Bursts of vibrant Latin music filled Mercury Lounge on Nov. 30 as Aline Morales took to the stage in the final performance for the club’s 16th anniversary.
Brazilian maracatu and forró filled the small club as Morales, now seven months pregnant, played Brazilian drums and sang in soft, melodic Portuguese.
With the release of her debut album Flores, Tambores e Amores, Morales said that her variety of Brazilian music differs from traditional samba or bossa-nova.
“I think this whole business of writing music in a certain specific way that you’re told to, it cuts your wings in terms of freedom and creation,” she said.
When previewing her new album, Morales said the Brazilian community in Toronto, where she now lives, was hesitant at first.
But when the album was released, members of the community were surprised and open to the new sound.
“People from Toronto, even Brazilians, they weren’t really familiar with this type of music,” she said.
“So I would come and perform and people didn’t really know what to do or how to dance and they were like ‘oh but it’s not Samba,’ . . . people still have that stereotypical vision of what Brazilian music is and nowadays, it’s changed a lot.”
Fellow bandmate and producer, David Arcus, said he and Morales experimented with different Brazilian influences on the new album.
“We were exploring a lot of different and new sounds that were outside of folk music that we were playing before, and we just decided to go with it and that was the genesis of [the album],” he said.
Arcus started working with Morales after taking a workshop with her in Toronto.
“There’s so much interesting stuff coming out of Brazil, the sounds and the rhythmic swing of the music,” Arcus said.
The two then began to form the group that performed at Mercury Lounge. The addition of two more instrumentalists, both Canadian, was important, she said, in creating the new sound for the album.
“I live here [in Canada] now and you can’t deny what’s surrounding you,” she said.
“More and more my music is blending the super Brazilian aspect of it and the Canadian influence and everything I’ve learned here . . . but mainly this relationship with musicians from Canada, from Toronto.”
Claudia Balladelli, the music programmer for Mercury Lounge, said that the club brought Morales to Ottawa for the end of its 16th anniversary celebration, which spanned a month.
“When you think Brazilian you think folk, you think samba, you think reggae, you think R&B, you think pop and rock . . . but then you think neo-Brazil, you think Aline Morales,” she said. “Brazilian music is always a good, vibrant beat.”
“We thought, ‘why not have something that opens, something that continues and then something that ends and wraps up the anniversary month’ and [Morales] does just that.”
Special guests included the Brazilian ambassador, the first secretary of Brazil, and several members of the Brazilian embassy.
“When they put their foot forward to help us, things happen,” Balladelli said.
“This year they started doing something by collaborating with Mercury Lounge more and more, so this is making us feel inspired to do more things.”
Balladelli said she didn’t think the frigid weather would deter concert-goers that evening.
“Outside it’s minus 19 degrees. Inside . . . it’s 45 degrees. You’re going to think you’re in Rio,” Balladelli said.
Morales said she was excited to be back in Ottawa for the show. After giving birth, she said she hopes to get back into music quickly and release another album before the end of 2013.
For now, she said she’s happy to be able to share the performance with her soon-to-be child. Or rather, children— she’s having twins.
“It’s actually pretty cool to be pregnant and performing, for the babies to be able to have that experience inside me, it feels great,” she said.
