Estudando o Pagode

Tom Ze

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 24, 2006)
• Original Release Date: August 9, 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Luaka Bop
• ASIN: B000EOTVKM
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #138,876 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Tom Ze's latest opus, Estudando o Pagode, isn't just a musical journey. It's more an eclectic, expermental collage of sounds, thoughts, and feelings. The Brazilian song master has collected these musings into a purposeful, often artful, post-feminist operetta. Intense concentration is a must. The hour-long escapade is divided into three acts, each detailing situations that involve the mistreatment and repression of women. Ze incorporates soaring sopranos, chanting choruses, braying donkeys, and orgasmic moans into his musical framework, which is based on the improvisational pagode style. Amid so much conscious clatter, there are moments of surreal beauty: the quiet grace of "Duas Opinioes"; the celebratory groove of "Elaeu," which takes place during a Gay-Lesbian Pride Parade at the Vatican; and the swooning soulfulness of "Prazer Carnal," set at the U.N. building in New York. Ze has said he doesn't make art, he makes "spoken and sung journalism." His issues are important, to be sure, but you're unlikely to find a more artful, amusing and arresting piece of experimental theater anytime soon. --Joey Guerra

Product Description

Tom Ze was the most daring of the founding members of Tropicalia, the political art and music movement that emerged from Brazil in the late 60's. Over-the-top pop bossa nova that transitioned into rock became the group's signature sound. Ze pursued catchy sambas rife with cleverly subversive lyrics and innovative instrumentation into the late 70's, expanding on his Dadaist ideas and experimenting with noise and homemade instruments. His fearlessness pushed him to the edge of obscurity until Luaka Bop released a "best of" Ze's recordings in the US in 1990, thereby reinvigorating interest in his music. This release is musically daring and danceable, with observations on human nature and sexual politics that are hilariously wry. The album has already been nominated for a Latin Grammy. "One of avant-pop's great musical minds..." - Entertainment Weekly. "...brilliantly bizarre, creative, and intellectual" - The Fader.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Fun, May 24, 2006

By	Swineface (England) - See all my reviews

Tom Ze has lost none of his lively sense of fun over the years. Each track beautifully crafted and full of interest. The bold experimentation with layers of sound combined with traditional forms makes the album sound fresh each time I listen - which is often!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best of the year, May 19, 2006

By	DKDC (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

Metacritic dotcom rates it as one of the top 2 cds so far this year (as of May 2006)

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Post Tropicalia gone off the deep end, July 28, 2006

By	wm "wordmule" (...onward....thru the fog!) - See all my reviews

The Tropicalia movement consisted of a group of inconoclasts who took bossa nova and samba, deconstructed them, then put them back together, and in the process indulged in psychedelics, so what came out became a heady mixture of Beatles inflected Brazilian music.

Tom Ze, an iconoclast's iconoclast, took things one step further and deconstructed the reconstructed Tropicalia and turned it into....well, Tom Ze....there's just no comparison, since his signature sound is just inimitable.

I'd have to agree with the reviewer here who says this is "not the place to start" if you're contemplating your first Tom Ze purchase. This CD, which is ostensibly an opera of sorts about the subjugation of women over the centuries, is indisputably his most inaccessible. It's got some highlights, but "Fabrication Defect", "Hips of Tradition", or "Jogos de Armar" are much more catchy and listenable as a whole.