Month: June 2010

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Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson – 1980 (1980)

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Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson “1980”
Released on Arista Records (AL 9514) in, um, 1980
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Shut ‘Um Down 5:28
Alien (Hold On To Your Dreams) 4:09
Willing 4:16 Corners 4:47 1980 6:20 Push Comes To Shove 3:37 Shah Mot (The Shah Is Dead / Checkmate) 4:04 Late Last Night 4:25
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This last collaboration between Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson is an excellent, underrated album that continues in the same downbeat soulful mode as “Bridges” and “Secrets” and is as equally good as those two. In fact this is might be a better, more consistent album than both of those. For some strange reason, I did not take to this record right away. I am not sure why it took longer for me to assimilate. Perhaps I could attribute it to the production — althought it is mixed extremely well, I feel like my head is stuffed with cotton or I just took a lot of cold medicine when I listen to it. But actually this is a characteristic of “Secrets” as well — it seems like all the higher frequencies were rollled off during the mastering process. But once my ears adjust (and/or I took a little EQ tweak on my system), all is golden

There are absolutely no bad songs here, although the song “Alien (Hold On To Your Dreams)” has always striken me as a little corny and trite. Although the issues of immigration, labor, and “illegality” it addresses have always been salient in Amerikkka, it is with an ironic twist that as the discourse on immigration issues has actually *worsened* rather than improved over the last several years, this song actually strikes me as LESS corny than it formerly had. Still, though, I don’t feel that it’s one of Gil’s better examples of sociomusical engagement. After that slight bump in the road, however, the album comes on strong and just keeps coming. Every track is a delight, musicially and lyrically. I do miss Brian Jackson’s electric piano work on these later albums, as he shifted to playing synths almost exclusively at this point aside from some acoustic piano work. Gil’s verse on this album walks the line of acidic social critique and compassionate hopefulness like only he can, from the reflective self-assesments of Willing (NOT the Little Feat song, by the way) or When Push Comes to Shove, to the chilling intonations of 1980 and Shah Mot. In many ways this is a record of an artist growing older in all the positive senses of the word. I hesitate to use the word “maturing” because of its loaded connotations, not least of which is the insinuation that his earlier work was someone naive, which is most definitely was not. It is not as if the revolutionary fire of Gil’s powerful mind is in retreat here, but he has more moments of repose, and spins more narratives of a more personal and intimate nature – a stylist change that had begun with 1977’s Bridges, at least in my ears. Gil leaves us with a light-hearted tune about the trials of getting your inspiration down on paper before it leaves you, a nice way to close the album on the upbeat.

Of course, the resident expert and guru of Gil Scott-Heron in the “blogosphere” has to be Simon at Never Enough Rhodes, who has more amazing material than you can shake a stick at. His write-ups have always been an inspiration for me to try harder, incidentally, as it is blogs like his that set the standard for the possibilities of the format. It appears there has been some trouble with the links of some of the rarities he has over there, but I highly encourage people to check them out regardless of this as his work is a labor of love.

Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson – 1980 in 320 kbs em pee tree

Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson – 1980 in FLAC LOSSLESS AUDIO format

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Led Zeppelin – Destroyer (1977)

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Led Zeppelin
“Destroyer”
April 2, 1977. Cleveland, Ohio

Yesterday (June 28) marked nineteen years since my brother was killed. I spent most of the evening listening to music to that reminds me him, which included some of the mighty Zeppelin. But I neither need to nor will make any excuses for digging the Led Zeppelin and it was not a nostalgia trip. Although certain hipsters and revisionist neo-punks still maintain they are too cool for Zeppelin, most people who actually like rock and roll will acknowledge the band’s place as one of the best in the genre. This was one of the first Zeppelin boots to come to my attention and has been issued a whole mess of times by different labels. By most reckonings the best versions are the ones released by the label Empress Valley, a version not attributed to any label in 2007, and this one released on the Eelgrass label in 2008 which is apparently just a slightly-louded version of the label-less pressing. The sound quality is pretty stunning, coming straight from the mixing console onto quality analog tape.

