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Sounds of Living, In Spite of a Junta: M.P.B. from the 1970s [Something Interesting #46]

  • Writer: Alex Bemish
    Alex Bemish
  • 1 day ago
  • 10 min read

Updated: 7 hours ago

When I work on projects for my office, I usually put on earphones and either play a podcast or a playlist of my favorite songs. Last Friday, I put on the playlist and one song in particular came on that inspired me to write this post - Chico Buarque’s “Construção“ (1971):


The song itself is a curious one since it's a six-minute track about the death of a construction worker and the callousness it's treated with, all done through wordplay to avoid censorship. Buraque wrote and recorded the song during the junta in Brazil between 1964 to 1985, a frightening time for many people. Similar to most other Cold War happenings, we're given very little awareness or education where I'm at on non-American happenings so it's always jarring to find out what actually happened elsewhere at any given period. There's benefits to keeping things in-house sometimes but when you look further abroad, the scope gets significantly larger and then it's easier to make sense of other troubles. A bigger toolbox often equals more tools to work with overall.


A key way to find out about these events and periods is by checking out the pop culture that sprung from them. A good point is that 1970s Brazil had a wealth of music that still excites today. The genre most of it falls under - Música popular brasileira or M.P.B. - is technically a catch-all for all Brazilian pop music. There was a lot of innovation and stylistic changes occurring during that time, though, due to continuing in a line from the bossa nova and Tropicália threads laid during the 1960s. Those genres have their own rich histories and won't be covered much by this post (see More Context for Further Interest if you're not already familiar with them) but they are vital to all the albums I'm recommending in this post.


Nothing I'm presenting here (as a English-speaking American with little first-hand knowledge of Brazil or speaking Portuguese) is a definitive account of this genre. These are just albums I like/love based on "feels," having listened to many of them countless times and connecting despite time and cultural differences. For further context, I'm also providing several resources from people who do have those connections and understandings I lack. I hope enjoying the music will inspire you to dig deeper and let it all connect to you on a personal level. That's a beautiful thing about art whenever regimes try to stifle them: it always finds a way to bloom in the end.


Recommended Albums

⭐ = Recommend checking out first.


Again, this isn't even remotely exhaustive - just a starter kit to find what you like and which roads you want to travel. (Don't forget to look for the hyperlinks in the titles, by the way!)


If you need more suggestions, here are two good lists to check out:


Chico Buarque - Chico Buarque (1978)

Chico Buarque is one of the key singer-songwriters in Brazilian music and these two records are important to his discography. The first one here, Construção, was actually his 8th (he started during the bossa nova period of M.P.B. in the early 1960s) but was the key one establishing where he would go. His 1978 self-titled album is added here to show where he would go later on, as it's the one with a signature anthem in "Cálice", which alluded to the torture and death of Stuart Angel Jones yet shrouded it within symbolism. Start here.



A long but beautiful album, this is actually one of two albums listed I would count as part of my top 20 albums overall In a more cliched way, this feels like the soundtrack to a magical realism novel (especially my favorite song, "Um Gosto de Sol"):

“The album is full of such [bittersweet and sensuous] shifts, moments that act like a refreshing breeze across the skin on a sweltering day, a shaft of sun piercing the clouds, a kind gesture on a crowded bus, reflecting how in our own daily lives the smallest of movements can trigger a reverberation within. In the lyrics, in the subtle switching of a meter, a key shift or a pivot in instrumentation, each song sets you down in a space far different from where you began. That sense of movement is intentional, as trains, roads, and modes of transportation often figure into Nascimento’s writing, and he himself considered his music “a kind of oxcart, something that unrolls and develops.” There’s the burred guitar build-up at the end of the otherwise hushed “Dos Cruces,” the clamor of church bells that punctuate and illuminate “San Vicente,” the mournful cello and strings in the middle section of “Um Girassol Da Cor De Seu Cabelo” that launches into a redemptive chorus about “a sunflower the color of your hair.””- Andy Beta, Pitchfork


Ranked as the best Brazilian album by Rolling Stone Brazil in 2007 (see link above), I'm not sure I agree with that assessment but it's still a damn fine album. It's less psychedelic than I expected but each track has a punchiness I appreciate. Since it's one I just listened to for the first time while researching this post, I can't give anything more substantial but I'm up for spinning it several more times to see if it sticks.

"Many authors have written that Novos Baianos failed in their attempt to end the sea of sadness that plagued MPB and the nation with a joyful, jocular, ironic, and upbeat album, but, as Ana Maria Bahiana writes, Acabou Chorare did more for the health of Brazilian music and the country's morale than any political remedy. The album is also highly cherished by its members. Moreira, in 1995, released his Acústico da MTV with half of Novos Baianos' repertoire, arguing: "These are songs that transcend time". In 2009, Galvão proudly stated that "we were the joy in the midst of a terrible time." - from the Wikipedia entry (link in album title)


Like Novo Baianos, this is a newer one for me but Seixas felt rowdier due to his rockabilly influences, his wild lifestyle (a thing he shares with Tim Maia later on and is evident by the title being a Tarzan war-cry), and lyrics from future "writer of The Alchemist" Paulo Coehlo. Again, not a lot from me until I spin it a few more time but it's a brief listen that sounds like it was a hell of a lot of fun to make.



Índia - Gal Costa (1973) ⭐

Gal Costa was one of the original Tropicalistas alongside Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil but often was more experimental in her sound than the rest of them. By the 1970s, the music began to mellow a little bit and it took on a more romantic quality. I've always liked this album and highly recommend it, especially the slinky and yearning "Da Maior Importância."

