Even though I love tropicália music, it’s hard to deny that Caetano Veloso is a douchebag. His politics, his egotism, and his sheer obnoxiousness detract, for me, from his (remarkable) music. Yet there’s one point on which Caetano and I agree, and that point is Gilberto Gil. In Veloso’s book, Tropical Truth, he constantly asserts that Gilberto Gil was the greatest musician of the tropicália generation, and I would have to agree. Although I love Os Mutantes to death, and I find Tom Zé to be the most fascinating of the tropicálistas, Gil had the best tunes, the best style, and the best goddamn attitude of them all. While Veloso, the Mutantes, Zé, Costa, and others were all consciously striving to record revolution, Gil was making sublime, timeless music that has aged magnificently regardless of politics. Only Jorge Ben was as sublimely consistent as Gilberto Gil, and if Gil’s records aren’t as groovy and funky as Ben’s, they’re more forward thinking and experimental. This album, Expresso 2222, is the first album Gil recorded in his native Brazil, following two years of political exile, and it’s easily the most joyous and vibrant of Gil’s early work. Drawing on classic samba, psychedelia, and the sort of vivacious funk that Gil had been exposed to in the United States, Expresso 2222 has no need of the wacky arrangements and oddball genre-blending experiments of Gil’s first few albums. “Back In Bahia” is the first classic: a skittering, frantic, soulful blend of Latin percussion, blues guitar, and Gil’s nasal shout. The title track continues in the percussive samba vein, while Gil’s skills as an arranger are apparent on sublime tracks like “O Canto de Ema”. This is the apex of Brazilian music in the early 70’s.
No comments:
Post a Comment