Nobody Can Live Forever: The Existential Soul of Tim Maia

One of the oddities of Brazilian music is the lack of strong, assertive male vocals: the kind of voices that aren’t afraid to bellow out a chorus at maximum volume. Maia is an exception. Marking the fourth release in Luaka Bop’s ‘World Psychedelic Classics’ series, The Existential Soul of Tim Maia is a compilation of the Brazilian singer’s work that has more straight-up funk and soul than anything psychedelic. After spending a brief time in the US, Maia returned to Brazil in the late 1960s and established himself as the country’s leading soul singer by the start of the 70s. This collection takes liberally from across his career, varying from slow-burning soul in the vein of James Carr (‘I Don’t Care’) to bass-rumbling Parliament-esque party grooves (‘Do Leme Ao Pontal’), while occasionally throwing a little samba into the mix (‘Over Again’).

Seven tracks are taken from two albums Maia made in the mid-70s at a time when he had joined a cult named Rational Culture and these tracks, as well as being some of the most musically adventurous, directly reflect his philosophy at the time. ‘Rational Culture, the final 12-minute track on the album, implores listeners to buy a copy of the cult’s guiding text in order to discover enlightenment. This compilation largely ignores all of Maia’s Brazilian hits, instead opting for his more experimental numbers, and in doing so showcases the extremely rich and varied work that the singer released in the 70s and 80s; a talent well overdue international recognition.