Butterfly Effect: Charlotte Dos Santos Interviewed
Music and memory. Charlotte Dos Santos explores this inextricable connection through a free-associative style; a musical sensualist, the Brazilian-Norwegian artist has toyed with mnemonic stimulation since the release of 2017’s ‘Cleo’. The largely self-produced project served as a time capsule of her tenure at Berklee College of Music and a year spent studying in Valencia, Spain; pivoting between soft-focus jazz, blue harmonies and new age undertones, she channelled the benevolent power of the project’s namesake, a Moorish Goddess.
A few years later, documenting a passage of time during the first lockdown, she underwent a “metamorphosis” of her own and developed a more personal narrative beyond mere storybook aspirations on debut album, ‘Morfo’. An insignia of a butterfly native to the Amazon – known for it’s coruscating kaleidoscope of blue – Dos Santos used this time in solitude to reconnect with herself, and her Brazilian heritage; contemplating notions of home, nature and belonging, of tribute to the land of her forebears.
‘Morfo’ is unabashedly romantic, both in sound and the feelings it elicits. A prismatic haze of future jazz, synthetic soul and sensuous bossa nova rhythms, it charts the winding path of old flames and new infernos; from the heartbreak hangover ‘Hello, Hello’, to the promise and potential of new love on ‘Patience’, to the enduring nature of steady companionship on cosmic synth ballad, ‘Aria 4 Arien’, Dos Santos expresses selfhood through reciprocity.
This is her soundtrack to eternal love.
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Where are you at the moment? How is the album promo campaign going?
I’m in Norway at the moment and I’m feeling excited. We launched the campaign in May, so this whole summer I’ve been wishing it was here already. I forgot about it a little bit and now that nervous energy is happening again.
There’s a lot of ongoing discussion about the untenable nature of the industry today. How have you been navigating the post-pandemic reality as an independent musician?
It’s still extremely hard to afford anything really. Artists just don’t make the money people think we make, a lot of the time we have to perform for free and promote for free; the question is if you’re ever going to reach that tipping point where you become something that’s sustainable long-term. The reality is, being an indie artist isn’t sustainable and you have to really love what you do. You have to find things to enjoy and remember why you do it and why you enjoy it. These last few years have been unprecedented but the negative effects won’t last forever and I’m staying hopeful even though it’s bleak right now.
You mention the self-promoting aspect of being independent musician. Do you find the hyper-visibility online is at odds with who you are as a person?
I have to be on all the time. I constantly have to promote myself, and it can be really exhausting. It’s like an addiction; it keeps me up at night – this incessant need to keep posting. What helps me is understanding that you’re using it as a tool and to not let it overtake other areas of your life. There are definitely ways of using it constructively, as a kind of planner. Also, I’m in a good place right now. I’m excited for the release and excited to build connections with listeners.
I connected with your music back in 2018 and it struck me how redolent and rich your music was. It possessed this transportive element I look for. Growing up, what music gave you that out-of-body feeling?
My parents told me this story of when we lived in Brazil, I must have been about three and we were driving to Bahia from somewhere. I was listening to ‘Little Drummer Boy’ on repeat – that says so much about me and what I create now. I was picking the prominent the drums out then. I really do obsess over the details!
When I matured, I listened a lot to Mariah Carey – she taught me how to sing. I had these R&B compilations full of Whitney and Toni Braxton and that birthed my fascination with love songs. I loved The Fugees a lot, that’s where my love of storytelling comes from. The other side of me listened to a lot of samba in the house with my family; my mom was really into Arabic music but also Flamenco, she loved getting lost in different languages. I was always fascinated by that and used to listen to music without understanding the words.
That captures the bilingual appeal of your debut project ‘Cleo’, a nostalgic take on jazz and Afro-Latin sounds. That body of work has endured – it’s your most-streamed project to date!
I love ‘Cleo’, I really do. I listen to it now and feel pride for what we created. Looking back I didn’t get to be as proud of it when it came out because I was in a tricky situation with a label I was on at the time. It soured the experience. The beauty of time is healing and I look at ‘Cleo’ as the person I want to be or become. There are things I would change: I think it’s strength and shortcoming is it’s demo quality, I would probably re-do that aspect over again but other than that, I’m immensely proud of this project.
