Have You Heard?
By Doug Robinson, Nov 3, 2006

An angel of world music

Thanks to those of you who offered kind words about my Paul Simon review—and especially to those who actually bought his great new CD, Surprise. It’s rewarding to learn that my enthusiasm is occasionally contagious.

I’d like start this column with a quick public service announcement. There’s a lot of interesting music coming up here in town over the next few months, not the least of which is Thanksgiving weekend’s International Jazz and Blues Festival being organized by my friend Antonio Lozoya. Antonio is looking for some volunteers to help with ticket taking and seating, so if you’re interested in lending a hand, please drop him an email at antoniolozoya@yahoo.com.mx. You’ll get to hear two acts for each night you volunteer, plus you’ll get that great feeling of helping an ambitious project take hold.

Now, on to some recorded music that deserves wider recognition. World Music became a record industry genre right around the time that McDonald’s started using hip-hop beats to promote the exact same food that had previously been hyped with fluffy pop songs. Like the food giant, the major record labels read the marketplace and proceeded to repackage the same product that had been there all along as “new.”

That’s not to say it wasn’t a worthwhile plan—it was. Even though it was largely used as multicultural seasoning, consumers finally got to hear some great music from Brazilian, African and Native American artists. Thanks to trendsetting (and successful) albums such as Peter Gabriel’s Us and Paul Simon’s Graceland, it is no longer considered odd to hear koto drums, Umbrian pipes, steel drums, Celtic harp, pennywhistles and other non-American instruments melded with electric guitars, keyboards, bass and drums. (Does anyone else remember how utterly strange it seemed the first time the Beatles used a sitar and tabla in a couple of their songs? I was the world’s biggest fan, but I actually remember lifting the needle and skipping tracks like “Within You, Without You” as a kid.) 

A few record labels differentiated themselves by taking a more purist approach—Putamayo comes to mind as one of the braver companies that released compilations of the real thing: indigenous music performed by indigenous musicians. Listening to these tracks was like being a fly on the wall in Rio, or Capetown or Shanghai. They were raw and even blemished—you could say they didn’t have same commercial appeal as the highly produced pop songs with bits of ethnic flavoring that began to creep onto American airwaves in the 1980s, opting to go for a more authentic—and challenging—representation.

One of my favorite albums of all time stood out for breaking this mold: Milton Nascimento’s Angelus. Nascimento was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1942 and started playing the guitar at a young age. Thanks to an impressive string of appearances at clubs and festivals, he was able to record his first album at the age of 19. When Brazilian pop sensation Ellis Regina covered one of his songs, his career was officially launched, and since then his poignant melodies have been covered by major artists around the world, including James Taylor, Wayne Shorter and Sarah Vaughn, as well as other superstars from his native country. (I’ve actually heard him referred to as the “James Taylor of Brazil.”)

So why was Angelus, recorded in 1995, such a turning point in World Music? While it probably wasn’t the first attempt to do so, it reversed the paradigm of merely sprinkling a bit of ethnic dust on top of an otherwise American pop song. Instead, each track of Angelus is first and foremost a piece of Brazilian music, and the outside influences of American jazz and European music provided the seasoning. Song after song, Nascimento creates melodies that tug at your heart. Even so, it’s hard to pin down the specific appeal of this terrific album. It’s sung almost completely in Portuguese (though James Taylor shows up on a cool version of the song “Only a Dream in Rio”); some songs are extremely simple and even unpolished-sounding, consisting of nothing more than Milton sitting at a piano singing a duet with a child while a percussionist experiments in the background. Other tracks use either top Brazilian rock musicians or a full orchestra, such as his unique arrangement of the Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye.”

It’s not an exaggeration to say that I feel every single track is a bit of a sonic adventure that stands up to repeated listenings. Tempos often change mid-song, and there is a complexity to the arrangements that seems contrary to the soulful simplicity of the melodies. And while I love the guest performances of jazz giants such as Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny and the aforementioned Wayne Shorter, I think I’d have to say that the artistic success of this music leans heavily on Nascimento’s creaky vocal chops. I don’t mean that to sound condescending—there is an unabashed sweetness and romanticism to his melodies that would probably sound sappy in the hands of a more polished performer. Like many other Brazilian singers that I’ve heard, you get the feeling that he sings because he loves to sing, as opposed to being trained from an early age because he had the strongest pipes in town, like some forgettable “American Idol” contestant. You can actually hear him struggle a bit for the high notes now and then, but i
nstead of detracting from the experience it does the opposite. It conveys a sense of raw passion that is often—way too often—completely missing from pop music today.

Angelus was nominated for a Grammy when it was released. I’ve had it in my collection for over a decade, and it is still a joy to listen to.


Doug Robinson is a multi-instrumentalist who plays in San Miguel with the group Mo’ Ritmo. His newest project is a collaboration with Tim Hazell called A Forest of Americas, which combines jazz, classical and pre-Hispanic instruments and styles.