As you all may know now, “late summer” is more of a vibe than a season. It’s in between times when hot summer days ease down with cool, easy-going, summer breezes. For the longest, I’ve been fascinated with music that speaks to this period. It’s precisely this hammock season that I’m going back to an album that fits it perfectly to a tee, Altay Veloso’s, sadly, little-heralded/known Brazilian masterwork: Paixão de D’Artagnan.
It was in that ground zero of saudade, Rio De Janeiro (and specifically, São Gonçalo), that Altay Veloso da Silva was both born in and into. Of Afro-Brazilian descent, Altay had to navigate the headwaters of a Brazil deeply multicultural by birth but increasingly stubborn to recognize the strictures that existed against those of a darker complexion. The son of an African high priestess and a noted jongo dancer, Altay knew that any ascent to be culturally relevant would always be hindered by his open embrace of his “blackness”.
Altay was a gifted musician who by the age of 17 put aside his public education to focus on that gift he was genuinely proficient in: performance. His mastery of the guitar and accordion had allowed Altay to make a living in the Rio’s cabaret and club scene. By the mid ‘70s, he would be asked to join MPB starlett, Wanderlea’s band. In spite of this upward mobility, Altay knew he had his own ideas and compositions that needed their own time in the sun.
O Cantador would mark Altay’s debut. Sidestepping any forced gentrification of his ideas/image, Altay tried to follow the spirit of noted Brazilian artists like Gilberto Gil and Milton Nascimento, two artists who were thought of as singer-songwriters first and not pigeonholed as soul singers or sambistas. It was that same debut that gave listeners a taste of his exploratory Nordeste sound, tinged by the Afro and country-leaning sounds of Bahia, yet able to sprawl interestingly with bits like leftfield interpretations of Camille Saint-Saëns’s “Le cygne” and that wonderful, call-and-response title track.
It would take three years before Altay Veloso would release a follow up in 1983. By then, Altay began to realize that this singer-songwriter sound had run its course and a change was in order. Perhaps influenced by the likes of Grover Washington and George Benson, so too did Altay lean hard onto a funkier sound that had tinges of fusion and jazz. 1983’s Avatar serves a perfect snapshot in time of a shifting MPB scene that was trying a way to transform its sonic calling cards – the warmth of their sound and highly technical easygoingness – in a way that spoke to this new era. At that moment, Altay shifted into a fusion pop sound on songs like “Minha Natureza” that made it easy to slot in TV dramas, movies and other visual mediums.
By 1986, Altay (as evidenced on his Sedução) had grown into Brazil’s answer to Mr. Breezin’ himself — as evidenced by Ed Motta’s hat-tipping in his own work. Moving away from songs that struck a midtempo or that spawned too much navel gazing, aiming for songs that spoke to the dancefloor, songs like absolute AOR stunners “Deborah” and “Pérola” signaled that Altay had found a mastery of groove (as little realized before).
What makes 1988’s Paixão De D’Artagnan that much more impressive than the prior minor gem, is that Altay found a way to take these ideas up more than a few notches. Working with the brilliant song duo of Lincoln Olivetti & Robson Jorge, it appeared that the key word for this album was “refinement”. Gone were the impossibly hyped sounds of certain tracks from Altay’s past, in would be sophisticated, and dare I say, “smooth”, impossibly modern-sounding music production.
Songs like “Duas Faces” speak volumes of the big sound that fitted Altay’s gorgeous compositions. Wherein the past most of Altay’s composition would be dominated by his own guitar playing, here he hung back and brought into the foreground his unique vocals, preferring to craft a sound that could best described as “chromatic”.
One can imagine, or I can imagine, how songs like “Crise” can speak to a younger generation grown on future funk and City Pop – it’s of that milieu. How can one make soul music that is neither here nor there but bespokedly nostalgic (in some way that is genuinely undated). It’s what makes the uplifting sound of songs like “Para Sempre” a reimagining of Marvin’s “What’s Going On” into it’s answer: positive energy, imbuing songs (through and through) with “vibes” that hadn’t a word yet sculpted for.
Speaking personally, a year ago when so many things were looking weirdly “off” in myriad ways for me, I’d go back to albums like Joyce Cooling’s Cameo, albums that eased my mind (like musical mantras telling me to: “hey, go easy on yourself”) and raise myself up from there. Now a year later, Altay’s album has wormed itself into my life in a way that continues this resonating vibration. Things are much more hopeful now. One has gone beyond that light in the distance. One now has time to luxuriate in its warmth. One can roll the window down and just breathe.
So certainly, one needs a soundtrack to all of that. And you know, I gotta say, right now songs like “Eu Te Amo” and “Encontro No Baile” are touching many meridian points just fine.*
*It is late summer, after all…