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Tracks like ‘Watching You’ have a smoky, speakeasy jazz standard feel, beamed in from a bygone era. Talk me through that retro influence…
I was studying at Berklee (College of Music) at the time and I was singing a lot of jazz standard songs, really focusing on the specificity of a jazz vocal. I took a sample of this voice which mumbled a phrase in a really sensual way – ‘Watching You’ is a very sensual song. Music is very visual for me, I like to create sounds that might accompany a movie and I think that was the inspiration behind ‘Watching You’.
Your music has that score-like feel to seasonal shifts and transitions. That came into sharp focus on your 2020 EP ‘Harvest Time’, which expanded your artistry beyond jazz tropes. How would you define this pandemic-era project?
As a little interlude. You’re right, it marked a period of transition for me. I was in an experimental mood, I had a lot weighing heavy on my chest at the time. ‘Harvest Time’ was about growing through that pain, growing from pain and shape shifting in a way. It felt like I was shedding skin. It’s my spiritual project and I think whoever needed to hear the project, heard it.
I want to draw attention to the remix package for ‘Harvest Time’. You invited Lafawndah to rework ‘Josef’ and it showed how well your sound translates on an electronic level. How did that come about?
I’ve been a fan of her music for a while and we’d had a few conversations about working together for a while. When we were brainstorming artists to remix the songs on ‘Harvest Time’, her name came up and it was meant to be. I’d love to venture down the electronic route more. I really don’t say no to anything, I’m really open to exploring new textures in my music. I’ve put a lot of energy into not being boxed in and if it feels natural to me and who I am, I’ll absolutely explore that more.
‘Morfo’, your long-gestating debut album is out. This album was created in and during the pandemic. Tonally there are similarities to ‘Harvest Time’, was it created as a continuation of that era?
I feel like I foresaw the whole process of stillness and transition with ‘Harvest Time’, which became an introspective project for a lot of people during the pandemic. In terms of creating new work, I was trying to stay busy. There was so much going on in the outer world, it was hard to really grapple with what was going to happen. My thinking was that I had to keep going and creating. The album was originally called ‘Metamorphosis’. I’d envisioned it as the next chapter of ‘Harvest Time’ but then the album kind of took on a metamorphosis of itself.
There was so much darkness during the pandemic, everything felt so heavy and I didn’t want to dwell too much in sadness. I resolved to make something lighter and more hopeful. A lot of the songs we completed we changed, so it felt fitting to call this ‘Morfo’. As for the writing process, I wrote every day and made sure I was productive with my time. I worked with Tom Henry, who I’d never met at the time. I was making the demos and sending them to him, he’d add some percussion and strings. That kind of online making process dictated much of the album.
Touching on the symbolism of the Morpho butterfly – which are most commonly associated with the Amazon – how did you weave that allegory through the album and connect it to your personal story?
The Morfo is the name of the butterfly representing Brazil and that’s essentially the theme of the album. We’re always in transformation; we’re always going to not be the same as we were before. I just love the metaphor of a butterfly because it transforms itself in a long and painful process. It’s about the beauty of the iridescent blue and that with pain comes beauty. It’s about understanding how we can learn from that journey and come out with a different perspective. I wanted for this project to appeal more to my Brazilian fans and my own heritage. I was conscious of going down a path of making more music in Portuguese.
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On ‘Morfo’ you more openly explore your dual heritage, particularly your Brazilian side. Did this album represent a “coming home”, a reconciling with the lineage passed down from your Father? Do you feel a dissonance between your Brazilian and Norwegian sides?
Honestly, I’m still on that journey. Maybe it’s because I’m in Norway right now, so I’m very sensitive to my surroundings and people. Whenever I’m in Norway I feel hypersensitive about my identity; I feel my identity more in such a homogenous place. Even though I grew up here, I’ve spent so much of my life living outside of Norway. I love Norway; I love the nature, the natural beauty but I have my own kind of interesting relationship with it.
With Brazil, it’s an ongoing journey because I have so many questions still. I haven’t been to Brazil in seven years, I’m trying to go back as soon as I can. I have to understand that I will never grow up there. I have my way of being resilient and my relationship to Brazil will always be about exploration. I’ve realised as I’ve gotten older that I can embrace both sides and that Brazil embraces both sides too. For a long time, I thought I wasn’t Brazilian enough or I wasn’t Norwegian enough. What I’ve realised is that, both sides have invited me with open arms.
