Jazz : Dori Caymmi’s Family Tradition

The sounds of Brazil filled the small room upstairs Friday at Le Cafe, when Dori Caymmi brought his guitar, his voice and his reminiscences to a small, appreciative audience.

A product of the second samba generation (his father, now 76, was a bossa nova innovator in the 1960s), the younger Caymmi himself now in his late 40s, is a master of mood evocation. His first song, “The Harbor,” began with a sonorous pedal tone on the guitar, leading to dramatic finger-style runs, spread chords and the gradual swelling of sound as Greg Karukas added his synthesizer.

Caymmi’s voice, magnified by an echo effect, took over as the rhythm of Claudio Slon on drums and Jeff Watts on bass eased the group into a firm beat.

The series of songs that followed--often with long instrumental introductions or interludes--was notable less for what Caymmi sang than for the charm with which he delivered his messages, whether in Portuguese, occasional English or in some indefinable wordless chant. Karukas used a flute-like synthesizer sound for several of his solos.

Essential to Caymmi’s act is his between tune banter--about his father’s home (“They called him the poet of the ocean”), the mixing of black and Portuguese cultures, Brazilian food, and English-Portuguese translation problems. He all but transported the listener to the scene where this seminal music began three decades ago. Caymmi returns to Le Cafe May 17-18.