by Len Brown, New Musical Express, October 28, 1989

Manuel Labour

PURISTS AND cultural segregationists must be reaching
for the suicide pills. There's Acid Bhangra, African
House, Japanese ska, Brazilian Hip-hop, Yemenite disco,
Turkish rap, Kate Bush tampering with Bulgars, gospel
mbira, Ukrainian Tetleys, Puffin Rock, Guatemalan glam,
Marc Almond ... Can this at last be the arrival of the
heaven-on-earth 'Melting Pot' which Blue Mink once
prophesied?

It's a difficult business, this World Music criticism
lark. Half of you wants to philanthropically acclaim
any serious attempts to break-down-the-barriers-man;
the other half has you waking in a cold sweat at 3am
dream-chanting tracks from a collaboration between
Terence Trent D'Arby and the New Guinea Pygmies Male
Voice Choir. As Teddy Roosevelt, I believe, once
recommended on the subject of American policy towards
Latin America, one should tread softly but carry a
rather big stick.

Thus we find David Byrne - Talking Head honcho, avant-
garde gringo, our man in Havana in a very large suit-
again flying down to Rio. I say 'again' because a fair
chunk of 'Naked' had samba stamped on its grooves by
hired indigenous musos, plus he's already given us
'Beleza Tropical: Brazilian Classics Vol l' and has
volume two of his fave Brazilian belters, 'O Samba',
all set for non-stop erotic limbo-dancing.

Moreover, Byrne's movie Ile Aiye, about Afro-Brazilian
ancestors of slaves and their upkeep of Yoruban dance
rituals, is doing the rounds. So clearly we're not
dealing here with a dabbler or a clapped-out artist
looking for a few amigos to massage his wilting muse.

Unlike previous Brazilian bus-trips, 'Rei Momo' is
unmistakably a David Byrne album. You know that he's
not just gone all Edmundo-Ross-meets-Sergio-Mendes-over-
cocktails from opening lyrical gobbets like 'Now and
then I get horny' (Tijuana brass or what?) and 'Hey Lady!
You make me giggle / We'll squiggie like honeymooners do.'

That Byrne is the squiggliest, strangeliest World Music
buff on the block becomes increasingly apparent; it's
obviously a hard thought-out labour of love designed to
introduce the uninitiated, even disinterested, to a
whole sweet trolley full of Latin dance styles. There's
salsa, samba, rumba, bomba, merengue, pagode, bolero,
mapeye, orisia, cumbia, and cha-cha-cha. When the old
Headcase succeeds one is transported into the suburban
shanty-town dancehalls of Rio; when he fails it's like
a Come Dancing nightmare of grinning sales reps in
beige and purple jumpsuits with secretaries in fake
tans and taffeta.

Obviously the commercial appeal of 'Rei Momo' over
real Latin groovers such as Barretto, Cruz, Pacheco,
Blades, Verges etc (many represented here) lies in
the fact that monolingual WASPish punters can understand
what Byrne's saying; sad but true that Brits rarely buy
songs in foreign languages yet merrily embrace tracks
with crap lyrics. Of course, David bodyswerves all
this by writing lyrics in English that no bugger can
make sense of: 'Albert Einstein wrote equations / God
told Noah 'Build an ark' / Johnny Mathis sings Cole
Porter / To bring light into the dark'. I just can't
get me head round that one, Dave.

What we have here is a collection of Talking Heads
tales that Byrne, in another fit of fusion fury, has
decided to steep in Brazilian rhythms. Like an
Hispanic 'True Stories'. Because he's a wayward
genius, some of it's brilliant, like the hope-in-the-
gutter 'Dirty Old Town' or the dark rumba of 'Good
And Evil' or the duet with a bullfrog on 'I Know
Sometimes A Man Is Wrong' or the classic samba of
'Don't Want To Be Part Of Your World' (featuring that
squeaking little percussive instrument that sounds
like a hyena being tickled).

And sometimes, amidst the congas and bongos and Afro-
Cuban brasses, there're godlike observations about,
say, the battle of the sexes at the end of the decade:
'Women have their world / And men, we have ours /
We're into sports / And they're into flowers'. Magic.

Yes, 'Rei Momo' is the further adventures of a New
York fruitbat flapping happily out of the rainforest,
grafting his worldview onto a Brazilian soundscape.
Neither fish nor flesh, neither masterpiece nor
monstrosity, alas we're left again with the World
Music critic sitting sore-arsed on the fence. Still,
at least I got through this review without mentioning
'Graceland'. Oh shit! (6)