Various Artists - Ultimate... Brazil (2006)

Various Artists - Ultimate... Brazil (206) @320

Ultimate... Brazil by Various Artists is a comprehensive 4-CD compilation released in 2016 (often labeled as Ultimate Brazil) featuring a wide-ranging collection of classic and modern Brazilian music, including bossa nova, jazz, and MPB. This collection spans artists like Jorge Ben, Gilberto Gil, and Antonio Carlos Jobim, offering a, "definitive" musical journey through Brazil.

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1972 - Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges – Clube Da Esquina

1972 - Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges – Clube Da Esquina (Flac)

 

The cover of 1972’s Clube Da Esquina perfectly encapsulates the music and the context that surrounds it. In the photograph, two young boys perch by the side of a dusty Brazilian road, both staring into the camera with differing expressions. Above this image of rustic innocence, a barbed wire ominously hangs. The picture perfectly complements the record’s playfulness, its quiet sensitivity, and the horrendous circumstances under which it came to be. Indeed, by 1972, Brazil was eight years into an aggressive US-backed military junta, unable to mount any meaningful opposition, and left stranded by most international powers. Though the key architects of Clube Da Esquina – Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges – were not as overtly rebellious as their contemporaries in the Tropicalismo movement, the artists remained under the watchful eye of right-wing authorities, often facing extensive censorship.

Clube Da Esquina is MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) that both subtly reflects this context and exists well beyond its shadow. The record begins with “Tudo Que Você Podia Ser,” a buoyant introduction to the album’s shapeshifting. The following “Cais” is a perfect example. It starts as a beautifully sparse track, allowing space for Nascimento’s delicate vocals. Its abrupt segue into a simple piano melody makes for one of the understated highlights of the record. Similarly, the Spanish bolero “Dos Cruces” is initially stripped back and mournful, but soon explodes into grand progressions.

Nascimento’s voice is a highlight throughout, especially on the gently affecting “San Vincente,” which features both a stunning performance and subtly unpredictable phrasing. The song makes plain that this album is built on compatible opposites. It is at once accessible but experimental, warm but haunting, ebullient but melancholic, gentle but deeply resonant, fragile but righteous. Often this duality is held just within Nascimento’s voice.

One of the most impressive things about Clube Da Esquina is its sheer ambition and range of influences. Given Nascimento and Borges’ upbringing in the state of Minas Gerais, there is a rural folk influence, a trace of the local church music, and a love of the popular bossa nova that had dominated Brazil’s charts. But this is far from adequate in explaining the intricacies of Clube Da Esquina’s unique sound. Throughout the record, you can also hear traces of the adventurous pop of The Beatles, as well as an incorporation of the many regional variants of toada (a style of Amazonian folk music); there is orchestral psychedelia, an understated compositional complexity, and experiments that were uncommon in much MPB. Through it all, Nascimento’s voice brings a vital cohesion. Though the compositions and arrangements by Lô Borges, Márcio Borges, Eumir Deodato, and Wagner Tiso are remarkable on their own terms, it’s Nascimento’s affecting navigation of the tracks that elevates the record to its current status as one of the most important Brazilian records of the 20th century.(Discover Music)

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1990 - Brazil Classics 2 O Samba

1990 - Brazil Classics 2 O Samba (Flac)

This is a compilation of samba from the collecting hands of David Byrne of Talking Heads fame. The selections primarily focus on the modern forms of the genre, more specifically on the studio end of the spectrum, with little or no relation to the large-scale productions associated with Carnaval in Rio. There are bits of reference to the classic sambas of the '60s in the songs here, and explorations into jazz on the side. Nods to Afro-Cuban influences are thick in the lyrics, going so far as to have a full song from the Candomble traditions based on the Yoruba orishas. Beyond this, though, there's a whole range of modern Brazilian music present in the background of these tracks, as slighter influences from MPB and Tropicalia quietly creep in now and then. The main force here though is the creative energy of a number of newer samba composers, forming exceptional works for the various singers. It can range from frenetic to extremely relaxed, but it's always solid music. It's the range of coverage, perhaps, that makes the album worth hearing. As such, it makes an outstanding jumping-off point for further listening in the realm of the samba. (AllMusic)

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1989 - Brazil Classics 1 Beleza Tropical

1989 - Brazil Classics 1 Beleza Tropical (Flac)

Pre-empting the surge of interest in tropicália, David Byrne compiled 'Brazil Classics 1' back in 1989, gathering timeless classics from Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Jorge Ben, Milton Nascimento and more.

In the 1960s, when Brazil was under military dictatorship, a group of forward-thinking artists spearheaded a fusion of local and foreign ideas that would become known as tropicália. Taking Brazilian and African rhythms, the scene's progenitors believed in "antropofagia", wherein culture would be able to cannibalize itself, and pop music would blur with the avant garde. Years later, David Byrne decided to assemble a slew of his favorite tracks on this definitive compilation - he notes that, at the time, jazz heads and his European fans knew the music, but many of his US fans had never come across tropicália before. The album was a huge success, and according to Byrne, the label made such a bad licensing deal that they lost money on every record sold.