The 1977 tour was the first time the band had done a full tour of the US since 1973, due mostly to Robert Plant having a nasty car accident in 1975 that put him out of commission for quite a while and reportedly had him singing from a wheelchair during the recording of the “Presence” album. One of the treats of their return was the inclusion of a set of acoustic-based songs which rarely if ever made it to the stage previously. In fact I would probably rave about this boot just because it has “Ten Years Gone,” one of my absolute favorite songs by these guys. Jimmy Page’s genius in the recording studio – as well as his good taste in stealing material by both American and English folk and blues musicians – has always been one of the things that kept me coming back to this band, as was John Paul Jones modest virtuosity as a “musician’s musician” who seemed capable of playing any instrument that landed in his hands. So this necessarily-stripped-down live reading of the tune lacks some of the force of the studio track on Physical Graffiti. But, really only *some* of the force – the tune holds up live remarkably well and keeps the vibe strong. The Tolkien-riddled “Battle of Evermore” fares less successfully in no small part because the inimitable Sandy Denny isn’t there to sing harmonies.

The mighty Led Zeppelin had plenty of VIBE, and (in case you were wondering) that is why they actually belong here amongst all the other stuff on this blog. When they were having a good night on stage, it must have been a tremendous collective experience (enough to even impress William Burroughs, who attended one show and wrote about it in such terms). Since the band was famously unhappy with their only official live-performance document The Song Remains the Same (exhausted end-of-tour sloppy performance and extremely drug-addled musicians…), many folks have speculated that the band would have been better served by a release taken from a few nights of this tour, including this show. In fact the band’s reputation as a live act was really only finally set straight by the double DVD released in 2003 that testified to them being more than an over-hyped “arena rock” phenom.

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My brother and I had less and less in common musically as we grew older, but we always had a bond in the Led Zeppelin. He went off and became a fan of “hair metal” — while idiosyncratically becoming the drummer for a thrash-metal band, which by definition are very much anti-hair-metal. He used to give me lots of shit, like older brothers usually do generally speaking, about my increasingly eclectic musical tastes during our adolescence. Whether it was catching me playing air-guitar to Purple Rain, or shaking his head in dismay as I zoned out in my incense-filled room blasting the 13th Floor Elevators or Moby Grape (“it smells like a Persian whorehouse in here…”), there was no doubt that we were becoming very different people. I had my vindication when I caught him playing my copy of “Sign o’ The Times” and he finally had to admit that Prince was pretty fucking cool. Like most siblings we probably couldn’t see (or, at least, I didn’t at the time) how much we were cut from the same cloth. I was probably about seven years old when he started collecting the Zeppelin albums — on vinyl through the Columbia Record Club via mail-order, baby!! So, if I felt like it, I could blame him for the years of reckless mixtures of drugs, sex, and the occult that inevitably “resulted” from my exposure to such Devil Music at an early age. But that would be silly; all that stuff was my own doing. One of my more pleasant memories, if a bit foggy, of the last year or so we had together, was the two of us (well, with his girlfriend in the passenger seat, unfortunately) driving on a road-trip to New York City in his pimped-out 1976 Trans Am. By pimped-out I mean that he had put in a decent sound system with a hefty amplifier and EQ, as well as a radar detector to elude the cops while speeding on the highways. I remember fondly the long ride up Interstate 75 blasting The Who and Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti” (one of the best all-time road-trip records.). Unfortunately I also remember with shame when he caught me buying opium from some schmuck in Greenwich Village. It turned out to be fake, bunk opium too, and so doubly not worthy of the embarrassment of getting caught. My brother worried about me a lot, and most likely saved my life in an incident where he took it upon himself to knock on some doors and put on his best metal-head menace to eke out information from my so-called hippie “friends” about where I might have disappeared to when I went missing for a few months when I was 15. I had actually told nobody but rumors travel fast in small towns, and he valiantly crossed state lines with his slightly-crazy bandmate who always carried a knife in his boot in his general preparedness for the apocalypse and had taken to calling himself Akhnaton after the Egyptian pharaoh. They tracked me down to a national forest before I was able to hitchhike across the country and meet my uncertain fate as a full-fledged drop out. I didn’t exactly pull myself together after that either. Less than a year later he was visiting me in the psych ward where I had been committed (half-voluntarily, half-coerced/forced there). He was the only visitor I had while I was there. It was less than two months after I got out of that place that he was killed in a car accident at around 3 am coming back home from a show with his metal band. I was the last person in my family to see him alive. Almost naturally, I thought it should have been me in that car, that there was some sort of mix-up. Not just guilt but also envy — the bastard got out of the game, and left me behind.

