The Case of the Brazilian Fuzz Rock

Every once in a while I get a chance to play some rock music on the Adventures. This is one of those times.

I always name Brazil as my favorite non-English speaking country for rock music, from psychedelia to heavy metal. Brazil's love affair with rock music began in the late 50s with a teen movement built around straightforward copies of surf and rockabilly sounds from the US. Then, in 1968, a group of up-and-coming artists collaborated on the epic LP "Tropicalia," and rock music in Brazil would never be the same. Heavily influenced by The Beatles' "Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band," and animated with professional orchestra arrangements from Rogerio Duprat, this album was a hugely successful marriage of native Brazilian dance rhythms with electric guitar and other rock idioms, all given a healthy dose of gravitas with socially and politically conscious lyrics.

The artists from this album went on to become some of the biggest names in Brazilian musical history:  Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Tom Ze. We will hear from those Tropicalia names in the first hour of today's set, focusing on some of the most experimental work from their albums of the late 60s and early 70s.

The second set today goes a bit further afield, uncovering more obscure 70s work from artists including Jards Macale, Milton Nascimento, Luiz Gonzaga Jr, Bebeto, Arthur Verocai, and winding up with a soulful gut grinder from Black Rio Soul superstar Tim Maia. As in the US, Brazilian musical styles moved away from psychedelia and politics back to simple acoustic sounds and romantic soul music (think The Band, Crosby Stills & Nash; Al Green and Kool & The Gang). But the spirit of experimentalism lived on in this music of the 70s, and growing studio expertise produced some of the most appealing sounds ever to come from Brazil (again, as in the US).