From the rare and obscure to the unknown, producer Tee Cardaci mines eleven genre-spanning gems produced during the waning days of Brazil’s military dictatorship, recorded by a new emerging class of artists operating outside of the major label system. Set to release August 4th, via AD and Org Music, we asked Brazilian music authority Allen Thayer to catch up with Cardaci in regards to the three year process it took to make the Sonhos Secretos compilation a reality…
Category: Brazil
Rogê :: Curyman
Cinematic samba-funk tinged with warm psychedelia and plenty of saudade, Curyman is a beacon of modern Brasiliana and an instant summer session staple. While Rogê would be easily at home alongside contemporaries like Sessa and Tim Bernardes on our Atençao! comp from last year, there’s a lush charm to Curyman that harkens back to the golden era of 70s MPB.
Sessão de Verão 3: Porta – The Old Man
Before the São Paulo bar and performance space Porta ever opened its doors to the public, Paula Rebellato, the co-owner, had a dream one night that she was visited by an old man. It was during the height of the pandemic and she was at a crossroads in her career, but in her dream an old man looked around the bar with approval, laughed, then exclaimed “Yeah, it’s going to be psychedelic!”
Baden Powell :: Tristeza On Guitar
While much of the Brazilian pop-music scene was caught up in the groundbreaking fusion of traditional folk stylings with Rock and Roll, Baden Powell was lingering further in the past. Tropicalia was taking the underground by storm; applying fuzz guitar, jazzed out sensibility, and tongue-in-cheek humor to far more danceable and groove-oriented cuts than the Anglo-American scene could comprehend. But prior to Os Mutantes massive breakthrough, Powell was working through his own vision of Brazil’s emergence into the mainstream. In 1966, Tristeza on Guitar was released as an essential first step on the road to full-blown Tropicalia.
J.B. De Carvalho E Seu Terreiro :: Fui Na Umbanda
Summer crate staple right here. All propers to Mr. Bongo for the initial hip, as featured on the third volume of their ongoing vinyl mixtape series. Brazil, 1972.
Pedro Santos :: Krishnanda
Via Brazil, polyrhythmic psych-laced orchestral steam heat. A kitchen sink kind of voodoo, complete with ambient bird calls, torrents of wind, hits of brass, and a bevy of unidentified “effects,” 1968’s Krishnanda is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. Genre-defying, the album’s thirty minute runtime touches upon myriad modalities and is now back in print via the Brighton, UK based Mr. Bongo.
Sessão de Verão 2: Thiago França – The Silver Saxophone
Thiago França may just be the busiest musician in Brazil. His typical performance and recording schedule is often filled up 6-7 days a week, sometimes with more than one performance […]
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Gabriel da Rosa
Shaping up to be one of our most played albums this spring, Gabriel da Rosa made his full-length debut in February with É O Que A Casa Oferece, courtesy of Stones Throw Records. Sounding like a lost seventies samba album, from the likes of Paulinho da Viola or Martinho da Vila, da Rosa makes his Lagniappe debut via a pair of Brazilian staples: Geraldo Pereira and Tom Jobim with Vinícius de Moraes.
Os Tincoãs :: Canto Coral Afrobrasileiro
In the 1970s, Os Tincoãs released three of the most revered and unique records of Brazilian music, which crystallized translucid vocal melodies on top of the polyrhythmic percussion patterns of Afro-Brazilian ritualistic music. Now, more than forty years after their last album, Sanzala Cultural has just released Canto Coral Afrobrasileiro, a collection of the trio’s recordings from 1982/83.
Gabriel da Rosa :: É O Que A Casa Oferece
Gabriel da Rosa’s debut album, É o que a casa oferece, arrives at an auspicious time as Brazilian music is becoming more ubiquitous, cresting a wave of popularity that has been building over the better part of a century. The last 90 years have seen Carmen Miranda’s polyrhythmic schtick in the thirties and forties, the smooth and sophisticated bossa nova craze of the early sixties, and in the seventies Flora Purim, Airto Moreira, and Milton Nascimento championed an adventurous style of Brazilian jazz. Now, a new Brazilian tide is rising, building off the previous waves’ continued relevance, and it’s washing ashore along the Southern California coast.
Sessão de Verão 1: Subterrâneo
There’s a certain pulse in São Paulo, unlike any city I’ve visited. The noise from traffic, helicopters, work crews, and vendors is constant and polyrhythmic. São Paulo often sounds and feels like it’s bursting at the seams. With roughly 12 million people in the city proper and 22 million in the metropolitan region, the megalopolis is loud – one of the loudest places I’ve visited – and this from someone who lived in lower Manhattan for over a dozen years.
Rubinho E Mauro Assumpção :: Perfeitamente, Justamente Quando Cheguei
In line with the late records of Jovem Guarda, such as Erasmo Carlos’ 1970-1972 trilogy of later-revered proto-indie, as well as with Os Mutantes’ flavorful Brazilian psychedelia, Rubinho & Mauro Assumpção’s only ever release wanders through daring and often humorous experimentations. With bare instrumentation and lo-fi timbres blowing against the grain of the recording, it soon came to be a coveted rarity among collectors. Mr. Bongo’s recent reissue offers a great chance to reexamine this piece of soft-noise MPB.
Chico Lessa :: S/T
Chico Lessa’s debut record, a post-Tropicalia jazz-funk private press release from 1982, has just been reissued by the Madrid-based label Vampisoul. It retains influences from the popular Brazilian funk of the early 1980s, from the then-somewhat-defunct Clube da Esquina scene (whose conductor Wagner Tiso is a center feature of the record), as well as from the exploratory and dissonant MPB of Boca Livre (whose mastermind Maurício Maestro signs the arrangements here). A bright little gem in an otherwise uneventful career that, much like the recent rediscoveries of José Mauro or Hareton Salvanini, makes us wonder what Brazilian music could have been — or what we are still to find out it was.
Erasmo Carlos :: 1941-2022
Yesterday, legendary Brazilian musician Erasmo Carlos passed away at 81. Simultaneously proto-Tropicalia and post-Tropicalia, his trilogy of releases from 1970 to 1972 embody an indie aesthetic of twangling guitars and cosmic laid-backness that, rather than merely mimicking (and being subsumed by) American trends, may fit completely in an admirable tradition of obscure para-country balladeers, with Robert Lester Folsom, F.J. McMahon, and others.
Gabriel da Rosa :: Jasmim Parte 1
“Jasmim Parte 1” is the debut single from Gabriel da Rosa. Raised in rural southern Brazil with a radio DJ father, Gabriel was exposed to all manner of sounds from his native country, but it wasn’t until he moved to Los Angeles that he began to truly explore the music, collecting Brazilian records. It was through this exploration that he bonded with Stones Throw Records’ founder Peanut Butter Wolf over their shared love of Brazilian music, and began writing his own bossa with collaborator Pedro Dom (Seu Jorge, Rodrigo Amarante and Latin Grammy Award winner Ian Ramil).