Although this show, in an incomplete version had circulated as a vinyl boot for quite some time before he died (on the famous Swingin’ Pig label), I do not know if he ever heard it or not. My guess would be he probably had not. So I like to imagine sometimes that I am playing it for him for the first time. It’s weird how when someone slips away from us, they become frozen in time – I will always think of him as 21 years old. In my dreams when he pays me a visit, that is usually his age. I’ve even had the odd science-fiction and conspiracy dreams where he returns to us, and we learn that his death was faked, a hoax. But he is still twenty-one years old, a fact that well all find rather peculiar but are afraid to comment on. Then it somehow becomes clear that this is not in fact my brother, but a clone or an android made from some recorded memory deposited in the Overmind, and that THIS is the hoax, and the dream fades, and I wake up.

So, wherever the hell you are, I’d like dedicate this post to you, with love, and hope you play it loud, commemorating Kali the Destroyer and the beauty of rock music in all its sublime hedonism, rough-hewn poetry, and eternal youth.

1. “The Song Remains The Same” (partial) – (3:40)
2. “The Rover”(Intro)/”Sick Again” – (6:44)
3. “Nobody’s Fault but Mine” – (6:29)
4. “In My Time of Dying/’You Shook Me” – (11:38)
5. “Since I’ve Been Loving You” – (8:23)
6. “No Quarter” – (19:46)
7. “Ten Years Gone” – (9:14)
8. “The Battle of Evermore” – (6:22)
9. “Going to California” – (5:48)
10. “Black Country Woman”
11. “Bron-Yr-Aur (Stomp)” – (5:11)
12. “White Summer”/”Black Mountain Side”
13. “Kashmir” – (8:32)
14. “Out on the Tiles”/”Over the Top”/”Moby Dick”
15. Guitar Solo – (9:45)
16. “Achilles Last Stand” – (9:40)
17. “Stairway to Heaven” – (10:10)
18. “Rock and Roll” – (3:26)
19. “Trampled Under Foot”

Led Zeppelin – Destroyer (1977) in 320 kbs em pee treeee
Mirror: MegaU. link…

Led Zeppelin – Destroyer (1977) in FLAC LOSSLESS AUDIO

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These links will probably come down in 48 hours or so, because they are the kind of thing that gets blogs taken ‘off the air’, so be quick..

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Ghana Soundz – Afro-Beat, Funk And Fusion In 70's Ghana (2002)

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Various Artists – Ghana Soundz:
Afro-Beat, Funk And Fusion In 70’s Ghana (2002)
Soundway Records (SNDWY 001)

I have been sitting on sharing this one for a long time, waiting and putting it off until I had the inspiration to write something sufficiently flabbergasted about it. But now that I just heard, due to my sleeplessness leading me to an online newspaper, that Ghana had a victorious World Cup game today (Saturday), I feel I can`t hold back any more. No pithy remarks or deconstruction of the music this time. I don’t even really care about the World’s Cup – it’s just not in my blood, I guess you could say. But I am really happy to hear about Ghana’s win.

