Alumbramento/Cara de Indio
Artist: Djavan
Community Score: 8.70
Serie Platino
Artist: Boleros Al Corazon
Maria Elena/Always in My Heart
Artist: Los Índios Tabajaras
Community Score: 10.00

Maria Elena/Always in My Heart is a single-CD that combines Los Indios Tabajaras' two hit albums from the early '60s. Both records contain laid-back, folky and vaguely Brazilian arrangments of contemporary pop and traditional Brazilian folk songs. There's a lot of filler on the disc, but it's enjoyable filler and anyone looking for a single disc... Read More

Estatua de Marfil
Artist: Vicente Fernández
Nascimento
Artist: Milton Nascimento

This is Milton Nascimento's most deeply Brazilian-sounding album in a long time, also the most downcast, but none the worse in its emotional impact. He adopts the battering, heavy percussion rhythms of the folia boxes (popularized by OLODUM) on several tracks, which frame the main portion of the album and give it enormous vitality. There isn't a... Read More

Strikes Back
Artist: Héctor Lavoe
Community Score: 10.00

LaVoe and Willie Colon came blazing out of the bugalu era and wrote a new script for New York salsa during the late '60s and early '70s: a script that included Puerto Rican and Panamanian graftings on the basic Cuban scion, and a tough lyricism that spoke of "barrio" problems to a "barrio audience". Then the pair split, and eventually Ruben... Read More

Misa Negra
Artist: Irakere

Irakere has been heralded as one of the best big bands in the world. Propelled by a driving rhythm section and potent horn section, this Cuban band won the Latin Grammy Awards in 1979 and 1980. On this 1986 recording, the band sinks its collective teeth into a few originals, including the 17-minute, four-part title track, as well as a cover of... Read More

Kindala
Artist: Margareth Menezes

A spunky pop singer from Northeastern Brazil, Margareth Menezes illustrates the richness and depth of the Afro-Brazilian experience on Kindala. In contrast to so much of the softer, more jazz-influenced pop that has come out of Rio de Janeiro, Kindala is grittier and notably percussive, yet consistently melodic. One of the album's many assets is... Read More

João (I Really Samba)
Artist: João Gilberto

Recent but classic jazz-bossa is played by one of its defining spirits. Vocally, Gilberto is in fine muttering form, communicating intensely with somebody in his breast pocket, and his guitar is as delicate as ever. This recording expresses the close links of bossa nova and jazz. Joao has Clare Fisher arranging and on some cuts playing... Read More

Os Mutantes
Artist: Os Mutantes
Community Score: 10.00

The band's debut album, Os Mutantes, is far and away their best -- a wildly inventive trip that assimilates orchestral-pop, whimsical psychedelia, musique concrète, found-sound environments -- and that's just the first song! Elsewhere there are nods to Carnaval, albeit with distinct hippie sensibilities, incorporating fuzz-tone guitars... Read More