There’s this heightened and fraught socio-political and environmental backdrop in Brazil right now. It feels like a pivotal time for this renascent wave of socialism in Latin America to spread further but the pendulum could swing either way!
if Lula (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) gets elected it would be amazing. Politics is so complicated and you never really know because it feels as if you’re navigating a smokescreen. It can look like it’s going in one direction and then suddenly it’s not but I’m very invested. I’m seeing a lot of healthy conversation and unity around this election and what we hope the outcome will be.
You compare the situation in Brazil to the move towards the hard right in Europe – progress always feels elusive. I’ve wondered about the politics and statecraft in Nordic countries. How would you define it?
Norway’s interesting because on the surface you think it’s a progressive place, but tradition and conservative values affects how things function here. It’s always different when you live somewhere; my partner’s American, he’s from New York and even that can be complicated. Norwegians are very traditional but they’re understanding that they have to adapt and open up more now, be more accepting of people not speaking Norwegian. I think in a long-term sense, that kind of rigid belief will only stunt growth because you’re not exporting talent to come in and help the country grow. You’re always stuck in the past. It’s a good place to raise a family and the health care is great. Socially, there’s still a struggle with diversity.
On ‘Morfo’ it feels as if you’re working towards self-love and how that sets you up for healthy companionship. There’s still internal battles but this album surveys the promise of true romance and how that romance endures. Is that a fair assessment?
It is. Sometimes it’s easier when other people tell you what they took from your work. You’re right, self-love is a prominent theme. On the song ‘Angel in Disguise’, I’m confessing that I’m imperfect and that I’m dealing with this pressure of always being visible, available and out there. We all have to put ourselves out there on the internet, present ourselves all the time and that can be tough. If we don’t have self-love, it only complicates your other relationships. On ‘Bye Now’, I’m living with being independent which is a sequel of sorts to ‘It’s Over, Bobby’.
I like that ‘Morfo’ touches on this algorithmic and trend-driven approach to the world on the song ‘Ghost In The Shell’…
Yes, ‘Ghost In The Shell’ is about AI; about our modern compulsions and addiction to technology and this move towards creating sentient beings. I’m in my head a lot on this album, like on ‘Crooked House’ which is about practicing patience. Like you said before, love is a big feature. ‘Aria’ is a love song to my husband. A lot of these songs are about experiences with my husband but I’m playful with it. It’s a very honest and open album. I’m not trying to put a persona on anymore, and that makes it more universal. I allowed myself the room for being playful and creating stories that play like fantasies, even though I’ve always written from my own experiences.
You touched on bringing a lightness and airy quality to the listening experience and you achieve that through the sonics. What were you wanting to create and evoke with your co-creators, Gotts Street Park’s Josh Crocker and Tom Henry?
I wanted to find a balance between making songs with a structure – a verse, chorus and bridge – and putting my own stamp on it. It’s that playfulness again; to not being completely beholden to tradition. It’s always good to be collaborative and I’m in this space of wanting to foster connections with people in person and actually take a break from writing solo. I want to be in rooms with people again, there’s just so much power in putting all these creative minds together into one headspace.
A lot of this album was created online. I remember sending Josh (Crocker) a demo of ‘Patience’ and he sent it back with this beautiful string arrangement at the beginning of the song. He just knew how to fill in the blanks and that’s the same dynamic with Tom. I worked with Tom a lot more, he’s on almost all the songs. So, it’s good to have somebody to bounce ideas off, to add or strip away the drums or strings. It’s important to be open and not too precious. At the same time, I was clear about what I wanted kept in a particular song.
I hear these turn-of-the-millennia RnB cues on ‘Morfo’, that spacey, synthesized sound...
That’s the era I grew up on! I have a spot for the song ‘Cupid’s Bow’; that’s my little Justin Timberlake meets Pharrell moment, that’s what I was trying to go for when I wrote the song. The N.E.R.D album, ‘In Search Of’, was the first album I ever brought. My dream is to work with him one day.
‘Morfo’ evokes the warmth and intimacy of seeing and experiencing things with your closest, it has a remedial quality. Is that the journey you want the listener to go on?
I want them to feel like they’ve gone for a walk in the forest with me and come back home feeling refreshed and satisfied. I want for this album to feel like an adventure, that’s all I want. You’ve taken something from this album and I love hearing what that is, I’m excited to hear what the world thinks about something I’ve been living through for a while.
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Words: Shahzaib Hussain
Photo Credit: Jeff Hahn
