Weekly News: Gordon Parks, Vidal Sassoon, Roberto Carvalli, Bebel Gilberto

I love the Brazilians. They know how to have fun better than anyone else on the planet, their music is the sexiest, swingingest sound ever created, and their beaches boast more beautiful women than all the catwalks in Paris, Rome and London.

And if I sound a little over-excited, you’ll have to excuse me: I’ve just come home from a party thrown by a Brazilian, where I met the country’s most talented musician, who happens to be gorgeous. And she said the nicest thing to me.

Bebel Gilberto is the princess of bossa nova. Her self-titled new album sold 100,000 copies, topped the Billboard world music chart and was nominated for a Grammy. Produced by Marius de Vries, who has also worked with Madonna and Bjork, it reinvents the classic Brazilian sound for the 21st century, with Bebel’s cool, alluring vocals against a synth beat.

That ‘classic Brazilian sound,’ by the way, was invented by Bebel’s dad, the legendary Joao Gilberto, who created bossa nova in the Fifties. He’s still alive, though he has a reputation as a perfectionist recluse who won’t give interviews and shuts himself up all day in his luxury hotel suite — venturing out at night to give dazzling concerts in tiny venues.

If you get a chance to see him, behave with respect, applaud but don’t whoop, and don’t ask for the air conditioning to be switched on: Joao will walk out of concerts, even in mid-song, if he thinks the audience is undeserving, or if the management switches on the generators. I met Bebel at the painter Olivier Mourao’s home. We met at Martin Summers’s birthday party, where all the entertainers were dressed as Elvis. When the singer started to talk about her dad, I was fascinated, but she didn’t recognise me. So I bent a spoon, to impress her, and she said:
“There is a man in my country, so famous, and he can do that just as well as you! I saw him on television when I was a girl.”
Dirty rotten imposter, I thought. Bet he does it by cheating.
Naturally, I said nothing, and smiled.
“His name,” said Bebel, “is Uri Geller.”
“Ah,” I said. “That’s me.”
“No!” she gasped (and this is the bit I really like). “You’re much too young. You must be his son!”
See why I say I love the Brazilians?

I toured the country in 1974. Actually, Shipi and I flew out for just one TV show, but we met a promoter, the biggest in the business, who insisted we couldn’t leave his country until I’d played every city.
Some of the gigs were extraordinary. I’ll never forget filling a basketball stadium, or being thrown out of a hotel for practising my powers with their cutlery, or driving half the night to find another hotel, in a battered VW with a hole in the front and freezing air blasting in our faces.

Most of all I remember the wild contrasts. One evening we were invited to the skyscraper home of a publisher who had put my face on the front of Brazil’s equivalent to Hello! His penthouse was on the top floor and gave us panoramic views across all Rio, with the colossal Sugar Loaf statue of Jesus gazing down on us.

The next day, we were walking up a steep hill outside the city, on a tour of the favellas or slums. Millions of people live there, in total poverty, their shacks pulled together from cardboard and scraps of tin.

We were taken to see a Makumba ritual, one of the creepiest things I have ever experienced. Although Brazil is a Catholic country, most of the poor have a deep respect for the voodoo tradition of Makumba, with its roots in African religions.

We pushed our way into a crammed room, where at least 20 people were shrieking, singing and swaying in a circle while an old man and two old women moved among them. The witchdoctor and his priestesses had only to reach out a hand and press it to the forehead of a worshipper, whether man, woman or child, and they would fall down in a trance like a puppet whose strings are cut.

In their trances, people writhed and shouted out in strange tongues, shaking and squirming, while the excitement around them built to fever
pitch. The room was thick with smoke from clay pipes on which almost everyone was puffing. I sensed a massive energy in the crowd — but I
was also scared half out of my wits.

When we finally flew back to the States, our tour almost ended in prison. I had bought a blowpipe for a few pennies from Amazon Indians
at the jungle city of Manaos. They showed me how to load it with a poisonous dart and hit a target with the accuracy of a sniper. I was
fascinated, though I probably couldn’t have hit a tapir at ten paces.

The customs officials at JFK airport were also fascinated. They seemed to think I was smuggling a dangerous weapon into America. In the end, they let me go... but I never saw my souvenir again.