At this point, tropicália is far more widely known, but 'Brazil Classics 1' is still a great entry-point. Byrne knows his stuff, and has selected some of the genre's defining tracks. Maria Bethania and Gal Costa's 'Sonho Meu' bends samba into new shapes, and Milton Nascimento's 'San Vicente' is a ghostly folk-prog experiment that no-doubt influenced Beirut, while Lo Borges' 'Equatorial' injects fresh life into psychedelic rock. Elsewhere, Jorge Ben's 'Caramba!' reminds of the soft power of Afro-Brazilian rhythms, and Nazare Pereira's 'Maculelê' adds the throb of a drum machine for extra seasoning. (Boomcat)

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2023 -Stan Getz, João Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto, Antônio Carlos Jobim - The Girl From Ipanema

 2023 -Stan Getz, João Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto,

Antônio Carlos Jobim - The Girl From Ipanema @320

 

ANDY

Bebel Gilberto - 2014 - Tudo

Bebel Gilberto - 2014 - Tudo @320

Tudo is Brazilian singer and songwriter Bebel Gilberto's first album in five years. It marks a reunion with producer Mario Caldato, Jr., who helmed her breakthrough offering, 2000's Tanto Tempo. Recorded in six different studios in America and Brazil, Gilberto's MPB weds modern bossa, samba, contemporary jazz, and adult pop. Tudo's sound is elegant, more restrained yet more colorful than anything she's attempted before. She wrote or co-wrote seven of these tunes and sings in Portuguese, English, and French. The dreamy, sun-drenched opener, "Somewhere Else," with bossa guitars, jazzy piano, brushed drums, and gentle percussion, is brilliantly but subtly illustrated by a slightly dramatic string arrangement from Miguel Atwood-Ferguson (who does the same on two other selections), making the tune a kind of manifesto. That determination is furthered in "Nada Nāo," as Gilberto is supported by acoustic guitar, bass, and a bevy of percussion instruments. "Novas Ideias" is a sprightly, sly, jazzy samba in duet with her co-writer, Seu Jorge, complete with his killer scat singing. One of the two big surprises here is her sensual reading of Neil Young's "Harvest Moon." Gorgeous in its romanticism, a gentle bossa backbeat is played by an array of percussion, given added dimension by upright and arco basses, lap steel, tres, piano, and acoustic guitars that all float in the humid space behind her voice. The other is a worthy cover of Luiz Bonfá's classic "Saudade Vem Correndo," with Didi Gutman's Walter Wanderley-esque organ, two flutes, guitar, and bass. The tempo is elastic, balancing jazz and samba. "Tout Est Bleu," composed by Andrew Anisere, Allioum Ba, and the late Pascale Hospital, is almost a contemporary jazz update of Pierre Barouh's Saravah Records' sound. "Lonely in My Heart," the other side of the emotions expressed on the set's first two tracks, is given a spacy, slightly psychedelic pop treatment, with sitar next to guitars, loops, and percussion. This is almost countered by Gilberto's reading of Tom Jobim's "Vivo Sonhando," a bossa nova closely associated with her father, João, revealing her command of the genre's musical language. Closer "Inspiraçāo," with its dubby synths and loops, is the only real concession to modern club, but a fine one. Given Gilberto's effortless presentation, Tudo seems somewhat sleepy on first listen. However, given the variety of its songs, her emotional commitment, and the simple yet sophisticated arrangements, the album gradually unfolds into something nearly magical once the listener moves further in. (All Music)

ANDY

 

1990 - The Legendary João Gilberto The Original Bossa Nova Recordings (1958-1961)

1990 - The Legendary João Gilberto
The Original Bossa Nova Recordings (1958-1961) @320

It is difficult to overstate or overhype the importance of this CD, for it exhaustively documents the starting point of bossa nova in Brazil prior to the global craze. The building blocks are solidly in place -- João Gilberto's highly distinctive, pioneering acoustic guitar rhythms, his precisely enunciated vocals (not recorded too closely for a change), the stripped-down, samba-based percussion, Antonio Carlos Jobim's extraordinary songs, and most tellingly on many tracks, Jobim's spare, often-copied backdrops and countermelodies for strings, winds, and horns that are so much a part of his compositions. We can eavesdrop on the exact beginning of the bossa nova movement with the 1958 single containing Jobim's "Chega de Saudade" and Gilberto's "Bim Bom"; one can easily see why this quietly revolutionary record hit the Brazilian music scene like a silent cruise missile. Moreover, the second single was "Desafinado," a fully formed masterpiece long before it became an international hit, with Gilberto producing a precision-cut gem of vocal pinpointing. Along with the singles, there are three albums of material squeezed onto one CD, 38 tracks in all, of which only a dozen surfaced in the U.S. on LP at the time. In addition to Jobim's songs, there are plenty of first-rate contributions by Gilberto, Dorival Caymmi, Ary Barroso, Carlos Lyra, and other writers. And perhaps most importantly, besides being historically indispensable and an extraordinary deal for the consumer, this music is an absolute pleasure to hear. (All Music)

ANDY