When Sergio Sayeg confirmed up in Joel Stones’ Tropicália in Furs report store round 2007, it appeared like a fluke. Stones had seen the angular younger man with an enormous cloud of darkish hair round Manhattan’s East Village for weeks. However the stranger’s curiosity within the Brazilian-specific vinyl haven rapidly revealed itself as quickly as he began talking, his English rounded with the distinctive full-bodied lilt of a Brazilian accent. The teenage Sayeg grew to become an everyday within the retailer, absorbing its contents – songs, discographies, monitor lists, liner notes, credit – like a sponge. Stones’ report store would grow to be a gravitational drive for Sayeg, who’s now on his second Tropicália-indebted album beneath the identify Sessa. His time there as a clerk and a buyer modified his relationship with music eternally, giving him a portal that hurtled him into the remainder of his life.
“You soak in, like, what’s a music? When do the drums are available in? How ought to they sound?” Sayeg recollects, pulling aside a candy, puffy brioche croissant within the sunny entrance window of a small Portuguese café in Jersey Metropolis. On stage and off, Sayeg clothes himself in placing classic garments that vaguely recall the Nineteen Sixties-era psychedelia that seeps into his music. Although Stones calls Sayeg “a bit of Bob Dylan”, the mysterious Minnesotan would by no means be seen in such daring apparel. Bob’s loss, actually.
Fifteen years after he first stepped into Stones’ store, Sayeg is nearing the top of a United States tour opening for the freewheeling Turkish psych-folk band Altin Gün. On the Music Corridor of Williamsburg the evening earlier than we meet – the second of two sold-out reveals there – the 33-year-old sat hunched over his honey-coloured acoustic guitar on a late April night. He launched songs from his second album, Estrela Acesa, carrying a soothing, radiant vitality. The mission’s title, in Portuguese, means “burning star”.
Sayeg made the report on the residence studio of his São Paulo buddy Biel Basile on Ilhabela – “lovely island” – situated about 200km southeast of São Paulo. There, the pair constructed the album’s rhythmic basis from a beachside locale. However Sayeg’s journey towards being an ascendant steward of certainly one of Brazil’s beloved musical exports started effectively earlier than he ever stepped throughout the edge of an enticingly named report retailer with a guitar within the window.
Now 33, Sayeg doesn’t bear in mind when or the place he got here by the nickname Sessa. He makes use of the title as a mononym for a full band, the place he’s joined by singers and a drummer. Sayeg grew up within the very small enclave of São Paulo’s Sephardic Jewish group. “I don’t suppose folks that attend synagogue would say, ‘Oh, it is a music place,’” Sayeg recollects. “It is vitally musical. Nevertheless it’s simply likelihood.”
