Customer Reviews

Manual Pratico Para Festas, Bailes E Afins, Vol.1

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ed Motta is a wonderful brazilian R&b/Jazz singer and producer and for the first time in my life I loved all songs in an album. Good music with refining where this singer mixed bossa-nova (brazilian jazz), r&b, soul and traditional jazz and showed that music doesn't have frontiers.

Ed Motta is an extemely talented young man. If you like Classic Soul or Funk and Brazillian Music, this is a must have CD!

this is one of the most perfect elegant funk library compositions ever recorded.

the title of the album translates into "Practical Manual for Parties, Ballrooms and the like". The title could not be more correct. This album was a major hit in Brazil, 3 or 4 songs were ubiquitous on the radio and discos back then.

Ed Motta is a talented Brazilian singer from Rio de Janeiro, with superior vocal chops on the soul/R&B tradition and an encyclopedic knowledge of jazzy / funky music. This album is the most "fun", catchy and best-selling of his career. IMHO, this is the best "acid jazz" ever recorded.

This album, recorded in 1997, was produced to sell a lot of copies, as Motta admited at the time. If you listen to most of Motta albums, they are brainy and jazzy, with vintage "ambiance" that covers territory from '50s lounge to lots of '70s jazz-funk, more scat singing than words and often are a difficult, if worthy, listening. But here he focused on streamlining his musical ideas and the tunes are catchy, irresistible even. Arrangements bring to mind Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan horn section and "DO it Again"-keyboards, Earth Wind & Fire, quality disco... I know, that's the definition of "acid jazz", but this baby sounds uniquely fresh and sexy, I guess it is the Rio de Janeiro vibe... the album is sung in Brazilian Portuguese with all the soul music inflections you expect to hear in English, it is cool. A few verses in English and Italian too...

In this era of song downloads, it is worth recommending individual tracks. Please buy it from a legitimate source so the artist can see some of the $ because he is not a spoiled star, but a nice guy making a living by offering good music.

So here it goes: the dance tracks are outstanding: "Daqui pro Meier", "Lustre and Pingentes", "A Flor do Querer" and "Mentiras Faceis" soar with great beats, horns and strings; "Fora da Lei" (greatest hit)and "Birinaite" (ridiculously catchy) are more pop and synth heavy, "Como Dois Cristais" is a delightful reggae/soul tune. The R&B ballads are "Vendaval" and "Por Voce Ser Mais" (nice melodies) and the jazzy "Falso Milagre do Amor" brings supple jazz piano, trombone solo and superior vocal melody, and in a second version a positively Gil Evans/Miles Davis (or is it Jobim?)orchestration. Finally, I have to recommend 'A Loja do Subsolo", which displays Motta's vocal virtuosism as he sings "a capella" in many overdubs, creating a whole band (drums, guitar, bass, trumpet, more?) for a funky jam that will remind you of Zeppelin's "Moby Dick" and something else from the good old days... this is magical, man!

Funk music for dancefloor? Kool & The Gang, Earth, Wind & Fire and dozens of others did it better!
Brazilian artists should look for their roots, instead of copying North American sounds.
Urgh...!