Month: November 2009

I first heard of Geraldo Filme through a lifelong Paulista friend who frequents the lesser-known haunts of the metropolis’s lesser-known but vibrant samba scene. When she handed me this album and said ‘This is really good, you’ll like this..”, I didn’t realize at the time what an understatement this was. At the time I didn’t know squat about samba, and if I had to pick a time and a place when I fell in love with the genre, it was hanging out at her house in Magdalena going through her huge record collection like a kid in a candy store. It was the same year I’d discovered Clara Nunes, and the beginning of a long journey that will continue until I go deaf.

This album, release on Eldorado, is simply one of the best samba records I own. Wonderfully warm sound, for which Eldorada is somewhat famous, and it hasn’t been ruined in the digital mastering (although the packaging on the CD reissue is total crap, without the slightest bit of information whatsoever). Filme’s songs are melodically lilting and uplifting and with a sweetness that is different way than what you hear in much of carioca samba, with less hard edges, more laid-back, and more emphasis on the stringed instruments which positively shimmer on this album. Listening to this album only leaves me with one regret — that Geraldo Filme recorded so damn little. For a long time after that day I was introduced to this album, I looked and looked trying to find any more of his records. I came up empty-handed, because there weren’t any.

A samba composer and singer from the interior of São Paulo, his work was extremely important to the paulistano samba culture but sadly his name is still somewhat unknown and underappreciated, even in Brazil. He wrote tons of songs but his own recorded work is sparse and scattered. He appeared along with Zeca de Casa Verde and Toniquinho on a 1974 album put together by dramatist and writer Plinio Marcus, called ‘Plínio Marcos em Prosa e Samba, Nas Quebradas do Mundaréu’, a rare album that I’ve been searching for and that I doubt has ever been issued on CD. The only album completely under his own name, as far as I know, is this one from 1980, where 11 out of the 12 tracks are his own compositions. In 1982 he participated along with Clementina de Jesus and Tia Doca on a album of slave work songs dating back to the eighteenth century and recorded in Minas Gerais, titled “O Canto dos Escravos” (more info here) This album apparently has surfaced on CD although I have yet to come across it. Also in 1982, Geraldo appeared on the Ensaio television program and a recording has come out of that too — not sure about the vinyl but it appears in one of several incredible boxsets produced by the SESC organization, “A música brasileira deste seculo por seus autores e interpretes.” It really is kind of tragic that even a lot of Brazilians don’t know the name of Geraldo Filme, although if you play them “O morte de Chico Preto” or “O silêncio no Bexiga” they would most likely say, “hey I know that song!.” If in the end a composer’s fame is more tied to songs thatnever leave you once they pass through your life, then Geraldo Filme is relaxing in the same celestial boteco sharing a beer with the other greats.

Old website about a tribute to Geraldo Filme at the SESC performance space where there are great samba shows all the time
————————————————————–

Geraldo Filme – Geraldo Filme (1980) in 320 kbs em pee tree

Geraldo Filme – Geraldo Filme (1980) in FLAC LOSSLESS AUDIO