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Rating: The sixties, musically speaking, never attracted me all that much. I've always preferred the typical sophistication of the seventies prog and the legacy they left in the subsequent decades, even indirectly through their deconstruction into less complex forms.
Of course, if instead of rock we talk about jazz music, our scenario changes completely, as it changes if we turn our gaze towards Brazilian music.
Towards the end of the fifties, bossanova was born. The chosen date coincides with the publication of "Chega de Saudade," written by Tom Jobim and Vinicius De Moraes and performed by João Gilberto.
Curiously, for critics, the end of the movement itself is decreed in '65, with the first festival of Brazilian popular music, won by Elis Regina with "Arrastão" composed by Edu Lobo and Vinicius himself.
Thus, the MPB or Brazilian popular music "is born," starting its trajectory towards a wider audience, embedding elements extracted from other musical influences into the bossanova matrix and traditional music (such as samba), reaching the peak of this trend in the tropicalista phase of the late sixties.
When we talk about bossanova, the characters that come to mind are always Jobim and Gilberto. However, we cannot forget that Vinicius is a key figure.
While the first two dragged the spirit of bossanova throughout the rest of their careers, Vinicius exorcised it by renewing it, thanks also to his eclecticism that saw him engaged on various artistic fronts including journalism and playwriting.
In short, the sixties were surprisingly rich in Brazil, also because while bossanova managed to influence American jazz, that freshness and instrumental freedom characteristic of jazz heavily penetrated a niche of Brazilian musicians. But we will talk about this on another occasion.
"Os Afro-Sambas," was released in '66, a year after "Arrastão." Vinicius became fascinated by the afro-Brazilian musicality in its most ancestral manifestations; in Candomblé, the most widespread African religion, in samba de roda and in capoeira. Thus, after thorough research in the Bahian territory, which more than any other managed to keep African culture alive, Vinicius and Baden put together all the collected material and skillfully merged it with their bossanova. For the first time, the beat of the atabaques accompanies the sound of the flute, the agogô marks the time for the guitar, excellently played by Baden Powell.
Certainly, Vinicius and Baden wanted to pay homage to the Afro-Brazilian tradition without which bossanova would never have existed and would not have been able to delight the salons of the Carioca bourgeoisie, helping Brazilian society a little to turn its gaze towards the Afro-Brazilian culture persecuted and marginalized.
An album that, by appropriating this ancestry, will always remain current. A work full of emotion, technically impeccable, richly arranged and deliberately recorded in a simple, rustic way, to maintain the spontaneity of the places where Afro-Brazilian manifestations occur. Baden Powell feels perfectly at ease, as he is used to combining the classical with the popular, and Vinicius seeks a lower register for his voice, murmuring his words almost in a tone of supplication.
"These antennas that Baden has placed towards Bahia and consequently towards Africa, have allowed him to create a new syncretism: "cariochize" within the spirit of modern samba, the Afro-Brazilian candomblé giving it at the same time a more universal dimension (...) never before have the themes of the black people of candomblé been treated with such beauty, depth and rhythmic richness (...) this is undoubtedly the new Brazilian music, ready to supplant the musical mediocrity in which the world is imprisoned. And I don't say this with the presumption of being the author of the lyrics, I say it in consideration of their extraordinary artistic quality, of the mysterious history that surrounds them: such magic that one cannot escape their seduction, without heading in the direction of their tragic appeal." Vinicius De Moraes
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