Fazer e Cantar

Diana HP’s heart lies in Minas Gerais, Brazil’s landlocked, literary heartland. Larger than France – where she resides – Minas is a land of rolling hills, sleepy colonial towns and vast cerrado forests, which burst into fragrant bloom when the rains come. The state has produced Brazil’s greatest modernist writers, including Guimarães Rosa and Drummond de Andrade, and a seminal musical movement – Clube da Esquina; which brought the world Milton Nascimento, Beto Guedes, Lô Borges and Diana HP’s uncle, the great singer-songwriter, Toninho Horta.

Fazer e Cantar dips into marketable anodyne bossa and chanson, but soon returns to Diana HP’s homeland: ‘Gagarine’ is a reinvention of the Clube da Esquina style – lyrical, dreamy, its wistful melody winds like a curving, church-lined cobbled street. ‘Delikatessan’ and ‘Brincadeira’ continue the reinvention – the former with another undulating melody, underscored with discordant harmonies and elastic bass; the latter as sweet and simple as a tropical breeze, yet with a harmonic and rhythmic richness that remember not only Minas but the Djavan of ‘Açai’ and ‘Capim’. While this is easy music to do anything to, it rewards deeper attention. Slip into it when you’re on the edge of sleep, get lost in the effortless, crafted complexity and journey with Diana through Minas…