Many years ago I lived and worked in Casablanca for a year. I had gone there on a whim, running away from a political and economic atmosphere very much like this one, and the threat of another dreadful winter. Funding had run out on my job, and I had split up with my boyfriend of the time. I travelled light and within a couple of weeks found myself with a job and a shared apartment. We had no music in the flat. One day I was in a car with some new friends driving through Casa, and we passed a smiling girl with fair curly hair driving her car at a roundabout. I can't remember if she followed me home, or if I just bumped into her again within a couple of days, but somehow we became great friends. She was French, working as a nurse. She introduced my flat mate and I to a great crowd of young French Moroccans. She also gave us a cassette player and a selection of cassettes, all anonymous. One cassette was by a Brazilian singer, and I adored it. She told me he was very popular in France, but I never got his name. I left the flat in 1981 and gave her the tape and cassette player back, though I fully intended to return to Morocco once I had sold my house in Manchester. I have been hoping to hear those songs and that voice ever since. When Paul Simon worked with Milton Nascimento I thought it might have been him. I listened to Joao Gilberto and Gilberto Gil, but never had that rush of recognition.My son then told me about Caetano Veloso - in fact we went to watch Almodovar's Talk to Her together, and there is a very emotional scene at a party, where Caetano performs. I listened to as much of his work as I could get hold of at the time. In 2007 I went to see him in concert at the Barbican - an amazing night, with an audience of mainly Brazilian and Portuguese fans, singing along and waving flags! I had read his autobiography by then, knew about his time in exile in London, and his involvement in the Tropicalia movement in Brazil.I still haven't heard the songs I listened to so many times in my Casablanca flat, but I discovered a singer who has become one of my all time favourites.
I was reminded of Caetano by a friend's face book post of him singing a Bob Dylan song this week - I hadn't listened for a while, so it was great to rediscover him. And I still search for that lost cassette.
