Missing Out

If you’re reading this and you were living in America in 1972, I have horrible news for you. If you liked rock music, you probably thought you had it made in 1972. You got to have heated arguments about whether you liked the new Rolling Stones album better than the new David Bowie album. If you were a little more hip, you got to have heated arguments about whether you liked the new Lou Reed album better than the new T. Rex album. If you were a little less hip, you got to argue about whether you liked the new Yes album better than the new Jethro Tull album.

The horrible news is that every single music lover in the country of Brazil in 1972 listened to better music than you did that year. You could have been listening to Milton Nascimento and Lo Borges’ Clube da Esquina, or Caetano Veloso’s Transa, or Arthur Verocai’s self-titled album, or (most importantly) Novos Baianos’ Acabou Chorare. All these guys had been listening to the psychedelic and folk music being released in the U.S. and the U.K. and decided they could combine it with their country’s musical styles to make both styles more interesting. And they were 100% right. And you had no idea.

To be fair, how could you have known about these albums? And even if you had somehow found out from someone you knew that Brazilian musicians were doing laps around the American music scene, how could you have listened to the albums? The Brazilians had a pretty easy time listening to your music–it was a bit more difficult for the pipeline to work the other way. If you were 23 in 1972, you probably had to wait until you were around 50 to have your musical life altered.

The best news is that I, a 23-year-old in 2021, have to put essentially no effort into finding and listening to Brazil’s finest from 1972. It’s actually embarrassing how easy it is for me to listen to Novos Baianos. I can do it on my walk to class. Outdoors. On the same device that I can make phone calls.

The Tunes

I understand it’s not a novel concept to talk about how crazy music streaming is. But I think about it most often when I listen Novos Baianos’ Acabou Chorare. If you pressed me on it, I would say Acabou Chorare is my favorite album. It’s a painfully fun 80 minutes (it’s only 40 minutes but I usually listen to it twice). And it’s so insane that I get to listen to it all the time. Even more insane: I don’t even know how I heard about it. If you wanted to dive into a music scene outside the popular conversation in 1972, odds are it was because someone else told you to do it. It’s so dumb that you can just trip over the best music you’ll hear in your life completely by accident while just sitting around in your own house.

And Acabou Chorare is the best music you’ll hear in your life. I guess that’s probably not true for most people, but if you were only going to listen to one full album mentioned on this blog, I’d highly recommend you make it this one. Apparently Acabou Chorare translates to “No More Crying,” an apt title considering it’s the happiest sounding music imaginable. The acoustic guitars are awesome and jazzy, like in “Preta Pretinha,” where one acoustic solos over another one playing the chords under it. But the electric guitars are what set the album apart from all the other amazing Brazilian albums of 1972.

“Tinindo Trincando” is probably the best example of the album’s ridiculous guitar sound. The guitar is the first thing you hear, and it provides the energy for the song both at the start and throughout. Stop-and-start songs like this one are usually driven by drums, but the guitar dictates the direction of this one, and the playing is so good it sounds like everyone else is just following along. Ditto with “Mistério do Planeta,” where the guitar plays so many different chords under the wordy lyrics that it’s easy to forget there even are lyrics. The guitar is that good.

Speaking of the lyrics, they’re in Portuguese. I’ve tried several times to read translated lyrics while I listen to the music, but the translations aren’t direct and they don’t make much sense. But it truly doesn’t matter. The songs are immediate–they grab your attention from the jump and they create a world around them so you can imagine they’re saying whatever you want. It’s like a communal chant–the feeling you get out of the sounds is strong enough that you get the message in any language.

The album does a reprise with “Preta Pretinha,” which is both the second song on the album and the last song. This can be unnecessary from other bands, but Acabou Chorare works as a meditation on energy and happiness, and the reprise works so well because it feels like the band has to play the song again. They’ve built up too much excitement to let the album end at “Um Bilhete Pra Didi,” so they take a victory lap. The album begs you to listen to it twice in a row.

Wrapping Up

Music connects with audiences for a million different reasons, but I think bands probably feel the best when they connect with audiences because their music about being happy has, in fact, made them feel really happy. Acabou Chorare is pure musical escapism; no music I’ve listened to has achieved the same effect. Spotify has too many issues to count, but it’s a blessing that I get to escape to Novos Baianos’ psychedelic Brazil whenever and wherever I want. When music is as good as this, it’s nice not to take it for granted.