“Índia finds Costa drawing upon her past and pushing deeper into Brazilian mainstream pop (often shortened to MPB). Gil served as musical director and guitarist, while Veloso penned two songs. The show-stopping title track—arranged by Rogério Duprat, the “George Martin” of Tropicália—reveals an orchestral lushness not heard since Costa’s 1967 debut. Costa’s voice moves from a simmering murmur entwining with woodwinds to an impassioned cry at the soaring refrain. As penned by José Asunción Flores and Manuel Ortiz Guerreiro, the song was originally written from a male perspective. But in covering it, Costa keeps the feminine pronoun intact, singing “India of brown skin, with her little mouth I want to kiss.” Later that year, she shared a kiss onstage with fellow MPB superstar Maria Bethânia, a moment that author Rudi Bleys wrote in Images of Ambiente: Homotextuality and Latin American Art, 1810-today, “paved the way for a lesbian coming-out in music.”” - Andy Beta, Pitchfork


Originally 1/3 of the Tropicália group Os Mutantes, she got rudely booted from the band once she and bassist Arnaldo Baptista broke up. So she started up her eventual long-and-fruitful career as a solo performer with this glam-inspired album. Listening to it for the first time while writing this post, it's a solid listen but I still lean towards her disco period, especially the song "Lança Perfume" from her 1980 self-titled album.

"Backed by the strong grip of her rock band Tutti Frutti, she delivers some of her biggest hits here: "Agora Só Falta Você," "Esse Tal de Roque Enrow" (composed with mega-selling esoteric writer Paulo Coelho, when he was an alternative rock composer [he was the main partner of the late rocker Raul Seixas]), and the eternal "Ovelha Negra," the anthem of the rebellious youngsters in Brazil. Lee can be a singer as competent in wild rock as in softer ballads when she acquires a girlish, tender quality. The album is a document of a time when she could be truthful about her ideals." - Alvaro Neder, AllMusic


África Brasil - Jorge Ben Jor (1976) ⭐⭐

This album is just fun, regardless of whether you understand what he's actually singing. The other of the two My Top 20 albums (it would rank probably at #4 if honest), I'd go out of my way to buy this on vinyl if I had a turntable. The music is funky, the wordplay clever when reading the translation, it has an exuberance to it that's infectious. I've bene a fan of this album since I first heard it in college and I'll die being a fan. If you listen to only one of these, it should be this. (Plus, you should know the melody from "Taj Mahal" by a different and vastly inferior song.)

"This 1976 album is undoubtedly one of the greatest classics of Brazilian popular music, with Jorge Ben mixing funky samba, Afro-Brazilian beats, and crunching guitars to create one of the most fascinating sounds ever recorded in Brazil. The album kicks off with the raw, energetic "Ponta de Lança Africano," and from there on it never slows down, but continues to pile up one fiery, funky gem after the other. The samba soul and samba funk scenes of the '70s in Brazil produced many great artists and many great recordings, fully comparable with the best soul and funk music recorded in the U.S. during the same period. Jorge Ben was the most prominent figure of this scene and África Brasil is probably the most famous of his '70s recordings. For any person who is interested in the music of Jorge Ben, or indeed Brazilian funk in general, there is no better sample of it than África Brasil." - Philip Jandovský, AllMusic


Robson Jorge e Lincoln Olivetti - Robson Jorge and Lincoln Olivetti (1982)

Party music is a big part of M.P.B. and both funk and disco left huge marks in what came out of the late 1970s and early 1980s. This album was considered a lost classic among cratediggers looking for new beats and it's pretty catchy. I also included a playlist of other Brazilian boogie tunes if you want to branch out for more.



The Soul of Brazil - Tim Maia (2008)

I'll be honest - I run cool on Tim Maia. He's never been my personal favorite but any survey of 1970s M.P.B. would be incomplete without him. He was known for his take on soul and funk music, lived pretty hard and fast with drugs, and got involved with a UFO cult during the time he wrote a lot of the stuff posted here. Overall, a even wilder guy than Raul Seixas. I decided to go with two compilations to give a good overview of what he's about musically.



More Context for Further Interest

Here's a collection of videos and articles if you need to know more.


Videos [1]

Music

A Trip to Brazil (wocomoMusic) Part 1 & Part 2 [2]


Articles

Music [3]

“What Is Brazilian MPB Music?” by Russ Slater (Sounds and Colours)


History

Brazil in the Seventies by Riordan Roett (AEI) [7]


Notes

[1] The videos for this post are strictly about the music. I had hoped to find some videos about the history behind the period but everything I found was either deathly dull, focused on recent events, recorded by blowhards, or just AI slop. I might not be the greatest at writing but I like to think I have standards for this blog. If you plan on searching YouTube yourself, consider yourself warned.

[2] Was hoping to share these directly but there's a copyright issue in posting directly to the blog - follow the links and check these out, since these are the best of the documentaries I'm putting in this Something Interesting.

[3] Apologies in advance but most of these will focus on the predecessors of 1970s M.P.B., since bossa nova and Tropicália get a lot more write-ups. I could find very little substantial articles about the music covered in this post and almost nothing about post-1985 music, so the Wikipedia articles at the bottom might be your best bet for going further.

[4] A lot of M.P.B. pulls from numerous Brazilian genres including the ones covered below - if I really want to be exhaustive, I'd also focus on axé, forró, choro, frevo, etc. but that would be too overwhelming and requires a book, not a blog post...

[5] A very good primer about what came before the albums in this post. Be aware that I needed to use the Wayback Machine to find the full article, though, since Pitchfork seems to have deleted most of it now.

[6] Hasn't been published yet (comes out 5/1/2025) but looks promising!

[7] Putting this here for contrast to everything else, since I'm usually suspicious of the American Enterprise Institute.

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