Take Note: MOMO.

Migrant musicians have a way of quickly finding their feet within a new community. Not long after moving from Lisbon to London with his partner, a Brazilian friend took Marcelo Frota – or MOMO., as he is known professionally – to Total Refreshment Centre (TRC), the brainchild of Lex Blondin, co-founder of Latin jazz behemoth New Regency Orchestra, in Stoke Newington. There, MOMO. met Alabaster DePlume and other young tyros of London’s new wave jazz scene. The experience would change him – and his music.

Born in Minas Gerais in southeast Brazil, MOMO. is the son of a civil engineer and wherever his father went for work, the family would follow. Rio de Janeiro, then Luanda in Angola, then back to Rio, and on to Michigan, Chicago, Spain and Portugal. His grandmother bought him his first acoustic guitar and his mother taught him a Portuguese version of ‘Blue Moon’. While he was in Rio, he and his friends would play guitar on the beach at Ipanema, and during his travels, he would always search out local musicians to play with and listen to. Along the way, he began making and recording his own music in a singer-songwriter vein influenced by Caetano Veloso and the other tropicália artists, as well as the current Brazilian scene and other diverse music he was enjoying.

After moving to London, touring with Alabaster DePlume and hooking up with other leading lights from TRC, his music began to change. After watching his young daughter dance, he decided he wanted to make an album that she could move and groove to. “Instead of starting with guitar and singing like a folk singer,” MOMO. explains, “I experimented by starting with the drums and the beats and the groove.” Recorded live using the TRC’s studio and rehearsal space, his seventh album, Gira, was born of collaborations and improvisations with the likes of DePlume, saxophonist Tamar Osborn, trombonist Rosie Turton and members of the electronic jazz outfit Emanative: Nick Woodmansey on drums, Magnus Mehta on percussion and Jessica Lauren on keyboards.

The title translates from Portuguese as ‘to move,’ ‘to turn around.’ It marks a clear metamorphosis in MOMO.’s music since his 2008 debut, A Estética do Rabisco (The Art of Scribbling). They are chalk and cheese in some respects, yet linked by a sense of fun and exploration. “I had a little bit the same feeling when I was doing my first album. Lots of freedom,” he reveals. “It’s why some of the songs are so long. I privileged the spontaneity of the grooves.” The album manages to strike a balance between this kind of number, like the utterly infectious eight-minute opener ‘Pára (feat Jessica Lauren)’, and shorter songs like third single ‘Rio’, which calls upon the classic songwriting credentials that have earned him the plaudits of Patti Smith, David Byrne and others. It is decidedly, however, this Brazilian artist’s ‘London’ album. MOMO. is at home here. “Life brought me to London and I think I’ve made my lightest album,” he suggests. “It could only have been created here.”

This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today