Badi Assad

Badi Assad creates her Wonderland with colors painted by many acoustical instruments, some of them archaic, whose sounds are invigorated by the fusion of Brazilian music with nuances of pop, folk, jazz and classical.

This is not the first time that this musician from the small town of SaÞo JoaÞo da Boa Vista (SaÞo Paulo State) has created music with a real substance and texts with an important message. Badi devoted her previous album Verde regarding the environment. Wonderland is only a logical next-step. We really do live in a wonderland”, says the Brazilian singer and guitarist Badi Assad about the state of our planet. “It’s just that everything is upside down.”

On the new album Wonderland, her second album with Edge Music, the musician leads her listeners into a world where – as the title suggests – they will encounter surreal harmonies, shifting moods and images, marvelous musical colors and delicate poetry.

Wonderland is a collection of cover versions based upon a single theme. Badi Assad has taken compositions by the Eurhythmics, Vangelis, the Asian Dub Foundation, Tom Jobim, Tori Amos and the Brazilian music star, Lenine, complementing them with some songs of her own, including “O que seria?” and “Zoar” (composed by Chico Ceìsar and her).

The album was produced by cellist Jaques Morelenbaum, who has already enjoyed a notable musical career and collaborated with artists such as Tom Jobim, Cesaria Evora, Madredeus, Carlinhos Brown, Caetano Veloso, Egberto Gismonti and Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Among the musicians who came together under his guidance in December 2005 in a studio in Rio de Janeiro were some of the Brazilian’s greatest such as bassist Zeca AssumpçaÞo, percussionist Marcos Suzano, flautist Carlos Malta, and the artist singer Seu Jorge (who appeared as an actor in the film City of God).

Anyone under the impression that Wonderland is a place where everything is rose-colored – that it somehow is describing a paradise on earth translated musically into unclouded harmonies – would be quite mistaken. Wonderland is a world turned upside down where values are inverted; realities lose focus and stray far from their original sense of harmony. We begin to wonder: What are the real necessities? Where is real love? . . . The songs on Wonderland are reflections of this fantasy: apparently light, upbeat and poetic, yet, on a deeper level, they reveal distortions and human weaknesses.