André Abujamra, Duzoutruz (Vol. 1) – Musician, comedian, musical comedian, er comedic musician, Abujamra is probably best known for his early work with Os Mulheres Negras (where he partnered with Maurício Pereira) and his film score work. He’s also had a long, wandering solo career. Here he covers some beloved songs while adding his own spins to their sounds, mainly effectively dinky instrumentation (funny without being overbearing) and touches of the Arabic music from his family roots (percussion and bits of drone). Where I know the originals, these versions don’t make me want forget them, but as he ranges over styles and years of Brazilian musics he doesn’t make me want to rush to them either. Listen here. Grade: B
Rodrigo Brandão and Sun Ra Arkestra, Outros Espaço – Brandão’s transtition from rapper to spoken word artist threatened to hide his creativity behind the language barrier. But working here with the Sun Ra Arkestra, and many of the usual Brazilian avant suspects, Brandão brews up a potent batch of mind-altering sounds. I suspect credit goes to the Sun Ra Arkestra. Brandão worked with the others on his solo debut, which never left the ground, but this one blasts off. Helps that Brandão embraces the title theme to drench his voice in spacey echo, adding sonic interest to words I don’t understand. (Once again, the usual sources failed to turn up lyrics.) But this one is all mood, flow, odd sounds and textures, and engaging weirdness. Listen here. Grade: B+
Céu, Um Gosto de Sol – I avoided reviewing her for awhile because I didn’t really like her music, so when I finally get around to expressing that dislike, she then turns around and releases a couple of decent albums in 2021. The first remade her earlier songs in acoustic manner. Here she covers other artists. Once again the secret is personality: to my ears she has it now in a way she did not. She’s singing looser and with more warmth. She sounds like she’s having fun. She covers the Beastie Boys from their Brazilian period (a terrific version of “I Don’t Know”). She takes on classics like “Bim Bom” and, um, “Feelings”. So, ok, it’s not a perfect album. Listen here. Grade: B.
Thiago França, Bodiado – KD VCS was an accidental pandemic commentary that nailed the sense of isolation in those early months of lockdown. Bodiado is a pandemic product. Recorded at home by himself, it’s actually more spirited than the forlorn KD VCS. Here França explores solitude as play. Recording, overdubbing, cutting, and mixing, he turns himself into a small, convivial party. But it is touched with melancholy because that’s the time we’re in, and as those sonic cocktails unfold one after the other, a sadness seeps into the edges because even a good party can’t escape that these days. Listen and buy here. Grade: B+
Batuqueiros e Sua Gente with Douglas Germano Partido Alto – Partido altos are a samba subgenre that emerged in the early 20th century as modern met tradition. One of the hallmarks of the music is the mixture of choral and solo singing in a call and response manner. The style was given new life in the 1970s among aesthetic (not political!) conservatives who deployed it against the cultural miscegenation of MPB and paved the way for pagoda samba in the 1980s. Here Germano teams with samba band Batuqueiros e Sua Gente for a lively revival that avoids sanctimony or timidity. Less frantic than the terrific Escumalha, Germano and the band serve up fast-paced sambas for dancing, singing and embracing life. I wish I could find the lyrics, which continue Germano’s attack on Brazil’s bad politics, but the music more than compensates for that lack. Listen here. Grade: A-
Don L, Roteiro pra Aīnouz (Vol. 2) – The second part of his reverse semi-autobiographical screenplay from Fortaleza-born, São Paulo-working rapper Don L (a.k.a. Gabriel Linhares da Rocha). Only it’s less about him than his world. The first half of this record bristles with violence, but not the real life crime stories you might expect in hip hop. It’s about politics. The second track, “Vila Rica” (“Rich Village”) recounts resistance against colonizers, only it’s really about Bolsonaro’s Christofascist political movement. Don L knows his enemies: not just Bolsonaro, but the wealthy who pull his strings (“investors of misery”) and the police they deploy against his opponents. The first half of this album imagines and wishes for revolution against those who