I’ve been so focused on the sexual harassment issue that I forgot all about my Brazilian music column of Thursdays today! So this will be a bit brief, but it will be good :)
If you ask me to name my one and only very favorite Brazilian musician of all times, it will be damn hard, of course, but if really pressed, on most occasions I would probably say: Jorge Ben(Jor) (he started out as Jorge Ben and changed his name to Jorge Ben Jor at some point, for somewhat obscure reasons). What he’s done in terms of coming up with a whole new beat is simply awesome: he invented the samba-rock guitar rhythm, which is the swingiest rhythm I’ve ever come across (and I’ve looked very hard!). There’s really nothing like it.
Jorge Ben started his career in the 1960s. His very first record, in 1963, contains an astonishing number of classics: ‘Mas que nada’ (which later became world-famous on Sergio Mendes’ rendition, and was recently re-recorded with the Black Eyed Peas), ‘Balança Pema’ (which has already made an appearance at this column on the Marisa Monte version), ‘Chove Chuva’, ‘Por causa de você, menina’, and so forth. He’s had very fruitful years in the 1960s (some say these were his best years) and the 1970s. In the 1970s, he had a whole period profoundly marked by an interest in alchemy, especially in his great A Tábua da Esmeralda album (1974, containing the classic ‘Os alquimistas estão chegando’, among others). In the 1980s he didn’t come up with anything particularly worth noticing, in my opinion, and his popularity was not at its zenith, to say the least. But then, in the early 1990s, in the same context of a rediscovery of Brazilian traditional sounds that I’ve mentioned before many times, Jorge Ben (now) Jor was rediscovered by the younger crowd – at first rather timidly (just for the cool and initiated ones), but soon after also by the masses. I’ve been extremely lucky to see all this happen in my teens. In 1992 and thereabouts, he was touring a lot but playing mostly in fairly small venues, low-profile productions. In that period, I went to numerous of his concerts; they were so awesome that I couldn’t miss any of them! Among the best dancing experiences of my life; I’ve seen the guy play live several times (maybe something like 10 times?), just a few meters away from me :). He then soon started playing at much bigger places, and there was a whole revival of his popularity in the 1990s.
He has continued to be productive and creative, he still plays live regularly, but if you ask me, he really doesn’t need to do anything anymore to be considered a semi-god in my pantheon. Most of his albums of the 1960s and 1970s have been re-mastered and re-released in the last 10 years, and the beauty and richness of his music has been revealed to a whole new generation of people.
It must be clear by now that, for me, to choose just one song by this guy is an excruciatingly difficult task. But it must be done, so here it is: ‘O telefone tocou novamente’, from his 1970 album Força Bruta. You need to pay attention in particular to the awesome guitar playing, quintessential samba-rock beat. Now, if you don’t like this song, then we just can’t be friends, so sorry.
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