We are on our third continental tour now. To date we have covered 85 countries. For many of those countries I have to search and scrape to find enough decent music to justify a post, but very occasionally I have the opposite problem of having more than I know what to do with.
Brazil is one such example. Even after taking the precaution of hiving off some of my favourite Brazilian musicians into a separate post I was still overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of what remained.
Apart from the first two tracks today's songs were selected by an elaborate process of closing my eyes and dabbing. If I did this again tomorrow there are many others that might be included instead but what we have ended up with are ten top tunes, most of which will encourage the shaking of one or more body part.
The first two songs are included because of their significance to the Tropicalia movement which revolutionised the music and art worlds in Brazil in the late 1960s and was seen as such a threat by the military dictatorship in power at the time that many of the leading lights were arrested or exiled. The musical wing started with Caetano Veloso's self-titled 1968 album which opened with the track "Tropicalia", named after Helio Oiticica's 1967 installation.
Later in 1968 Caetano teamed up with Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, Gal Costa and others to record "Tropicália ou Panis et Circencis", which is considered to be the manifesto of the Tropicalia movement and which regularly tops charts of the best Brazilian albums. From it I have picked the Os Mutantes track that provides the second part of the title.
Before Tropicalia came along all the cool kids were glued to their TVs every Sunday night watching "Jovem Guarda" which from 1965 to 1968 transformed the musical taste and fashion sense of Brazilian teenagers and made stars of its presenters. One of these was Erasmo Carlos who went on to enjoy a long and successful career. Today's track comes from his 1972 album "Sonhos e Memórias" and is a beefed up version of a song originally released in 1964 by fellow Jovem Guarda star Roberto Carlos (no relation to either Erasmo or the footballer of the same name).
Our next act is another with a link to Tropicalia. Miguel De Deus was singer and guitarist with the psych practitioners Os Brazões, who as well as making some great records in their own right also served as Gal Costa's backing band in the late 1960s. Fast forward to 1977 and Mr De Deus released the album "Black Soul Brother" under his own name. I have selected the title track on the grounds that it is magnificent.
We will skip ahead two decades now where we find Molejo winning hearts, minds and feet with their pagode sound. Pagode is a variant of samba which developed in Rio de Janiero in the 1980s, hence the title of this track from Molejo's 1996 album "Não Quero Saber De Ti Ti Ti". Personally I can't really tell the difference, but apparently they use a banjo and a tan-tan rather than a cavaco and a surdo. So now you know.
The 1990s also finds Carlinhos Brown - up until then the leader of the percussion ensemble Timbalada - taking his first steps as a solo artist. Mr Brown is one of my favourite Brazilian artists and I am pleased to say he is still going strong today, having picked up some Latin Grammys and an Oscar nomination for writing "Real In Rio" (from the soundtrack of the animated film "Rio") along the way. Today's tune comes from his 2017 album "Semelhantes".
Our next artist also has an connection to the Academy Awards having been one of the stars of the 2002 film "Cidade De Deus" (City of God) which received a number of Oscar nominations. We are of course talking about Seu Jorge, who has maintained a parallel career as an actor and singer for the last 25 years, combining the two of them in "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" where he performed David Bowie songs in Portuguese. That was not without its charms but personally I prefer his own stuff, like this cracker from 2011's "Músicas Para Churrasco, Vol. 1".
"Is it rock? Is it reggae? Is it funk? Beiradão? Fusion? What's that sound?". These are the questions posed on the Soundcloud page belonging to Os Tucumanus, a band from Manaus who have been on the scene since 2006. I found this track on an excellent 2014 compilation called "Rolê: New Sounds of Brazil".
If any of you were wondering what the answers to those questions are, according to the always reliable Google Translate it is music made by "an authentic, pavulous, idealistic, and unusual being". I think we can all agree that it is the level of pavulosity that gives Os Tucumanus' music its distinct sound.
We are nearly at the end of the waffling now, but we can't leave Brazil without sharing some sertenajo music with you. Essentially their country music, it is incredibly (some say inexplicably) popular. The commercial boom happened in the early/mid 1990s when literally thousands of male duos starting emerging from the southern plains.
One of the biggest were Rick & Renner who during the course of their career sold over 10 million albums and performed to an estimated 225 million people. This tune with its synths and riff nicked from "Da Da Da" dates not from 1982 as you might expect but from 2007 (on their album "Coisa De Deus"). Its cheesy but I have a soft spot for it.
We have something much more up to date and cutting edge for the MAR slot. In 2013 the Recife based producer/engineer Buguinha Dub teamed up with local scenesters Yorujah to create an album they called "Aduba Duba Dub". On this track they are joined by Luiz de Assis on vocals and I think they all deserve a round of applause.
"Tropicália" - Caetano Veloso
"Panis Et Circenes" - Os Mutantes
"É Proibido Fumar" - Erasmo Carlos
"Black Soul Brother" - Miguel De Deus
"Samba Diferente" - Molejo
"Derivado Petrolífero" - Carlinhos Brown
"A Doida" - Seu Jorge
"Churrasco de Gato" - Os Tucumanus
"Vai, Vai, Muuuu" - Rick & Renner
"Sweet Dada Adubada" - Buguinha Dub & Yorujah
I only noticed when I got to the end of the list that it was all men, with the sole exception of Rita Lee of Os Mutantes. So let's try to redress the balance with a selection of some of numerous fabulous female singers from Brazil.
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