Can you recommend any Portuguese music or spoken word audio resources?

January 10, 2007 3:22 AM

Can anyone recommend any music, audio blogs, podcasts or other audio resources in Portuguese?

Starting from scratch, I'd like to learn a bit of Portuguese, and I've found that listening to background noise in a foreign language helps a lot with pronunciation. Bonus points for stuff particularly suitable for a complete beginner, or any other Portuguese resources for novice language learners.

posted by handee to media & arts (11 comments total)

Are you talking about Brazilian Portuguese, or European Portuguese? They're remarkably different in pronunciation, vocabulary, and even some grammar (moreso than UK vs. Australian vs. American English). My wife (who is from Brazil) has a lot of trouble understanding the language when spoken from Portugal.
So it's an important distinction to make, before you move forward.
posted by jozxyqk at 3:46 AM on January 10, 2007

I know no Portuguese but Fado Music probably expresses itself using fairly simple language.
posted by loosemouth at 3:46 AM on January 10, 2007

Brazilian portuguese, initially. I wasn't aware that they were so different!
posted by handee at 3:51 AM on January 10, 2007

I love the Tribalistas - they're Brazilian. The music immediately puts me in a good mood. The twelfth track on the album I linked to, Ja Sei Namorar, is my favorite wake-up song ever.
posted by hazyjane at 5:04 AM on January 10, 2007

Brazilian Nuggets is a portugese music blog with lots of great old 70's tropicalia type stuff. I've seen lots of similar blogs in portugese for bossa nova as well, but don't think I've seen any specifically geared toward formal language teaching/learning.
posted by p3t3 at 5:06 AM on January 10, 2007

First thing I thought of was Antonio Carlos Jobim. I was just listening to Joao Gilberto's recordings of Jobim's music while I was working yesterday. So beautiful...
posted by miss lynnster at 5:30 AM on January 10, 2007

Pimsleur courses, aimed at teaching beginners a language through listening and speaking, cost quite a bit, a couple of hundred dollars for a set of thirty lessons. Rumour does have it though that they're fairly widely available to download, if you swing that way. Not as pretty as the other recommendations, but possibly a quicker way to learn...
posted by paul! at 6:38 AM on January 10, 2007

Previously, some bossa nova suggestions.

CliqueMusic is like the All Music Guide for Brazil. They also publish in English if you get frustrated. Check out Sabadabada and Loronix; both are in English, but you can get tons of great obscure music.

There's no shortage of fantastic music from Brazil. A good starting place would be David Byrne's compilations--a great way to get a survey of MPB , samba and pagode, forró, and more contemporary stuff (80's and 90's, that is.) The nice thing about stuff on Luaka Bop is that Byrne includes English translations along with the lyrics in Portuguese. Also check out Os Mutantes, Tom Zé, and my favorite contemporary group from Brazil, Moreno+2/Domenico+2.

Vinicius Cantuária and Arto Lindsay usually have English translations in their booklets, too. (Lindsay sings in Portugese about half the time.)
posted by hydrophonic at 7:08 AM on January 10, 2007

Seu Jorge on the Life Aquatic Studio Sessions. He's covering David Bowie songs, so just follow along and teach yourself (if you're a Bowie fan, natch).
posted by chaosscontrol at 7:52 AM on January 10, 2007

If you have satellite TV you could consider signing up for Globo television - you'll get all the telenovellas etc and shows in BZ PT. My wife listens to a bunch of music but only 1 comes to mind right now Sandy y Junior - standard pop music fare in Brazil. I'll ask her for more when I'm home. (She's Brazilian)
posted by clanger at 9:41 AM on January 10, 2007

Here are a few links to local radio stations online:

http://www.89fm.com.br/aovivo/

http://transanet.uol.com.br/

http://www.jovempanfm.com.br/frame.php?page=http://www.jovempanfm.com.br/index.html

http://www.metropolitanafm.com.br/web2.0/

http://www.97fm.com.br/extras/redir.asp?p=http://www.97fm.com.br/top20/

http://www.tropical.fm.br/

http://www.gazetafm.com/

Start your learning now. while visiting the above sites look for the links "Ao Vivo" or "No Ar"

Boa sorte
posted by zona_sul at 3:26 PM on January 29, 2007