Sergio Mendes is Enchanted

On his 39th album, Brazilian legend surrounds himself with a diverse cast of young bucks and experienced vets. He gives MP3.com the 411.

Interview RSS The Exclusive MP3.com
Interview Podcast Audio Sergio Mendes
"The Look of Love" feat. Fergie

There are charmed lives, and then there is the life of Sergio Mendes.

The Brazilian legend has been introducing the rhythms and melodies of his homeland to the pop world for more than 45 years. He has continued to do so in recent years with help from Black Eyed Peas star Will.i.am, as well as a diverse cast of young bucks and experienced vets.

He broke onto the scene as a sideman for the likes of Cannonball Adderly and Herbie Mann in the early 1960s, but soon stormed to the top of the charts with his group Brazil '66, which served up pop versions of Brazilian classics.

Now 67 years young, Mendes is set to release Encanto, his 39th album, on June 10. It features guest spots from Will.i.am and fellow Pea Fergie, as well as Juanes, Natalie Cole, Ledisi, Carlinhos Brown, Herb Alpert and Lani Hall, the original singer for Brasil '66.

Mendes spoke to MP3.com about his past, his present, and his future.

Hello, Sergio? Yes. Hey there, it's Jim Welte at MP3.com. Hi, how are you? I'm doing very well, how are you doing? Good. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I appreciate it. My pleasure, my pleasure. So you're in LA right now, right? I'm in LA, yes. It sounds like you're going to do a bunch of summer jazz festivals this summer, right? That's right, yes. Are you heading out soon? I'm heading out the day after tomorrow. I'm going to St. Petersburg Florida, and then on the 17th, we play the JVC Jazz Festival. Right, in Miami. In Miami, yeah. And then from there, I go to Europe to do promotion for my new album. And we're doing all sorts of television shows in France, in London, and in Austria. A busy summer it sounds like. Yes. And then we come back here and we go straight to Atlantic City on the 20th and Carnegie Hall on the 21st. And then we do an East Coast tour at the end of June. And then into Europe again for concerts in Milano, Vienna, the North Sea Jazz Festival, the big jazz festivals in Europe. Yeah. There aren't too many artists your age who have been around as long as you have who are still touring this much. What do you mean my age? What are you talking about, man? [Laughs] [Laughs] You're in your 30s right? That's right! [Laugh] So what do you think you would be up to right now if a certain member of the Black Eyed Peas hadn't come knocking at your door five years ago with a crate of your old albums on vinyl? Well, it's hard to say, you know. I'm sure somebody else would have knocked at my door. Hopefully, yeah. Yeah. [Laughs] But it's been a pretty momentous turn for you in the past five years. Absolutely. It was a very important moment for me, and it opened my heart and my eyes to the idea of creative collaboration with young musicians. And it's a very exciting thing for me to do that. That visit from Will.i.am, coming to me and reaching out, was very important. [For] my second album that I did, I used musicians from all over the world, and it's a great feeling to work with young people and share ideas. It's a great thing. Yeah, I would imagine it is. It's not as though you creatively needed some rejuvenation, but I would imagine that if you did, this is a good way to get it--to tap into the blood of a younger generation to help you reinvigorate your sound. Absolutely. But it's always really great working with people from--not only age wise--different cultures. I worked on the new album with an Italian rapper and with Juanes, the number one Spanish singer. That brings such a fresh energy. And in the past I did a lot of recording with jazz musicians. I did an album with Cannonball Adderley, I did an album with Herbie Mann, and so I've been doing creative collaboration for a long time. It so happens now that it's with the younger generation, which is a wonderful thing because I learned a lot from them and vice versa. It's a very healthy thing, I think. I was thinking, both you and Will, over the years, have been criticized by certain people for straying too far from your respective genres and not sticking to traditions and kind of pushing the sound in different directions. I would imagine that in that regard you guys are almost kindred spirits of sorts, in the sense of wanting to kind of push the envelope and expand the sound and reach out a little bit more. Absolutely. Look at the whole new generation that never heard those great Brazilian classics. Even when I go to Brazil, there's so many young people that never heard "Mas Que Nada," that never heard the songs from Timeless and from the new album. All of a sudden, they get exposed to it because of the nature of the recording. Yeah, absolutely. It opened a whole new door to reintroduce the Brazilian music, which I've been doing for so long. I still play Brazilian music. And it's just the way that we present it right now that's different and it's today. It's more innovative. It's a big challenge to recut something that you did years ago, in a fresh way. You mentioned some of the collaborators that you've worked with on this new album Encanto. How did you assemble that group? Last time was a lot of people that most people would widely associate with Will.i.am, or the Black Eyed Peas. That's right. This time is much more diverse. Natalie Cole, Juanes, Ledisi. And also, Lani Hall, the original singer from Brasil '66. Right. And Herb Alpert. Yeah, I wanted to go full circle on this album. This album is very different from Timeless in the sense that I decided to go back to Brazil and do all the recordings down there. So, all the tracks were cut either in Rio de Janeiro, my home town, or Bahia, to show the diversity of rhythms and the beauty of Brazilian music. So, I think that made the new album, I hope, very different from the last one. Because I used local musicians. It sounds considerably different, yeah. That's right. And when I came back to LA, I called Herb and Lani, who are my dear friends, and I said, "Would you like to be part of this album?" And they did. And so it was a full circle thing. I have young Brazilian singer named Vanessa Da Mata. There's the Italian rapper, Jovanotti, Juanes, and a young singer named Ledisi. And speaking of coming full circle, you're working again with Carlinhos Brown, your songwriting partner for the Grammy winning Brasiliero album in 1993. Well, he's fantastic. He's a dear friend. He's an incredible musician. I went to Bahia to his studio and spent a week there. And he's full of ideas. And again, it's like collaborating with an old friend again. So, that's what this album is about. Yeah, and to stick with the full circle theme, one more thing is that you're playing Carnegie Hall next month. That's right. You played there in 1962 in a show that many people believe launched bossa nova music here in the US for the first time ever. That was the first time, you're right. The first time ever. We had Jobim, Dizzy Gillespie, yeah. 1962. Forty six years later, it all comes back. I'm not counting. [Laughs] You should stop counting; you're absolutely right. [Laughs] Do you feel like you would like to continue making records like these two for a while, where you do lots of collaborations and that kind of thing, and bring Brazilian music to a younger generation and wider audience? I think so. Brazilian music is what I love. That's the sound that I grew up with. So it's familiar to me. There's an endless source of beautiful melodies and rhythms. It's just a great source, and it's my roots, it's my country. Besides that, the popularity of Brazilian--people love Brazilian music. Everybody's charmed by those sounds. More than ever. Yeah. In Japan, in the United States, in France--so why not? I think I would like to continue that and have guests from different places, and from here of course, and keep doing this kind of work. I like it very much. Well, here's hoping that there's many more of these albums coming along the way. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sergio. So when is this going to be up? I can just send you an e-mail. Can you? Great. Yeah, give me your email address. By the way, you're so knowledgeable, it's unbelievable. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. I'll send you a link when it's live, Sergio. I really appreciate the time. Thank you Jim. Have a good one. You too.