Jorge Ben

Songs reveal an artfully considered blending of classic American and English roots and rock influences, from the Beatles and Badfinger to Roy Orbison, James Brown, Alan Toussaint and Elvis Presley

Brazil Classics vol.1 - Beleza Tropical (1989)
MP3 192 Kbps | 65 min | 89 Mb @ rapidshare.com

“Compiled by former Talking Head David Byrne and released in 1989, with liner notes and translations by Arto Lindsay, Beleza Tropical documents a New York hipster's first infatuation with the rich, deep, and varied spectrum of Brazilian popular music from the rebellious '70s. There are better Brazilian anthologies, but none so clearly assembled in order to counter the received opinion of Brazilian music as lightweight bachelor-pad fluff (although Milton Nascimento, with his beautiful high tenor, sometimes comes close). Caetano Veloso (whose magnificent “Terra” is itself worth the price of admission) and Gilberto Gil are remarkable lyricists whose music is influenced as much by the Afro-Brazilian rhythms of northern Brazil as by the Beatles. Jorge Ben contributes a pair of highfalutin yet funky soccer songs, Chico Buarque is at his most uncompromisingly poetic, and Nazare Pereira taps deep into Brazilian folklore”.

Richard Gehr (Editorial Review, Amazon.com)

Light and breezy, pure and easy, that’s how I spent most of last week, and this album was a great soundtrack for it. Osmar Milito is an interesting figure in Brazilian jazz, having a hand in the famous Canecão club in Rio and playing with the likes of Sylvia Telles, Leny Andrade, and Flora Purim early in his career, and later on doing lots of soundtrack work for those venerable Brazilian exports, telenovelas. His post-bossa nova records are collectible for a reason: they’re damn good listening. Milito does the general arrangements and provides his groovy acoustic and electric piano stylings on a variety of tunes, many of which will be familiar to regular visitors to this blog. It opens with Jimmy Webb’s hit for the 5th Dimension, “Up Up and Away” aka “Beautiful Balloon” which sets the dreamy, laid-back tone right away.