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This disc was the first of many wonderful compilations from Englands’s Soundway Records. While in terms of packaging and notes, Soundway would only continue to get better and better over these last years, the music pretty much sets the template of what we can expect from any of their releases – rare grooves, truly creative arrangements and instrumentation, and for the most part excellent sound quality. Some of my personal favorites here are the tracks from Ebo Taylor, Oscar Sulley and the Uhuru Jazz Band, the Honny and the Bees Band, and especially K.Frimpong and his Cubano Fiestas who kick out a smoldering deep groove and then four minutes in blow my mind with a beautifully melodic versus replete with harmonies that crescendo into .. .more smoldering grooving. Just when I think they can’t do anything else to surprise me, they end the song with a bloody Moog solo, and then my head explodes in time with my shuffling feet. I can’t swear on it, since it is three in the morning and I would be sleeping if I could, but this might be my favorite cut of them all. Though the Apagya Show Band that follows them with more scintillating scorch marks on my eardrums follows pretty closely. Actually there is quite a bit more analog-synthesizer freakness on this collection which tickles me tenderly in the places that matter, more than I am used to hearing on this type of material.

At this point in my time on earth, what I once thought to be impossible has begun to occur – I am beginning to tire of James Brown known-offs, particularly because there seems to be no particular bottom to that barrel that is still being scraped and most probably always will be. There, I said it. I won’t name names but there are one or two tunes on this that I can just as easily pass over, even though they are still pretty good.

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Ghana Sounds – Ghana Soundz – Afro-Beat, Funk And Fusion In 70’s Ghana (2002) in 320 kbs em pee tree (PLEASE STAND BY… I seem to have lost this link from months and months ago..)

Ghana Soundz – Afro-Beat, Funk And Fusion In 70’s Ghana (2002) in FLAC LOSSLESS AUDIO

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Dominguinhos – Programa MPB Especial 1974

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DOMINGUINHOS
“A música brasileira deste século por seus autores e intérpretes”
SESC São Paulo / JCB Produções Artisticas

Recorded for the Programa MPB Especial on February 8, 1974, directed by Fernando Faro

Dominguinhos – sanfona de oito baixos
José Braz dos Santos – zabumba
Domingos P. Neres – triângulo

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Some years ago the SESC organization of São Paulo released a number of boxsets of interviews and music with musicians and composers. This disc is from the second boxset (the discs themselves are not numbered or in any way chronological). Only a fraction of the stuff filmed for this series has found its way onto DVD, such as Nara Leão, Cartola (very recently), or Elis Regina. If you’ve seen those then you know the format — a little bit of playing, a little bit of talking, some more playing, very relaxed. In fact one curious production technique is that you never (or at least I haven’t yet) hear the actual questions being posed to the artists. This used to really annoy me. Now I see it as some of form of editorial self-erasure, an attempt to efface the interviewer’s subjective presence and keep the focus on the artists. In that sense the technique is mildly admirable. But there are still times when I knew what the hell they had been asking about..

But in this case, Dominguinhos, who is as relaxed and good-natured in an interview as you might expect from his music, tells us a little about growing up in Garanhuns, Pernambuco, his father being a small farmer (pequeno agricultor, not “small” like Azulão) who also worked as a tuner of sanfonas de 8 baixos (eight-button accordions) and playing in the feiras where so much business gets conducted in the interior. He tells of meeting as a young boy with the master Luiz Gonazaga, who would become his mentor and protector throughout this life.

