360 records from 2000: 3. Uakti: Aguas da Amazonia

Country: Brazil
Artist: Band
Career: recording since 1981
Language: Instrumental
Genre: Tuned Percussion


Uakti is a Brazilian quartet, who play percussion instruments they designed and apparently built themselves. For this record they reinterpret a Philip Glass dance score dedicated to the rivers of the Amazonian rain forest.

At this point you’ve probably stopped reading, and I can’t blame you, except you’re wrong. You don’t need a library card to enjoy this very easy, very melodic, very unique, hypnotic and beautiful music. ‘Self-built instruments’ in this case doesn’t mean you hear the bicycle wheel fall off somewhere in the third song. I’ve always loved the sound of vibraphones and xylophones, and these guys have invented some almost heavenly variations on the sound of tuned percussion. I’ve never heard the original Glass scores, but these interpretations are a mile away from some of the austere Glass music I’ve heard, they bring the sound of the earth and the body into it, not just some intellectual exercise. It’s all about those little rhythmic patterns and fragments that spin around each other, constantly changing the overall sound. Anyway, when I started this 2000 thing, I had no idea music like this existed, and now I do, and I love it.

(But then, I do have a library card and I actually found this record at the library, so maybe you do need a library card. Let me know how you fare…)

At its best: Japura river, Madeira river, Tapajos river, Paru river, Amazon river