Céu

Personnel: Céu (vocals, keyboards); Dustan Gallas (guitar, Fender Rhodes piano, background vocals); Bruno Buarque (drums, background vocals); DJ Marco (scratches); Lucas Martins (background vocals).
Audio Mixer: Gustavo Lenza.
Recording information: AudioMobile; Centro Cultural Rio Verde Sao Paulo, Brazil; Estúdio La Nave.
Photographer: Haroldo Sabóia.
The concepts of musical multiculturalism and postmodern synthesis were paid a lot of lip service in the early 21st century, but it took an album like CeU's self-titled debut to give the terms true meaning. Finding itself at the intersection of traditional Brazilian forms and urban contemporary attitude, CeU's music is a seductive aural melting pot that plays like the soundtrack to the new global village. CEU mixes bossa nova, samba, and Latin jazz with trip-hop, dance pop, Afropop, and reggae (her cover of Bob Marley's "Concrete Jungle" is one of the album's many highlights). It also blends singer-songwriter intimacy with heady, top-tier production, gorgeous melodies with street-wise grooves, and Spanish-language lyrics with a musical vocabulary as wide as the world.