forro

We then get something of a musical travelogue of his life, with him playing some of the different types of music he played to get by when living in Rio – samba, música romantica, boleros, show tunes. Songs by Tom Jobim, Johnny Alf, Jack Lawrence. We even get a short snipped of chansón with “La vie em Rose” immortalized by Edith Piaf. It’s not as if Domiguinhos is alone in knowing this repertoire as it was more or less required of working musicians, but as he demonstrates in this casual setting it is not hard to imagine that his emotive capacity to connect with whatever material he plays is at least part of how he grew to be such a sought-after session player, apart from his association with Gonzagão. This TV program was filmed as Dominguinhos was ‘hot stuff’ with the post-tropicalia scene, having both recorded on my ex-girlfriend’s album “India” (1973) and also touring in her live presentation of it. I may be partial because I am still in love with Gal Costa after all these years in spite of her breaking my heart, but I really think the India tour performance should see a legit DVD release (there is a bootleg pimping itself out over at YouTube…), because I would rather go blind from stroking myself than from squinting my eyes at a blurry image *while* stroking myself, damnit. Anyway, if the only thing Dominguinhos ever did in his entire career was to play on that album, he would still deserve top props from me. But he was also working on Gilberto Gil’s ‘Refavela’ album which would yield one of the most beautiful songs either man would write, “Lamento Sertanejo (Forró de Dominguinhos.” But he opens the show with his most famous and instantly-recognizable song “Eu só quero um Xodó,” which is a staple in the forró song book now, both pé de serra and electric… I had always thought it was co-written with Gilberto Gil because of its appearance on the latter’s “Cidade de Salvador” album (underrated and rather hard to track down, unfortunately), and because the melody seems so obviously GIL to me.. But it’s not, its Dominguinhos and Anastácia. There is however, the Gil/Dominginhos collaboration “Abri a porta” later on, and the fantastic song written with Chico Buarque “Tantas Palavras.” There is even a song he co-authored with his nine year-old daughter Liv titled “Vários caminhos.” And it’s amazing.

forro

I think this box has something like 13 discs in it and a book which transcribes all the interviews and has some commentary by the likes of Tarik de Souza and Sergio Cabral who worked on the SESC project. They are all pretty consistently good but this one is really special and definitely my personal favorite. It’s recorded with the sparseness and simplicity that really brings out the best in Dominguinhos without the frills of (over)production, and to hear him play some of these tunes *entirely* by himself (by which I mean, with the zabumba and triangle players sitting them out in the corner) is a privilege, like having him come by to your house and play for you on your veranda on a crisp autumn evening. Some of the other volumes in the SESC boxes seem to be made from second or third generation back-up tapes or transferred off the video reels, whereas this one has incredibly detailed and warm sound. And, of course, he has some anecdotes peppered between the songs that prove how any good sanfoneiro is also a good storyteller. He ends the show appropriately enough with an homage to his mentor, Luiz Gonzaga, and shows us why is truly the only one worthy of being Gonzaga’s successor and ‘filho postiço’.

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RESPOTED ON MARCH 27, 2013

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Jackson do Pandeiro – Forró do Jackson (1958)

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Jackson do Pandeiro
“Forró do Jackson”
Released 1958 on Copacabana Records (CLP 3068 / CLP 11086 )
This CD pressing, Copacabana (99301)
Pressed by Sonopress Brasil, probably 1995

Above are two of my personal favorites, tracks penned by the Rosil Cavalcanti, also a Paraíban who found a second home in Recife just like Jackson, and who aside from contributing some of the most memorable moments of Brazilian music, also played football and worked at the Ministry of Agriculture.

01. Falso Toureiro
(Heleno Clemente – José Gomes)

02. Rosa
(Ruy de Moraes e Silva)

03. Ele Disse
(Edgar Ferreira)

04. Forró em Limoeiro
(Edgar Ferreira)

05. Cumpadre João
(Rosil Cavalcanti – Jackson do Pandeiro)

06. Meu Enchoval
(Gordurinha)

07. Moxotó
(José Gomes – Rosil Cavalcanti)

08. 17 na Corrente
(Manoel Firmino Alves – Edgar Ferreira)

