mpb

Mix: 6. Eastern Jungle

2017/10/03

It took two guiding lights to shepherd me through this mix I created for Mexico City’s brilliant Mitamine cultural curation blog. First, I knew the beginning had to start with Lins & Ford’s “Fast Roads” and it’s end had to be with Kyoko Koizumi’s “Eastern Jungle”. They felt like thematic book ends to something bigger. What was…
Edson Natale: Nina Maika (1990)

2017/09/29

These are the kinds of albums that really live with you. Sao Paolo native, Edson Natale’s name may be the lead on the album cover, his visage may be the one seen folding in the background (with guitar in hand), but its those other small names around him that make Nina Maika such a beautiful…
Tom Jobim: Matita Perê (1973)

2017/09/20

Lightness, sweetness, and melancholia those are things that define Tom Jobim’s career. You don’t need me to regurgitate a whole Wikipedia page to stress his heralded place in Brazilian music history. Together with João Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim allowed for things like space, quietness, and off-beats to have a place in pop music. Everything we…
Almir Sater: Instrumental (1988)

2017/09/13

Something so simple as an album of 10-string viola caipira instrumentals shouldn’t sound so impressive, but leave it to Campo Grande native Almir Sater to make you rethink a whole lot of something. This release, Instrumental, was more than just a musical document of some brief musical sojourn, it was a massive peek into the…
Mix: 5. Trás-os-Montes

2017/07/14

When conceiving my latest mix all I could think about was the works of master Impressionist painters. Where other painters try to highlight the contours and contrasts shapes, objects, and environments have between each other, these Impressionists tried to understand connections found among still and moving life. It’s an understanding of the beauty of gradients…
Mendes & Mendes: Mendes & Mendes (1982)

2017/06/06

What’s this? Just some sweet, sweet Lusophonic magic, from the great African island nation of Cabo Verde. Music fitting that jaw-dropping album cover. The self-titled debut from brothers Gérard Mendés (also known as Boy Gé Mendes) and Jean-Claude Mendés displays the intriguing combination of Creole Portuguese-African polyrhythms, American boogie, and Brazilian samba the duo became huge stars among the Cabo Verde diaspora…
Sonia Rosa: Samba Amour (1979)

2017/05/16

Heady, windswept, gauzy saudade that could only come from someone like Sonia Angelica De Carvalho Rosa, are things that don’t quite reveal themselves when you hear Samba Amour. Sonia Rosa had an unlikely musical career. Although she was born in São Paulo, Brazil it wasn’t there where’d she stake her claim to fame. A precocious child, she taught herself Joao Gilberto’s songs when…
Flávio Venturini: Nascente (1981)

2017/04/04

There are few albums that just put me in a special place. Flávio Venturini’s Nascente is one of them. When it’s on, it seems my whole spirit bends to its will. Overrun with string instruments, mostly warm-sounding, and some of the most captivatingly tender harmonies on any side of the hemisphere, or era, Nascente just has…
Mix: 3. What Do You Do When It’s Spring?

2017/03/20

In a way, rebirth is exactly what my third mix is about. Taking cues from various feelings springtime evokes, I wanted to compile a set of songs that moved in concert with the season. By themselves, each song has a faint musical seed that germinates and blooms into a much more pronounced, powerful direction. However, taken as part of a whole, despite…
Pierre Barouh: Le Pollen (1982)

2017/02/17

News travels so quickly now that it’s hard to keep up with the cycles of life. Word of Pierre Barouh’s passing, at the end of December 2016, didn’t come recently to me, it came to me this week. It came when I discovered them while researching this thought in my head – of sharing his work at FOND/SOUND.…