Brazil Various Artists

Alternate African Reality is a follow-up to several compilations I have published on Syrphe since 2007 (the first one, Beyond Ignorance and Borders included various artists from Africa and Asia), and even earlier on my defunct tape label in the 1990s (the last tape, Archives Humaines vol.1, was published in 1996 and included 25 artists from 25 countries, including non-Western ones : South Africa, Japan, Chile, Brazil).

Not the walls that should collapse is that passive place and "of craftsmanship" that the market has given to the Latin American. Today, for a Latin American artist to be recognized in the global art markets, he must be able to say "from here I speak". Recovering myths, traditions, ancestral cultures and popular are some of the twists that artists seek to be legitimized. "And I wonder: why? Already when you start working with record labels, you realize that it is the same market that imposes these criteria of legitimacy. It's interesting. Why do not other people need it to create their own language? We need instrumentalists able to think and live up to their time. They will be accused of heretics, yes, but I invite you to heresy.

This historic album recorded live an important moment in Brazil, not only in music. Two months after the military coup that instituted the dictatorship in 1964, it was realized at São Paulo's Teatro Paramount. It greatly propelled bossa's penetration in Brazil's larger city and biggest consumer market; opened the gates for Elis Regina's highly successful regular TV show under the same name; was the first time when a bossa show gathered 2,000 people; was the first professionally managed show in that movement, with all artists receiving their cachets for their presentations; and was responsible for instituting São Paulo as an important focal point for bossa, until then restricted to Rio…