Bem-Vinda Amizade

Even those with only a passing interest in Brazilian music will have heard the song ‘Mas Que Nada’ – a standard almost as ubiquitous as ‘The Girl From Ipanema’. It’s Jorge Ben’s most famous song. When it first appeared – on the singer’s brilliant 1963 debut, Samba Esquema Novo, it sounded as fresh and exciting as Tom Jobim had before him and Gilberto Gil would after. Ben was once emblematic of how a certain kind of Brazilian saw themselves, especially men from Rio. His 1969 ‘Pais Tropical’ is a Brazilian bloke anthem, a sunny song about how all is well because ‘I live in a tropical country, blessed by God, naturally beautiful, with carnival in February, and I have a VW Beetle, a guitar, and a girlfriend called Tereza who dances samba.’

But Tom Jobim and Gilberto Gil moved on. And by 1981 when Jorge Ben recorded this zippy, samba-fused, happy album his formula, which had changed little since the 60s, was out of kilter with a dictatorship, now championed by Bolsonaro, which banned samba, tortured priests and dropped people out of aeroplanes. This was the last of Ben’s records which produced a hit, ‘Santa Clara Clareou’. It’s a pleasant enough album, with a few underrated greats (the best of which is the rousing anthem in praise of Brazil’s Indians, ‘Curumim, Chama Cunhatã Que Eu Vou Contar’), but a classic it ain’t. And if you’re after the best of his late period funk, you’re better off with the album he recorded the previous year – Alô Alô, Como Vai.