09. Coco do Norte
(Rosil Cavalcanti)

10. Êta Baião
(Marçal Araujo)

11. Cajueiro
(Raimundo Baima – Jackson do Pandeiro)

The sweet smell of São João bonfires is already wafting through my windows. Unfortunately in some strange postmodern (or is it post-ironic?) twist, I have been without running water in my house for five days now, I’ve been sick with alcohol poisoning from someone serving “moonshine” in a single mixed-drink I had over the weekend, and the big musical attraction for São João here has nothing whatsoever to do with “cultura Nordestina”, except for the fact that they are very popular here, numerically speaking probably more popular than the home-grown sounds of pé-de-serra, ciranda, or samba de coco. Indeed, the big attraction today is romantic sertaneja duo BRUNO E MARRONE!! Now, if you happen to have heard any of the GOOD sertaneja from the earlier decades of the twentieth century and mostly made in the south and center-west of Brazil… this has nothing to do with that whatsoever. Think of Lefty Frizzell or Hank Williams Sr. versus Garth Brooks or Alan Jackson, and you get the idea. This stuff is totally corporate, totally mass-marketed, so much so that I am having trouble finding an un-protected YouTube clib to subject you for my masochistic gratification. For tonight’s debacle, the city has erected a stage in the central plaza that is two or three times the size of what we had here for Carnaval. No doubt built according to the duo’s megalomaniac specs, the funny thing is that its a small plaza and I have no idea where the audience is going to fit. The other problem is that some of my friends here genuinely like this crap, so I have to respectfully keep my mouth shut. Although I drew a line when it came to the stage – I was remarking on its absurd size and one of them said, “well they have huge band,” to which I responded..”Um, bullshit. There were a LOT more people crammed onto the stage during carnaval and nobody was seriously inconvenienced by it. It’s just the ego of these famous guys..” Here is a clip, probably filmed on a cell phone, of the duo playing in what seems to be a smallish place in comparison

Another funny thing is that comparatively speaking, there is MUCH worse out there than these guys. At least they seem to avoid the tendency towards over-sized ten-gallon hats and women in trashy outfits on stage who pole dance on and around the musicians and singers. But its still crap, and crap from Goiás, which is far away from the Nordeste. I wish I had that second-hand car I’ve been thinking of buying, so I could kidnap Ariana Suassuna and bring him here to brow-beat these two with his crypto-fascist regionalist puritisms, bludgeoning them into submission with his ancient croaking voice until they beg for mercy and play some damn pé de serra.
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All of which brings me to the point of today’s post, Jackson do Pandeiro. It’s been my intention to post something every day during the regional mayhem that is Festa Junina and São João. I am getting rather tired of all of it, frankly. Between the World Cup and this daily party, I can’t get a lot of my work done, at least not the parts that depend on the participation of other people. But then I get revived when I randomly happen across a stage of *decent* pé de serra, or when I put a record like this one — a classic Jackson do Pandeiro from 1958, with a classic cover of him in repose in the lap of the gorgeous Almira.

Jackson (who also went by “Jack” and also “Jaques” in earlier phases of his career) is LONG overdue for a proper box-set treatment of his discography that surpasses the weak ‘retrospective’ type CDs like the “Millenium” collection, one of the only ‘best-of’ packages I think is still currently in print. The guy was a larger-than-life figure, charismatic and innovative, and to my ears he is as important as Luiz Gonzaga, although I understand all the social and historical reasons why Gonzaga’s legacy is more prominent in Brazil as a whole. This record, like just about he everything he did, has no bad songs on it. The tracks “17 na corrente” and “Coco do Norte” were both hits but any of these songs will get a dance floor moving and most of them will be recognizable to the discerning ear of many a fan of Brazilian music. Unfortunately “Forró em Limoeiro”, a song that did a lot for his career and earned him enough money to go and schmooze with music journalists and `ipmortant` industry people in Rio de Janeiro`, sounds like it was sourced from a 78-rotations record rather than a master tape, but the music still shines. Here is a clip of him performing it a good fifteen years later, along with some commentary from various people about his tremendous contributions, principally in the area of syncopated rhythm —

