Produced // Alê Siqueira e Marisa Monte 

Executive Producer // Leonardo Netto 

Recorded // Alê Siqueira 

Mixed // Flávio Souza and Alê Siqueira 

Additional Recording // Dadi and Guilherme Calicchio 

Line Producer // Cíntia Carvalho 

Recording Assisted // Márcio Barros and Guilherme Calicchio

Mixing Assisted // Guilherme Calicchio 

Mastered // Bernie Grundman

Original Artwork // Jarbas Lopes 

Design // Gringo Cardia 

Design Coordination // Gringa Cardia / Mesosfera  Produções

Art Coordination // Gabi Caspary 

Art Work Photographed // Marssares Photographs of Marisa by Leo Aversa 

Assistant Graphic Designers // Carolina Vaz Flavia Castro Pedro Pezinho Rico Vilarouca 

Music  Copyist // Edu Morelenbaum  

Chord Charts // Dadi e Guilherme Calicchio

Lyrics translated // Arto Lindsay  

Recorded and Mixed in Rio de Janeiro From October 3rd, 2005, to January 9th, 2006

Special Thanks // Pedro, Mano, Sidney, Nuccini, Adriana, Liminha, Brown, Arnaldo, Orlando, Lan Lan, people from home and from the office, Kátia, Nayara, Pedrão, Otávio, and Gabriel for the microphones, Charles, Chico Neves, Dora, Márcio Botner, Jarbas Lopes, Mario Caldato, and Pedro Oliveira



ABOUT THE DISC

I began on stage.

The arc of my career was built on direct contact with the public in live performances.

In the fifteen years since I began I have not recorded often because of long tours that have kept recording periods far apart.

Five records in fifteen years without counting the Tribalistas and the ones I produced for other artists. In 2001 after I finished the tour for “memories and chronicles” which lasted almost two years I decided to spend some time at home.

I took advantage of this to produce a record for Argemiro and to plunge into the Tribalistas project with Carlinhos and Arnaldo.

A studio project.

I love and have always loved being in the studio.

We recorded the whole record in Rio in thirteen days.

A song a day.

I became pregnant during the recording.

The record came out the month my son was born.

During the months that followed I had a chance to spend more time at home.

I took this opportunity to do some things that would have been difficult if I had been travelling. Without being planned some of them became the seeds for these records I have just made.

From my life long contact with the samba of Rio de Janeiro, especially from time spent with the old guard of the Portela Samba School and from the research I did for their record of 1999 that I produced, I knew of a trove of material preserved only in oral tradition and little by little being lost.

I became curious to know more and searched beyond the borders of Portela. I began a series of interviews, oriented by conversations with Monarco, Paulinho da Viola, Dona Yvonne Lara and my father, among others.

I heard from composers, their relatives and partners while searching for more than songs. I wanted to find out about their points of creative reference and the sources of the songs they wrote.

So the sambas of Jaime Silva, Dona Yvonne, Casemiro, Moraes and Galvão, some more than fifty years old, joined contemporaray songs by Adriana, by Paulinho, by Arnaldo, by Carlinhos and myself. This record, “Universo ao Meu Redor”, is focused more on the atmosphere surrounding samba than on samba itself, on its most frequent subjects- love, nature, music itself, the human condition, the singing of the birds, our back yards, and lives lived together through art…

I invited Mario Caldato, who I have always wanted to work with,to produce this record with me. He is responsible for the sonic personality of the record.

At the same time as I had these meetings regarding samba I began to digitalize all my cassete tapes.

I wanted to save the evidence of the process of composing.

Fifteen years of songs being written.

Some concluded, others abandoned.

A lot of these that everyone knows, at their source notebooks of sonic sketches.

Almost one hundred tapes, all listened to, cataloged and mapped by me.

Infinito Particular.

And this process of listening made be dive into compositions from different periods, not just with old partners like (Nando,Carlinhos,Arnaldo,Pedro Baby,Dadi) but also into widening my horizons to include new partnerships with Seu Jorge, Adriana, Yuka, Leonardo Reis and Rodrigo Campelo.

Many encounters, and soon enough I had material for one more record.

This time I chose only songs I had co written, and I invited Ale Siqueira, who I had worked with on the Tribalistas record, to produce with me.

And with arrangements by Eumir, Phillip and Donato. That’s it…

If I had recorded just one record and gone on the road it would have been a long time before I had the chance to record again and there would have been a rupture betweeen what I do and what I show.

That’s why I conceived these two records of unrecorded songs.

Conceived at the same time, like fraternal twins, coming into the world, now, on the same day.

But very different.

Each with his own story.

Each one speaking for himself.

Like two photographs.

With a lot of people and myself in the mix.

I thank everyone.

Marisa.