Brazilian Soul

Black is beautiful! In 1971, as if echoing Jorge Ben’s “Negro é lindo” released the same year, the choice by singer Elis Regina to include the song by brothers Marcos and Paulo Sérgio Valle on her new album Ela showed the power of Black American culture on Brazilian artists at the time. Four years earlier, swing star Wilson Simonal had surprised audiences by performing a poignant “Tributo a Martin Luther King” in his shows before the censors could have their say.

The main musical representation of Black cultures – soul music from the United States – had been omnipresent in Rio since the early 1970s, as well as in São Paulo: on the radio, in chic clubs as well as in favela dances, on the beach and even on TV Globo. The channel’s influence on Brazilian music was considerable, giving rise to a whole generation of artists who were inspired by African American music (Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, etc) and who were involved in the composition and arrangements for established musicians such as João Donato, Antonio Adolfo, Dom Salvador, and Orlandivo.

The father of Brazilian soul music is Tim Maia. In 1963, when his friend Jorge Ben released his first album that mixed jazz, soul, rock, samba and bossa, creating a unique style that would become his trademark, our young Cariocan was returning from a four-year stay in the United States. In his luggage he brought back the rhythms of the Black community that had taken care of him. It took him seven years to establish himself as the Brazilian James Brown, first by working as an arranger for the yéyé singer Eduardo Araújo, then by producing his first LP, an homage to Black music in Portuguese, most of whose tracks can still liven up any self-respecting dance party today.

Cassiano, Hyldon, Carlos Dafé, Marku Ribas, Dom Beto, and many others followed the path opened up by Tim Maia – a type of MPB renamed Música Preta Brasileira (Black Brazilian Music). Some, such as Toni Tornado, Tony Bizarro, and Miguel de Deus, gradually shifted their soul music towards much funkier, radical sounds. Take Gerson ‘King’ Combo, whose closeness to the Black Rio movement – inspired by the Black Panthers – even led to his imprisonment several times. Unlike in the USA, the style in Brazil remained essentially masculine, and only the singers Lady Zu and Sandra de Sá were ever recognised as fully-fledged Música Preta Brasileira artists in their own right.

The high point of the Brazilian soul craze was the first album by the group Banda Black Rio released in 1976 on Atlantic, the leading American label for the genre. This was closely followed by União Black on Polydor. Undermined by disco culture, by the explosion of national rock, and then by rap, the movement gradually died out in the 1980s. It was reborn at the end of the decade under the impetus of artists such as Skowa, Claudio Zoli, and Ed Motta, nephew of the legendary Tim Maia and a great collector of Black American music.