Meu Nome é Gal: The Best of Gal Costa

Performer: Gal Costa
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Includes liner notes by Gerald Seligman. Along with fellow Bahians like Gilberto Gil, Maria Bethania, and Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa was one of the key figures in the tropicalismo movement that was the Brazilian equivalent of America's late-'60s countercultural revolution. Her long, prolific career has taken her from lush balladry to bouncy pop and iconoclastic experimentation. MY NAME IS GAL draws from a 13-year period of releases on the Verve label. The first thing MY NAME IS GAL makes apparent is Costa's eclecticism and knack for combining the outre with the sweet. The mission statement that is this collection's title track begins innocently enough, but ends with an unhinged-sounding Costa shrieking over frenetic fuzz guitar. "Nao Identificado" leads off with an explosion of electronic/psychedelic effects, only to turn quickly into a smooth ballad. Costa proves equally at home with American-influenced, Joplinesque blues turns and elegant, highly orchestrated crooning. Whatever her mode of expression, though, her remarkably expressive voice supplies a strong contextual thread all by itself.

Essentially the first lady of Brazilian music, Gal Costa was among the musical rebels who gathered under the Tropicalia banner in the late-1960s/early-'70s, espousing a countercultural aesthetic that advanced Brazilian pop beyond bossa nova and samba into challenging new territory. Her big, bold style found her belting out melodies diva-style one moment and indulging in psychedelic, avant garde freakouts the next. In the '80s, like many of her peers, Costa switched to a slick, commercial pop sound, but by the '90s she started getting back to her roots, managing to work with one of her heroes, Antonio Carlos Jobim, shortly before his death.

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