Chico Buarque

Hello there folks. I'm Grisha, and I'm from Tel-Aviv, which is in Israel. Dave invited me to contribute, so here we go. I'm doing a show for an Israeli web radio called Halas, and it's called "Tropical Truth", just like Caetano Veloso's book, which I unfortunately never had a chance to check out. Naturally, the show's focused on Brazilian music, so that's what I'm gonna write about.

Well. As probably most people know, end of the sixties / beginning of the seventies weren't the easiest of times in Brazil. Dictatorship / censorship, all that shit. Caetano and Gilberto Gil were forced to leave their country and moved to London, Joao Gilberto and Carlos Lyra moved to Mexico. Chico Buarque went to Italy, because he used to live there as a kid. There he recorded two albums in Italian. First one of these is "Chico Buarque Na Italia", which is just standard Chico singing in Italian. The second one is, of course, "Per Un Pugno Di Samba", his collaboration with Ennio Morricone. The record company didn't think much of this LP's commercial potential, so it came out only in Italy, and later became a much sought-after item. The version in Portuguese, that Buarque also recorded vocals for, didn't come out until fucking 2000, when it was released on CD as "Sonho de um carnaval", in France only. WTF.

Anyway, the album is all versions of his songs from his first four albums, and Morricone's touches range from good to stunning. My favourite song on the album is the version of "Funeral de um lavrador", from "Vol. 3". To make it more interesting, I'm also posting the original, which of course is not half bad also, but the Morricone version is guaranteed to blow your brains out. Both are in Portuguese.

Chico Buarque - Funeral de um lavrador
Chico Buarque / Ennio Morricone - Funeral de um lavrador