Occasionally, very occasionally you chance upon a record and realise very quickly that what you're listening to is one of the very best albums you've ever heard, at the very least in its genre. Such is the case here for me, with the 1976 album from Brazilian artist Jorge Ben which I've been immersed in over the last couple of days after reading a glowing review of it as 'one of the best albums you've probably never heard' and immediately typing its name in on Spotify to give it a listen for myself. I'd be delighted if I could do the same favour and introduce someone else to the joys of this wonderful album just by writing about it here.
I'm no expert on Brazilian music though it's something I've been catching up with fast, particularly since I started writing this blog. Like many others I started with Os Mutantes, groundbreaking Tropicalia artists of the sixties and moved onto Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa and others. All worth checking out! A couple of days ago I found my way to this. Jorge Ben is one of the mainstays of this kind of music, where Tropicalia, Samba, Rock Soul and Funk are all thrown into the mix shaken up and come out peculiarly Brazilian. But he's also, very clearly, very close to the top of the heap.
This is a quite astonishing record! Within thirty seconds of opener Ponte de Lanca Africano starting you almost instinctively realise you've come across something very, very special as the band kicks in and Ben's vocals and the female backing singers contributions begin to weave across the mix along with the rest of the whole sensation. It's a conscious attempt to fuse Brazilian traditions with Afro-beat and funk and pretty soon it becomes quite plain that this record is every much the equal of the very best Fela Kuti and James Brown records you've ever heard.
By the time I got to third track O Filosofo, I was utterly sold. Ben and his team throw so much into the pot that it becomes quite intoxicating at points. But half the secret of the album is that they keep things both punchy but light. No single track is longer than four minutes fifty seconds and there's a compact looseness to each and every song, none of which seem to be anything resembling a weak link.
As I say, I'm no expert, and also no Portuguese speaker, so I can't comment authoritatively on the subject matter and themes of the record, though apparently football is well to the fore on several tracks as Ben is an enthusiastic Flamengo fan and has returned regularly to the sport throughout his career for the basis of his music, not unnaturally as it's such a central theme for the Brazilian nation and a particular signifier for a specific kind of communal joy. He's also less explicitly political than many of his contemporaries but otherwise I'll doff a cap to my own sheer ignorance and just post links to other articles with greater background detail on the record at a later date.
The music speaks more than loudly enough for itself regardless. It's deeply layered. To quote the excellent Perfect Sound Forever website's thoughts on the subject, 'Africa Brasil's soaring beat make it that rarest of things, a dance album that revolutionized all areas of popular music.' There is something generally revolutionary here, a focused intensity and vision that is hard to contain sufficiently in words. The record is probably best known for its reworking of an old Ben track Taj Mahal that Rod Stewart plundered for his considerably less magical global smash Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?. Stewart was subsequently sued by Jorge and forced to settle out of court. Sadly the sheer familiarity of the hook make it the least captivating track on the record for me. It should have been left well enough on its own.
It's chillingly cold outside my window, as it has been for weeks up here in Newcastle, with a biting north easterly wind that feels as if it's sure to endure forever, but it's always deeply warm inside this album. The rhythms speak of a whole life and consciousness that seem so far away from us here in the Northern Hemisphere. Pattered bongos, breathy vocals, scattered but tight percussion, fluid and assured guitar from Ben himself, echoes of influences north and east of the location this was actually recorded and released from. Most of all, it's imbued with the sound and feel of the Amazon, both jungle and river which I'm sure all Brazilians are eternally conscious of.
The album gets slightly deeper, darker and funkier on its second side without ever losing sight of itself as a hugely unified record and statement. Fans of City of God, that remarkable film about Rio Favela gangster life of the same period as this was made, from more than ten years back, will appreciate the essential urban rhythms of the record and the light and darkness in Brazil's soul that it speaks of.
One of the best elements of the record as with all great Brazilian records is the Portuguese language that it's sung in itself. Such a great, rhythmic tongue, and so immersed in culture and shared experience, both good and bad, Ben particularly shows a huge understanding of it and the culture he belongs to here. His words, and there are lots of them on this album, ride the music they're bedded on with a quite remarkable certainty of where this is all going.
As the record rides towards its inevitable departure and its title track, as a river does towards its sea, it's cooly confident of its own greatness and never once puts a step out of place. You can't help but ride along with it, safe in its rhythms. Each track flows into the next as the album tightens its grip and works its way into you.
I've done my best with this review, unable to fully do this quite supreme album justice, in ignorance of all of the ingredients that have contributed to its gestation and creation but at least partially conscious of its pure genius. Try it yourself and see if you concur! While I hunt down my own vinyl copy.
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