would return Brazil to its repressive colonial or military past. The album turns more personal toward the end, but that political framing remains the focus of the whole. Of course, all of that is only apparent to me through bad browser translations, so I’m left aching to understand better how the words work. All of which means the music itself is a blessing. With production that’s funky, hard and full of gloriously abrasive sounds, you don’t need to know the words. But when you read those translations along with the music you get a sense of how verbal and instrumental content cohere into something dynamic. Even behind the langauge barrier, this one sounds special. Listen here. Grade: A-
Alessandra Leão, Acesa – Like Romulo Fróes, percussionist/singer Leão is both a professional musician and an amateur scholar/historian, a traditionalist who understands ways of art die if they aren’t made anew for the present. So, while looking backward, she performs in the now and imagines where the musics she loves might go. As on her terrific trio of 2015 EPs, Leão and her collaborator Caê Rolfson dive into modern sounds even as they draw upon older worlds from Brazil’s northeast. Hard regional rhythms combine with synthesizers that harshen the party without ending it. You’ve heard of retrofuturism? How about some futuristic traditionalism? (The album is accompanied by a musically democratic video series where she explores the roots of this music in the lives of Brazilians.) Listen here. Grade: A-
Flora Matos, Flora de Controle – Without much flash, Matos has emerged as one of Brazilian hip hop’s most consistent performers. She hasn’t released a Bluesman or Batuk Freak or Gano Pelo Bang, but she chugs away releasing solid album after solid album. Her latest initially sounds a little bland, the tracks too samey. But as they sink in details emerge—some background percussion or a string of vowels she raps—that color and decorate the songs. Streaming-era brevity (10 tracks in 23 minutes, two of which are remixes) makes it hard for the languid flow to build up much momentum, but maybe that’s the point. Plus, one of those remixes might be the best thing on the album. Listen here. Grade: B
Fabiano do Nascimento, Ykytu – You always hear in your biases. Love or hate, it’s hard to get past them. So when Nascimento’s latest kicked off, I was sad he was back into new age territory. But then that picking, those lines, the riffs started pushing through the shiny, tasteful, genteel surface. It’s not just that he has chops; it’s that he knows how to use them. His technical displays make musical sense. Not that the too shiny, too tasteful, too genteel disappeared, but I learned to tolerate it and hear the beauty he was aiming for and gets closer to than my biases want to allow. I’m betting he’ll never equal Dança dos Tempos, but he’s showing enough facility and smarts to be more than a one album wonder. Listen and buy here. Grade: B-
Mariá Portugal, Erosão – Jazz? Artsong? Avant-post-samba? Call it what you want. After 20+ years on the Brazilian music scene and playing on some of the best albums of the period, drummer Portugal has earned the right to cross whatever borders she wants. And here she does. Portugal, who completed this album before emigrating to Germany (temporarily?), has played with DonaZica/Iara Rennó, Quartabê, Ava Rocha and Elza Soares where she’s established her bona fides not only as a drummer but as one of the leading musicians reinterpreting Brazilian traditions for the future. This is no sidewoman throwaway project: the drummer gets some because she knows how to give some. The mix of song, jazzy passages and electronic trickery coheres into a difficult, sometimes austere beauty that moves from funky and serene and glitchy effortlessly. Two brief tracks aside, the album’s songs unfold slowly and unpredictably. Where you might expect a drummer to go for straighter, rhythm driven music, Portugal just as often uses percussion to ornament the other instruments as to keep time or drive the music. The pace risks static at time, but Portugal and her collaborators maintain the tension needed to propel things forward. As with her Quartabê bandmates Maria Beraldo and Joana Queiroz, Portugal has made some of her most compelling music here as a solo artist. An album where the strengths keep emerging as you immerse and listen more carefully. Listen here. Buy here. Grade: A
Brazil Beat 