Live in Bahia

2 discs, 32 live tracks, recorded in 2001 at two different places in Salvador. Caetano is one of Brazil’s most popular artists. He started in the 60s (and is over 60 years old) and along with a few others, Tom Ze and Gal Costa, started a music movement called tropicália. Often built on beautiful pop sounds, mixed with out playing and hard, sometimes aggressive political lyrics. You can hear that the crowd is huge, that it’s a party, and can instantly find the hits by listening to the crowd reaction when the song starts. To say this is Brazilian pop really doesn’t do it justice, yes Caetano has mellowed over the years but you can hear in the older tracks the music was much more challenging. He is often considered the Brazilian Bob Dylan. The tracks from the early 70s are my favorites and I think this is when this music style was really on fire….and like Tom Ze, Caetano released a LOT of albums between 1971-77.

There are lots of tracks; I’m just going to point out my favorites.
Disk 1:
1. Upbeat, danceable track with nice percussion.
**2. Amazing short piece, with jazz guitar, tight percussion, a few words repeated. The song completely changes towards the end.
4. The track slowly builds from a simple guitar riff.
**6. Classic political song co-written with Gilberto Gil. A dark pace with lots of words and cool electric cello playing from Caetano. It’s awesome to hear the crowd sing along during the chorus.
7. Mostly Caetano’s voice and electric cello playing with crowd cheers throughout the song.
**8. One of Caetano’s running themes. Fruit as symbol. A great looping guitar riff and his voice.
9. Wow! Listen to the crowd cheer for this song and then sing along! A beautiful and simple song. Just guitar, Caetano and the voices of the crowd singing along.
10. Another nice folk song. Just guitar and voice.
**12. Another huge cheer and the crowd sings every word. I wish I knew the language so I could sing along with them. Again just guitar.
15. I’ve always been fascinated by this song. An electric guitar rock song about longing to be an American then realizing you like being Brazilian. All of this a dedication to Raul Seixas who was a Brazilian rock pioneer.

Disk 2:
1. Ahhh, a track that got Caetano in trouble. There is a line of a woman speaking, while making love saying, “a little slap won’t hurt”. It was meant to be anti-pc (in the late 80s) and well, a lot of people were offended. A soft, smooth, guitar piece.
2. Straight forward percussion fades in and out and then in and out again.
3. Electric guitar leads the way.
4. Soft track in which the crowd sings along. A beautiful description of traveling.
5. One of his biggest hits. A samba track. This almost became a hit in the US as well.
6. The women in the crowd sing along with this song about a hot boy from Rio.
8. More percussion than on most other tracks. Picks up the pace a good bit.
**9. Vocally percussive, which makes sense, the track is called Language. Then the song kicks into a nice Samba groove. Full band.
10. A darker sounding track. A male dancing song in a style I’ve never heard of called, xaxado. **13. The song that started a movement. Quirky, many instruments, great percussion in an odd rhythm. Up beat with an amazing swing.
14. Up beat dance track with some great percussion.
Great stuff -mph