The Classic Years

Performer: Chico Buarque
Distributor: Select-O-Hits

Notes: Recorded in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Personnel: Chico Buarque (vocals, guitar). Translator: John Armstrong . Brazilian pop hero Chico Buarque's early music differed from that of his contemporaries in the Tropicalia movement in that it was less overtly political and experimental. Instead, Buarque's songs were steeped firmly in samba, bossa nova, and other common Brazilian forms. The link to tradition, however, never compromised Buarque's individuality as a songwriter: his uncanny facility with lyrics and durable, infectious melodies made his material as fresh as any Brazilian artist of the era. CLASSIC YEARS brings together the best of his early work under one cover. Buarque would branch out both stylistically and technically over the course of his lengthy, prolific career, but this 20-track collection, which stretches back to his earliest singles ("Sonho de Um Carnaval"), demonstrates that the artist's subtle, precise sense of songcraft and moving performances were dazzling even from the beginning.

Like many Brazilian baby-boomer musicians, Chico Buarque was enamored of the bossa nova sound personified by Joao Gilberto, and began his musical career by emulating it. However, when Brazil's political situation became turbulent, Buarque and peers like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil upped the musical ante with iconoclastic lyrics and increasingly complex melodic/harmonic structures. The style they created was known as Tropicalia, and though they were persecuted by the government as dissidents, their sound became hugely influential, both on Brazilian music and on subsequent generations of European and North American musicians. In addition to his music, the multi-talented Buarque is also known for his poetry, novels, and plays, and has made a long journey from pretty-boy pop idol to countercultural upstart to elder musical statesman.

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