With any luck this MPB Especial which see a DVD release someday if TV Cultura can liberate the tapes. And HOLY CRAP what do we have here?? “O Canto da Ema” performed Jackson and João do Vale (who has a writing credit on this song) performing inside what seems like a train car or a small diner…

Too bad its only a minute long, because its a riveting minute. I should have more incisive critique about this album but I am simply enjoying far too much coming across these great clips of Jackson. He managed to appear in 10 different films during his lifetime (I don’t have any ready statistics on this but I believe his colleague Gonzagão has him beat in terms of film appearances..). This montage shows him in full cangaçeiro regalia, in proper São João spirit:

More sources on Jackson do Pandeiro

An interesting-looking book that I hope to read someday soon, by Fernando Mouro and Antonio Vicente

A rather simple website that does not have a ton of information, but DOES have a fairly thorough collection of song lyrics in an easily accessible format, plus some choice quotes (under ‘depoimentos’) from famous artists about the importance of Sir Jaques. Check it out here at directly in your browser as http://jacksondopandeiro.digi.com.br/

And another website, a bit more professional design than the last but is a bit more clunky to navigate. It does have a fairly detailed discography although I have reasons to doubt that all the dates are correct, it is still a useful resource: http://jacksondopandeiro.com.br/

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Luiz Gonzaga – Luiz "Lua" Gonzaga (1961)

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*note: Gonzaga did not actually have a mustache in the photo above..

Luiz Gonzaga com Acompanhamento Típico
“Luiz ‘Lua’ Gonzaga” Released 1961 on RCA Victor (BBL-1115)

1. Capitão Jagunço baião (Paulo Dantas/Barbosa Lessa)
2. Baldrama Macia rasqueado (Arlindo Pinto/Anacleto Rosas)
3. Creuza Morena, valsa (Lourival Passos/Luiz Gonzaga)
4. Dedo Mindinho, baião (Luiz Gonzaga)
5. Amor que Não Chora, toada (Erasmo Silva)
6. O Tocador Quer Beber, xote (Carlos Diniz/Luiz Gonzaga)
7. Na Cabana do Rei, baião (Jaime Florence/Catulo de Paula)
8. Aroeira, xote (Barbosa Lessa)
9. Rosinha, baião (Nelson Barbosa/Joaquim Augusto)
10. Corridinho Canindé, baião (Luiz Gonzaga/Lourival Passos)
11. Só Se Rindo, xote (Alvarenga/Rancinho)
12. Alvorada da Paz, marcha (Luiz Gonzaga/Lourival Passos)

Transcription notes: Vinyl -> Pro-Ject RM-5SE turntable (with Sumiko Blue Point 2 cartridge, Speedbox power supply) > Creek Audio OBH-15 -> M-Audio Audiophile 2496 Soundcard -> Adobe Audition 3.0 at 24-bits 96khz -> Click Repair light settings, additional clicks and pops removed in Audition -> Normalized to -1 db -> dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced -> ID Tags done in foobar2000 v.1.0.1.
Absolutely no EQ or noise-reduction!

