The Pulse of Brazil (ARC MUSIC EUCD 2507, 2004)
Extremely cool and not overly foreign. To what can one compare it? Hmmm. Piedmont blues. You see, Delta blues and other subgenres from the Deep South came from people with low incomes, Sears catalogs and something to say, whereas Piedmont blues came from a similar environment, but at least the artists had access to radios, so they knew a little more about what other musicians were doing, whether they could afford exactly the same lessons and instruments as those other musicians or not. “The Pulse of Brazil” presses all the right salsa buttons, but does so with more innovation, resourcefulness and creativity and less formality and elaborate gear than any mainstream release within that genre.
It’s more sparse, too, keeping the spice, sexiness and steamy ambiance of good commercial releases shopped to James Bond film productions but showing off some great individual artists along the way. A phrase rarely used by World Music reviewers is, “Crank it up,” but that is a serious and enthusiastic suggestion regarding this release.
The nice thing, the superlative praise one can give to a foreign language release is that it makes the listener start trying, not only to dance along, but to sing along with songs in an unknown tongue. This CD does that with some songs on the first listen and with all on subsequent plays.
Author: Arthur Shuey
Arthur has been reviewing music for publications since 1976 and began focusing almost exclusively on world music in 2012.
His musical background includes past presidencies of the Cape Fear Musicians Association and Blues Society of the Lower Cape Fear, founding membership in nine other blues societies, service on 17 music festival planning committees, two decades of teaching harmonica to individuals and groups, operating a small recording studio and performing solo and in combos for 30 years.
Arthur has written professionally since 1975, pieces ranging from short fiction to travel articles, humor to poetry, mainly for local and regional entertainment media. His blog,” Shuey’s World,” is featured at www.accesswilmington.com.
