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リオの煌めきを爪弾きと歌声で
稀に偶然は起きる。編集部からの依頼通知を開けた時、部屋には偶々『CAFE BLEU SOLID BOND』が流れていた。naomi & goroがスタイル・カウンシルの傑作盤をフルカヴァーした2013年の作品で大好きな一枚だ。〈ジカ熱〉緊急事態宣言下でリオのカーニバルが開幕した翌日の午後、渋谷の11階のカフェで伊藤ゴロー氏に新譜の話を伺った。
naomi & goro名義では7年ぶりのオリジナル盤にして11作目の『RIO, TEMPO』は9曲入り。この間、じつに多彩なコラボ活動やソロ作も3枚作り、naomi & goro & 菊地成孔名義も挟んできたゴロー氏は開口一番、「当初はnaomi & goroに戻る感覚がなかなか掴めないというか、オリジナル曲も書き溜めてきたわけではないので何らのアイディアもなかった」と明かした。「初心に返って二人だけでもいいかな」という初期案も「曲を作っているうちにいろいろと欲が出てきて（笑）」結局はリオの常連リズム隊と伊藤彩氏（ヴァイオリン）が参加。坪口昌恭氏が終盤の2曲でRhodesを奏でるという構成になった。口火を飾るのはジョビン＝ヴィニシウスの“BRIGAS NUNCA MAIS”。7曲目の“RIO”は「ライヴでは昔からよく演ってきたカヴァー曲なのですが、なぜかアルバムには入れた事がなくて」漸く今回で実った。
そんな作業を進めるにつれ、徐々に〈リオに捧ぐ〉的な潮流が浮上してきて、ジョビン・ファミリーの一人であるパウラ・モレレンバウム氏に2曲の作詞を依頼。「録音で通算4回訪れている僕自身の、リオへの想いをメールで伝えて」書き下ろしてもらった。うちの一曲で忘却を歌った“OBLIVION (ESQUECIMENTO)”の訳詞を読むと、後半にこんな素敵な表現がある。♪甘い川としょっぱい海が手の中で交じり合う…恋模様を汽水域に喩えたパウラ氏の粋な詞からは男女関係の機微だけに止まらず、日本人のnaomi & goroが共にブラジル音楽に魅せられてコンビを組んだ頃の原初の想いや航跡さえもが透視できる。
「僕は結構遠回りをして二十歳過ぎてからボサノヴァを始めたのですが……最初はどうしても日本人がそれを真似る事のジレンマに見舞われたり、じぶんが本当にやりたい事はボサノヴァではないんじゃないかとか（笑）、妙にへそ曲がりなところがあって」とは意外なゴロー語録。が、そんな足元のぐらつきも初のリオ録音で現地入りした途端に吹き飛んだ。「向こうの人たちは〈おっ、日本人もなかなかやるじゃん〉とか（笑）、〈しかも日本的でいいよ〉とか、半ばお世辞も含まれているんだろうけれども誉めてくれてね」、以降は「楽になった」。そんなリオの風土と音楽（仲間）への思慕が全編に溢れている一枚!
Naomi & Goro’s Rio, Tempo
Interviewed and written by: Anri Suetsugu
Strumming and singing away the luster of Rio
On very rare occasions, coincidences do come about. It was just when Café Bleu Solid Bond was playing in my room that the editing desk contacted me asking me to run the interview. It’s my favorite album of the bossa nova duo, Naomi & Goro, released in 2013, covering The Style Council’s first and classic album Café Bleu in its entirety.
To hear about the latest album, I sat down with Goro Ito at a café on the 11th floor of a building in Shibuya, in the afternoon of the very next day the Rio Carnival opened under a state of public health emergency declared by WHO for the outbreak of the Zika virus.
This 11th release from the duo – which is the first output as an original studio album in 7 years under the name of Naomi & Goro – is titled Rio, Tempo and contains 9 songs. Over the past 7 years, Ito has been intensely involved in various collaborative projects and has also made 3 new pieces solo.
With also a release under the name Naomi & Goro & Naruyoshi Kikuchi (avant-garde jazz musician/saxophonist) in between, Ito starts off by saying: “It was hard at first to get back the sense of playing as Naomi & Goro,” also revealing that “we didn’t have any ideas at all ―it wasn’t like we had kept on writing original songs and accumulating them for some time later.” He continues: “The original notion that ‘perhaps it would be nice to go back-to-basics and work between only the two of us’ gradually changed as we made the songs. We ended up wanting to do more (laugh).” In the end, the duo invited the regular rhythm section from Rio as well as Aya Ito (violinist) to the production. Masayasu Tzboguchi (jazz musician and main man of electro jazz unit, Tokyo Zawinul Bach) also participated in the production playing the Rhodes piano on the 2 tracks close to the end of the album. The album opens with the track “Brigas Nunca Mais” co-written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. The 7th track ”Rio” is, according to Ito, “a cover track that’s been played frequently at our shows, but for some reason never made it to be on our album”, that happily finds itself listed on the album this time.
Through the production process, a mode to ‘dedicate the album to Rio’ gradually emerged, leading them to ask Paula Morelenbaum of the Jobim family to write 2 songs for them. “I e-mailed him my own feelings I have toward Rio – a city that I’ve visited as much as 4 times for recording purposes,” and had Morelenbaum write the songs specially for the album. In the latter half of one of those songs that sing about oblivescence “Oblivion (Esquecimento)”, there is a line that goes sweetly like this:♪Rio doce e o, Mar salgado se encontrarao (sweet river and salty sea waters meet)... These lyrics by Morelenbaum that compares love affairs into brackish waters lets the listener see through the very original enthusiasm of when these two Japanese, Naomi & Goro fell under the spell of Brazilian music and decided to form a musical duo as well as the wake of the duo’s career, not limited to the simple subtlety of man-woman relationships as the lyrics may superficially suggest.
Ito explains: “I started playing bossa nova after turning twenty following a fairly big detour. At the beginning, I used to get caught in a dilemma of a Japanese trying to make themselves sound like it, or get into a twisted way of thinking that bossa nova wasn’t the thing I really wanted to do (laugh). I was extraordinarily cynical.” A pretty unexpected saying from Ito. Though, the initial insecurity in his stance ends up flying out of the window the moment Ito set foot in the city of Rio for the first time for recording works. “The locals gave us praise, saying things like ‘Hey, you’re doing well for a Japanese’ (laugh) or ‘And it actually sounds nice and Japanese’. I know it must have been half-flattery, but they were complimenting us nonetheless. Ever since then, things became ‘much easier’,” Ito looks back.
Rio, Tempo is one great piece overflowing with the yearning for the local culture of this wonderful city Rio, and also with their heartfelt thoughts for fellow musicians!
