Brazilian singer-songwriter Dora Morelenbaum, left, and guitarist Guilherme Lirio perform during Morelenbaum's first concert in Seoul, Thursday. The show marked the opening of her Asia tour. Korea Times photo by Lee Hae-rin
A soft bossa nova breeze swept through western Seoul Thursday night as Brazilian singer-songwriter Dora Morelenbaum brought her genre-blurring sound to Korea for the first time, opening her Asia tour at a small venue in Hongdae.
The concert at West Bridge Live Hall offered Korean listeners a rare chance to experience contemporary Brazilian music up close on a spring weeknight.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1996, Morelenbaum is one of the most closely watched artists among Brazil’s new wave of musicians redefining Música Popular Brasileira (MPB).
The daughter of cellist-arranger Jaques Morelenbaum and vocalist Paula Morelenbaum, who both performed with bossa nova legend Antônio Carlos Jobim and collaborated with the late Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, she grew up in a household where music was an everyday language rather than a separate profession.
“My parents are musicians and that took a big part of my musical formation,” she said in an interview with The Korea Times before the show. “When I was little, I traveled a lot with my family for their shows. I was always surrounded by music.”
Her professional debut came in 2021 as part of Bala Desejo, a Rio-based quartet whose kaleidoscopic sound drew on bossa nova, samba, tropicália and psychedelic pop. The group’s 2022 debut album, “Sim Sim Sim,” won the Latin Grammy Award for best Portuguese language contemporary pop album, catapulting the young band to international festival stages before it disbanded in 2024.
Morelenbaum launched her solo career in parallel, releasing the EP “Vento de Beirada” in 2021 and earning early praise as “the future of Brazilian music” from critics who singled out her ability to bridge tradition and experimentation.
That promise crystallized on “Pique,” her 2024 debut full-length album, which earned a Latin Grammy nomination for best MPB album.
On record and onstage, she threads together Brazil’s musical heritage — bossa nova, samba and MPB — with jazz, soul, R&B and disco, blending them into a fluent, contemporary sound. She describes her music as mirroring Brazil itself, where many genres coexist and naturally mix with outside influences. “In Brazil, we have millions of different genres and it happens all very naturally, mixed with outer influences,” she said. “I think artists of Brazil’s new music scene are also doing a lot of this.”
Source: Korea Times News
