitely bright, a canary golden Brazilian bright for Joe Davis and Far Out. And I’m sure there is at least one record shop assistant in Rio that would agree. Note: This summer (2004) Far Out celebrate their ten year anniversary with the release of three albums - the latest installment of their iconic Brazilian Love Affair series, a re-issue of two classic Milton Nascimento albums, and new sounds from Troubleman. See below for links to buy on Amazon. RELATED LINKS: Far Out Review of Milton Nascimento's Maria Maria / Ultimo Tem Review of Brazilian Love Affair 5 Buy Troubleman's Time Out Of Mind at Amazon UK (CD) Buy Brazilian Love Affair 5 at Amazon UK (CD)  | US (CD) Buy Milton Nascimento's Maria Maria / Ultimo Tem at Amazon UK (CD) Buy Blue Brazil at Amazon UK (CD / Vinyl)  | US (CD) Buy Brasil at Amazon UK (CD / Vinyl)  | US (CD) PUBLISHED: 6 June 2004 More features EMAIL UPDATES! Do you want to receive Know The Ledge update emails? Click here to sign up!	::: RELATED LINKS Far Out Review of Milton Nascimento's Maria Maria / Ultimo Tem Review of Brazilian Love Affair 5 More Features