During an interview, in a dark room in the Ekko pop venue, Utrecht, the four musicians of the Belgian group Ão talk about their mix of styles and languages, which can be heard on both the new album Malandraas well as at their live concerts. Guitarist Siebe Chau talks about his Bolivian guitar – the charango -, percussionist Bert Peyffers about a wheelbarrow in France on which he tapped rhythms, singer Brenda Corijn about the ideas for songs that she, based in Portugal for a long time, sent by email to the others. Keyboard player Jolan Decaestecker says: “We had to bridge the necessary distances, literally and figuratively.”
What now sounds abstract becomes immediately clear during their concert a few hours later in the sold-out Ekko. The enthusiastic audience presses forward to delve into the musical richness and visual details: from the stockinged feet with which guitarist Chau operates the pedals of his foot-bass to the thick set of keys that Peyffers uses as an instrument, and the winding hand movements of Corijn. Decaestecker stands a bit to the side but is the axis of the group. With his keyboards and electronic effects he edits the sounds of the others on the spot.
Cross-pollination is at the heart of the Ão style, and it brings them much acclaim. Ão (‘Ouch!’) has already been warmly embraced in Belgium, and their concerts are often sold out in the Netherlands as well. The quartet in their late twenties will play at Bevrijdingspop in Haarlem on May 5, and a month later at Best Kept Secret in Hilvarenbeek. Their songs, like on the second album Malandrahis poetic stories framed by baroque bulging instrumentations. Rhythms have a Lebanese pattern, or Colombian, or Angolan. There are Portuguese lyrics and Bolivian guitar fragments, together they form a ringing, chattering whole over which Corijn’s sensual vocals sway.
A few years of puzzling and rearranging
In beautiful songs like ‘Talvez’, ‘Orgulho’ and ‘Cada Vez’, Portuguese melancholy merges with other types of longing, such as homesickness for distant places. The different colors of earth are connected by Decaestecker’s ‘ambient’ – ‘environment’ – which penetrates everywhere.
Malandra is the result of a few years of puzzling and rearranging. “I have always had a fascination with sound and sounds in general,” says Decaestecker. “I used to play guitar, but was mainly fascinated by effects pedals. Ultimately, I did a music production course, where I studied software and everything that a computer can add to music. So my roots lie in ambient, but also in experimental guitar styles.”
Ão started as the duo of Siebe Chau and Brenda Corijn who ensured that their songs in – then – Brazilian style would sound ‘like bossa nova covers in a hotel lobby’. Decaestecker joined, and then percussionist Peyffers, who had ‘fallen in love’ when he heard the duo on a TV programme. “I was in a different room than where the TV was, so I didn’t see them. I thought these were old Portuguese musicians who had been playing together for years. Someone told me that these were people my own age, in Brussels. Then I bombarded them with expressions of love until I was allowed to join in.”
I bombarded them with expressions of love until I was allowed to participate
Singer Corijn, also an actress, was born in Mozambique, where her Belgian father and Mozambican mother met. After the age of six, she lived alternately in Brussels and in various places in Portugal. She sings her own kind of Portuguese, she says, with accents from Mozambique, Brazil and Portugal.
She also sings in Dutch and English, but preferably in Portuguese. “Your language determines the sound and rhythm of the singing. Dutch has more consonants. Portuguese has many vowels, which makes it easier for me to create long singing lines. I like that, so you can end up with flourishing words.”
She first sang some songs in another language. “For example ‘Orgulho’, I had to look for the best form. I sang the first versions in English, and then suddenly it became something different.”
Quartet Ão.
Photo Alexander Popelier
Stories about life
This ‘Orgulho’ (‘proud’ in Portuguese) refers to Brenda’s childhood. “I often sat at the table with my mother and her friends from Portugal or Colombia. They were long evenings, everyone told stories about her life. Those are moments I will never forget.” A few years ago she interviewed her mother for a play. “The performance was about being a woman and what has changed or remained the same over the course of different generations. I asked her ‘Are you jealous of me, of the opportunities I have had in my life?’ My mom replied, ‘Jealous isn’t the right word, but I would have liked to be the one you are’.”
The statements appear almost literally in the song: “Orgulho, orgulho, orgulho, orgulho/ Gostaria de ser aquilo que tu es” (“Proud, proud, proud, proud/ I would like to be what you are”).
A few hours later, during their performance, Corijn dances loosely across the stage and talks to the audience. She introduces one of the songs in detail, then addresses one person in the audience. “Yes, mom, I know you don’t want me to talk about you so much. But then you shouldn’t keep coming to see me.” She laughs and starts ‘Orgulho’.
