A long hard look at Brazil... part 9

All through this time the standard length for Brazilian records was very much set at half an hour, 35 minutes tops. So when this 21-track, 65 minute mammoth appeared it had tremendous impact. In a way it's the White album-successor to Tropicialia's Sgt Pepper's. Another multi-artist gathering. Milton Nascimento had achieved a fair level of success with his angelic singing and he used this as leverage to record this greeting card for his homeregion of Minas Gerais. The record broke the musical monopoly of the two big cities (Rio and San Paulo) and introduced a new regional music scene. Musically it cleers the board of the elaborate orchestrations and studio experiments of Tropicalia for a more rootsy, 'organic' (ugh) sound – you know what I mean, sounds like these musicians actually hung out together before recording. Except – and you know this is a big exception – no Brazilian record could ever sound brown.

For me, the biggest draw of the record is that Milton involved a roster of friends/musicians, but most of all Lô Borges, who I believe makes his debut here. If the cover picture is to be believed, Milton and Lô were childhood friends. Milton achieved success, but could never quite shake off the memory of the mercurial talent he had met – so he gave him a friendly push (yep, still making most of this up). Even though Lô is very much a junior partner on the record, his contributions stand out a mile away (and all of it is good, so that's something). This is one of my favorite records (like, ever, I guess).

Can't say why – the clippety cloppety rhyhtm – like Don Quichote galloping on his mule -, the spacious arrangement, but mostly the melody. He makes you wait for the chorus, but when it comes...

There's a lot to this album: 15-second fragments, multi-part epics, instrumentals, covers, returning melodies, different singers, different backing bands. I've listened to it for more than 10 years now, it seems bottomless.

Here's a great Milton piano ballad. Wait for the glorious piano & strings-section at the end!