The Afro-Sambas

Rio de Janeiro - There are records which I listened to many times in the LP era, but which I can't seem to find on CD, either because they were never released in that format or because they were released on labels with little presence in the market and thus were virtually invisible. This forces us to go to collectors, who make digital copies of the treasures in their archives. (No, friends: this IS NOT piracy). I have my supplier for rock, my supplier for forró, my supplier for MPB... a little while ago, I managed to get my hands on a rare gem.

The Afro-Sambas, by Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes, is a disc recorded at the beginning of January 1966, produced by Roberto Quartin, with arrangements by Guerra Peixe. There are just eight songs, but the impact they made is still reverberating.

In his book Bossa Nova : The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World (Chega de Saudade, in Portuguese), Ruy Castro says that at the time Vinicius and Baden had decided to lock themselves in an apartment in Rio to compose, making sure it was stocked with numerous cases of whiskey. The credit for the afro-sambas goes in equal parts to them and to the doctor who kept them alive during their uninterrupted spree.

In the liner notes (dated February 1966), Vinicius states that his collaboration with Baden had started four years earlier, and that since then they had enjoyed listening to live recordings of songs of candomblé and samba-de-roda from Bahia sent to them by Carlos Coqueijo. From this period date African-themed sambas such as Berimbau and Samba da Bênção, which certainly could have been included in this disc, since musically they belong to the same cycle.

I guess that this was the first disc in which Vinicius appears as performer from beginning to end, even if supported by Quarteto em Cy. The arrangements and the recording have an almost handmade quality. And, in back of everything, Baden Powell's guitar, supporting the melody with bass lines (Canto de Xangô), with percussive slaps (Canto de Ossanha), or outlining the simply beautiful melody of Canto de Iemanjá.

The afro-sambas received a beautiful recording recently by Mônica Salmaso, but this original recording with Baden and Vinicius has the primitive and immediate force of those songs which make their impact more by the brutal newness of the poetic and melodic material they present than by the musical garb they wear. The record appeared at a moment when the urban, intellectualized middle class had begun to look at black rural and popular culture with curiosity and respect. Some scholars say (I can't say whether they are right or not), that a large part of our culture results from popular re-readings of the ideas, forms and themes from erudite culture. If this is the case, the importance of an erudite re-reading of the ideas, forms and themes arising from popular culture is greater still. The very term “afro-samba" illuminates, since it recognizes that samba, by that date, was already something assimilated and practiced by urban white culture, and it needed an injection of Africa and black remembrance.

Translated from the original Portuguese by Tom Moore. Tom is a classical musician and translator who lives in Rio de Janeiro. His most recent CD of trio sonatas by Boismortier is available from A Casa Estúdio.