Album review: Gilles Peterson/Sonzeira

Brasil Bam Bam

Gilles Peterson’s famous catchline is “joining the musical dots“, and the BBC DJ’s Sonzeira collective continue that mission on an album that was recorded over several weeks in Rio.

Those who listen to his weekly radio show might have expected those dots to be joined to Western genres such as hip-hop and electronic dance music, but instead Peterson has concentrated on connecting some of the more significant forms of the Brazil’s own music. As such, you’ll hear the intact African rhythms of Salvador, the samba and bossa nova sounds associated with Rio, alongside Tropicalia grooves given a modern twist in the studio.

This labour of love for Peterson involved the cherry-picking of some of Brazil’s top musicians, including Marcos Valle and contemporary star Seu Jorge, possibly familiar as Knockout Ned from the film City of God. But the most venerable of all the guests here is Elza Soares, the queen of samba who was once married to Brazilian soccer star Garrincha. Getting Soares to record the well-travelled classic, ‘Aquarela do Brasil’, could have had all the pitfalls of doing an Irish album and asking Christy Moore to sing ‘The Fields of Athenry’. It works well here, however, in a stripped down emotion-laden version.

Experts in Brazilian music, or those willing to do a trawl through Wikipedia (ahem), will know Soares got her first break from Ary Barroso, the man who wrote ‘Aquarela do Brasil’. Is it too much of a leap to suggest the tears the 78-year-old is seen wiping from her eye during the promo clips for the album are those of an elderly woman being reconnected to her past by the power of music? There’s also a fine South Americanised cover of British soul classic ‘Southern Freeez’, a song long due a revival.

Incidentally, the shout-outs on the sleeve notes include a thanks to formerly Cork-based DJ Paul Murphy, who organised the first ever Brazilian concert that Peterson saw back in the 1980s; and Corkman Sean O’Hagan, the ex-Microdisney musician who does some of the string arrangements for Sonzeira. Joining the dots indeed, boy.