As far as I can tell this was Luiz Gonazaga’s first long-player recorded FOR the format of a long-playing record or LP. Previous to this his work has been on 78s and singles. The record is also unique in that it lacks any songs from his famous partnerships with Humberto Teixeira or Zedantas. There is quite a lot of variety on this album, reflecting how Gonzaga was simultaneously “inventing” a genre of music and also constantly expanding its boundaries. The record starts off roaring with a tale of Canudos besieged by the militias of the First Republic, with their captain in the role of Judas against Antônio Conselheiro, the “messiah” of the sertão. But then the second cut, Baldrama Macia, takes us far from the northeast, to a different style of caipira or ‘country / folk’ music from the state of Mato Grosso and the area around its capital, Cuiabá. The style is called “rasqueado” and I don’t know too much about it, but apparently it grew from the riverine cultures spanning Paraguay to Mato Grosso and included the influence of polka music. To my ears it bears a curious resemblance to certain types of Mexican folk musics far to the north. The third tune, Crueza Morena, is in the mold of a traditional ‘valsa’ sertaneja, the very waltz that found its way to Brazil via the Portuguese court culture when the royal family briefly resided in Rio de Janeiro in the early nineteenth century, and would influence everyone from Villa Lobos to Pixinguinha. The next cut, a pure baião written entirely by Gonzaga himself, is a fine tune, nothing wrong with it in the least, but it pales compared to the song that follows it. “Amor que não chora”, written by the famous samba-cançao composer Erasmo Silva, was the big hit off this record. Just a gorgeous tune, everything about it complementing everything else in perfect proportions of instrumentation, vocal, lyric..

“Lugar que tem chuva, tem felicidade
Amor que não chora, não sente saudade”

Such simplicity executed with deceptively perfect rhythmic exactitude. The only other lines in the tune:

“Meu amor me abandonou, eu não sei qual a razão
Hoje está fazendo um mês que eu fiquei na solidão

Ai, ai, meu amor não chorou
Ai, ai, meu amor me deixou”

All of these are case-book examples of a vocalist knowing how to drag a line behind the beat, then speed it up in just the right place, where the phrasing is more essential than hitting all the notes – which, incidentally, Gonzaga always nailed with his big, expansive voice. Looking at the song structurally or compositionally, “there’s nothing to it,” as the English expression goes — but that’s part of the beauty, of course.

This is followed by a short song detailing the legal campaign to insure the rights of sanfoneiros everywhere to have a drink while on the bandstand. During the Estado Novo of Getulio Vargas (1937-1945), forró musicians were forbidden to drink on the bandstand due to the belief that they would incite riots and unrest and bring back the chaos of the cangaçeiros like Lampião who caused the government so much trouble. The repressive, discriminatory, and senseless law stayed on the books long after the fall of Vargas. Since Gonzaga had come to prominence with plenty of hit songs during this period, he had simply had enough of having to stay ‘dry’ during performances and wrote this song in protest. The song was popular and powerful enough that in 1962 the subject was to be brought before the Câmara of Deputies, where a nearly unanimous vote was held, “O Tocador Pode Beber.” A historic political victory in the name of popular culture.

The second side of this album is also quote good although not as strong as the first half. “Na Cabana do Rei” is another melodically lovely xotê about singing toads and pigeons. The next few tunes kind of float right through my consciousness without leaving much behind except for “Corridinho Canindé” which features a slick refrain of ‘ziggy-ziggy-boom’ as well as a tuba. This makes me happy. And actually the most beguiling track here closes out the album “Alvorada de Paz”, which is a marcha in the style of a samba-exultação, that is to say a patriotic samba singing the praises of not only Brazil but its leaders as well — in this case the election of President Jânio Quadros. Quadros was only president for about eight months, famously resigning his office and claiming that “occult forces” were conspiring against him. This is a literal translation from the Portuguese, which really only means “hidden forces.” But I think that if we take Quadros’ resignation letter literally, we will realize he was talking about the RECORD INDUSTRY, the Devil’s Plaything, more powerful even than the derrubador dos presidentes Carlos Lacerda, and thus by extension — Luiz Gonzaga and his “homage” to his presidency. In this line of reasoning, Gonzagão is responsible not only for the collapse of Jânio Quadros administration, but also the military coup that seized power from his vice-president João Goulart in 1964, and the entire military regime that followed. An still the cangaçeiros await their real revenge. If you play this record backwards, you will realize that forró is not just party music. It’s the Devil’s Music, pure and simple.

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