Summer. There’s just something about hearing that word, about living in that season, that brings a certain urgency in me. It’s the meaning I place behind it that allows me to express my best sense of self. It’s when I think this blog’s readers get to hear music that’s the closest to what I enjoy listening to. It’s when I think I can find new contours to explore that style we like to call “Balearic”, as you’ll hear in my latest ‘Digging Deep’ mix for LYL Radio.
Where do I start? I think for me, it’s always finding a guiding light to show me the way. All it takes is one great song to inspire me and spur me to build a world around it. And this time, that beaming ray came from Brazil with Nei Lisboa’s “Verão Em Calcutá”.
In “Verão Em Calcutá”, I heard this wonderful idea, that of looking outside of where you live (of what you know) to inspire you to travel a different way. I heard Nei finding vibrant, summer, resonances, in hidden oases.
As Nei expresses through his lyrics, it’s that chase of the sound of the sea that makes your mind daydream and create, imagining and reimagining new vistas and experiences, all without having to set one foot in those (seemingly) distant shores. So, I thought, let’s add music by others imbibing in Nei’s inspiration. Let’s find those who are zig-zagging across separate oceans, until the grains of sand appear, and the shoreline reveals itself to them.
“Come on, baby, maybe, everything will work out, in a good summer in Kolkata”…
Verão Em Calcutá
Tracklist:
Nei Lisboa – Verão Em Calcutá
Yuji Toriyama (鳥山雄司) – The Missing Link ~Chun-Li Stage~
Frasco (フラスコ) – Sun Will Still Shine
Stephen Bishop – Little Italy
La Escuelita – La Yapla Mata
The Light & The Salt (빛과 소금) – 오래된 친구
Anita Mui (梅艷芳) – 夏日戀人
Oattes Van Schaik – Could This Be Love
Electric Mind – Can We Go
Paco Saval – Tonight (Sprint to Paris)
The Keiser Twins – Magic Feelings
Guarda Branca – Boneca (Instrumental)
Kiyoshi Miyaura (宮浦清) – If You Miss A Good Dream (忘れかけたGood Dream)
All images by author.