In a sense, a veteran is exactly what she is. Before she was Tetel (pronounced teh-TELL) Di Babuya, jazz singer, she was Marcela Venditti, a classically trained violinist who had established a reputation as a highly regarded player in her native São Paulo, Brazil. Although she knew for as long as she can remember that she was a musician—“It never occurred to me to do anything else,” she asserts—her destiny seemed to lie in the orchestras she began playing in when she was still a teenager.
Still, she had grown up loving Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s classic Ella and Louis. When in her late twenties she made a more profound discovery of vocal jazz, she was entranced by its possibilities. “I just knew I had to try and sing the best I could,” she says. “I didn’t care if I had a good voice or a bad voice, I simply had to sing.”
That decision has yielded rich rewards, as Meet Tetel (which inaugurates a new name as well as a new milieu) testifies. Her contralto is as agile and expressive on the coy, playful “Not About Love” as on the vulnerable ballad “For One Man Only”; she tackles “Clean Cut” with full-tilt funk but can also put just a sprinkle of attitude on “Lullaby of Loveland.” As a finishing touch, her cover of “Someone to Watch Over Me” strikes a perfect balance of wistfulness and quirky charm.
Of course, Di Babuya has excellent support in these endeavors. Her accompanists include pianist/arranger Daniel Grajew, saxophonist/trumpeter/trombonist Richard Fermino, bassist/guitarist Nilton Leonarde, and drummer Emilio Martins: the cream of the crop on São Paulo’s jazz scene. Even so, when the songs come out, they are Di Babuya’s own. She is, as Arkadia Records chief Bob Karcy succinctly puts it, “A phenom, a gifted musician.” Meet Tetel is living proof.
Tetel Di Babuya was born Marcela Venditti in 1986 in Araçatuba, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. When she was seven years old, the family moved to California, where her psychopharmacologist father taught at Stanford University. When they returned to Brazil two years later, her father—who was also a drummer, singer, and pianist—signed her up for violin lessons.
Music, and classical music in particular, quickly took hold of her passions, and by 13, Tetel was playing in orchestras and her school bands. From there she went to the University of São Paulo for a bachelor’s degree, to São Paulo State University for a master’s in music, and then to the professional orchestra circuit. She played with the Heliopolis Symphony Orchestra and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, with whom she toured Brazil and then Europe; performed in the São Paulo production of The Phantom of the Opera; and worked as a soloist with the Limiar String Orchestra, the Poços de Caldas Festival Orchestra, and the Laetare String Orchestra.
By the time she fell in love with jazz in her twenties, Tetel had been so deeply immersed in classical music for so long that it was difficult to imagine herself doing anything else. However, the allure of improvisation, of swing, and of writing her own songs was too strong. Guided by the influence of Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Amy Winehouse, and Norah Jones, she reoriented herself as a singer. Her first performance was at an orchestral concert, but soon afterward she enlisted the help of pianist and arranger Daniel Grajew. Together they assembled the songs that became Meet Tetel.
Tetel sent demo recordings of the songs to Arkadia Records’ Bob Karcy. “I listened and heard something special and unique in the material she sent me,” Karcy says; in her he found the perfect vehicle for revitalizing the record label beyond its acclaimed catalog. He signed her to the label and served as producer for her debut. They worked together to fine-tune and rerecord her songs, resulting in Arkadia’s first new release in over a decade—and a debut album that overflows with the promise of an exciting new artist.
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