David Arthur Brown

DAVID ARTHUR BROWN-BIO 2009 David Arthur Brown is an American singer-songwriter and world traveler. He is the leader and founding member of the Los Angeles/Barcelona based band, Brazzaville. David grew up in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles in the 1980s. Many of his songs are inspired by that period in his life as well as his subsequent travels through Asia, Europe, South America and, most recently, Turkey, Russia and the former Soviet Union. David has recently finished his first solo effort, Teenage Summer Days. It features many great Barcelona musicians as well as some of his longtime L.A. friends. The album features songs such as Barcelona, written in Catalan (the native language of Barcelona) and inspired by a dream that David had about a meteorite sailing over all of the most beautiful aspects of his adopted city. The album’s title track, Teenage Summer Days, is a song about 1980s cholo culture in Los Angeles. For this song, David borrowed the chords and melody from a Russian “gopnik” or hoodlum song by an artist named Aleksin. Richer Man explores the question of what it is that makes a man truly “rich." Girl From Vladivostok is a surrealistic portrait of David’s favorite Russian city. Magura was inspired by a tiny village in the Carpathian Mountains and tells the tale of a city boy who yearns to escape to just such a place when he arrives at his twilight years. David has also just released a CD of classic Brazzaville songs with well-known Turkish musicians, entitled Brazzaville In Istanbul. That album was produced by Deniz Cuylan from the Turkish electronic group Portecho, and was released on the DoubleMoon label out of Istanbul. David currently lives with his wife and two small children in the Eixample neighborhood of Barcelona. He enjoys grocery shopping with the old Spanish ladies and reading before bedtime.