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Jards Macalé – Jards Macalé (1972) (Polysom reissue)

Jards Macalé – Jards Macalé
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 96 khz | Art at  300 dpi
24 bit 96 khz – 927 MB | 16-bit 44.1 khz 235 MB
Polysom 33124-1| Released 2012 (Orig.1972)  | Brazilian / Post-Tropicália / Samba / Soul – Funk

This record seems to fit the mood right now.   It is, somehow, a demonstration of how to remain calm while everything falls apart around you.  Brazil is very close to electing an right-wing extremist so repugnant that I don’t even want to name him here, and the US senate is poised to send the definitive reaffirmation, backed by a few thousand years of patriarchy, that women are still the property of men and do not deserve to be heard in the public sphere.  There might not be anything specifically political about this record, but it captures a kind of quiet perseverance, wrapped in melancholy, that are in so many of the best records from this period – the worst, most repressive years of Brazil’s military dictatorship.Jards Macalé – Jards Macalé (1972) (Polysom reissue)

Novos Baianos – Novos Baianos (1974) (Bomba Japanese reissue 2016)

Novos Baianos – Novos Baianos
1974 Continental SLP-10.144 (Original release)
2016 Japanese reissue, Bomba Records Continental SLP-10.144 

Last Sunday, Brazil’s first World Cup match ended in a tie, and now they’ve won their a match against Costa Rica.  I didn’t watch.  I don’t care about the World Cup.  Even if I did, I’m not sure I would be cheering for Brazil this year.  Country has lost its damn mind, and Neymar continues to be whitening. Also FIFA continues to be an ethically dodgy facilitator of slave labor littering the world with disused stadiums built as monuments to their power.  So let’s listen to a record by some people who embody the “beautiful game” as, in my uninformed naiveté, I imagine it to exist in some parallel utopia – Os Novos Baianos, lovers of futebol and purveyors of fine music, still in the midst of their heyday.

Novos Baianos – Novos Baianos (1974) (Bomba Japanese reissue 2016)