Fôrça Bruta

Força Bruta
The sideview of a brown-skinned man with his hands in a clasp held up to his mouth and a hanging microphone in the foreground
Studio album by Jorge Ben
Released September 1970
Recorded 1970
Studio Estúdio C.B.D. in Rio de Janeiro and Scatena in São Paulo
Genre Samba soul, Tropicália
Length 40:37
Language Portuguese
Label Philips
Producer Manoel Barenbein
Jorge Ben chronology
Jorge Ben
(1969)		 Força Bruta
(1970)		 Negro É Lindo
(1971)

Fôrça Bruta is the seventh studio album by Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist Jorge Ben. It was recorded with the Trio Mocotó band and released in September 1970 by Philips Records. The album was titled after the Portuguese for the phrase "brute force", during a time of political tension in dictatorial Brazil.

Fôrça Bruta introduced an acoustic samba-based music that was mellower, moodier, and less ornate than Ben's preceding work. Its largely unrehearsed recording session found the singer improvising with Trio Mocotó's groove-oriented accompaniment while experimenting with unconventional rhythmic arrangements, musical techniques, and elements of rock, funk, and soul. His lyrics explored themes of romantic passion, melancholy, sensuality, and to a lesser extent postmodern and political values, also a departure from the carefree sensibility of past releases.

A commercial and critical success, Fôrça Bruta established Ben as a leading artist in Brazil's Tropicália movement while pioneering a unique sound later known as samba rock. In 2007, it was named the 61st greatest Brazilian album by Rolling Stone Brazil. That year, the album was released for the first time in the United States by the specialty label Dusty Groove America, attracting further critical recognition.

Recording and production

A black and white photo of a man with an acoustic guitar, surrounded by three other men holding percussion instruments
Ben (center) with Trio Mocotó, 1971

Fôrça Bruta was recorded by Jorge Ben in 1970 with Trio Mocotó, a band who had accompanied the singer on his self-titled 1969 album.[1] They were composed of Fritz Escovão (who played the cuíca), Nereu Gargalo (tambourine), and João Parahyba (drums and percussion).[2] According to Parahybe, Fôrça Bruta was recorded in one nighttime session, and most of the songs had not been rehearsed, with the intention of giving listeners an impression of Ben's musical mood at the time.[3] The singer's busy schedule during the success of his previous record led music critic John Bush to believe it may have led to a mellower recording of samba soul for this album.[4]

During the session, Trio Mocotó improvised with Ben on acoustic guitar; he played the viola caipira for the songs "Aparece Aparecida" and "Mulher Brasileira".[5] The band attempted to develop a distinctive groove with a rhythm that would harmonize with Ben's guitar, which had more of a rock feel, or "iê-iê-iê" as Parahybe called it.[3] They played several percussion instruments, including the atabaque and bell plates, while the singer incorporated a tuning fork. Traditionally used by musicians to maintain musical tuning among instruments, Ben instead stimulated the device with his mouth to generate sounds that resembled a harmonica.[6] For "Charles Jr." and other tracks, Parahybe used the whistle of his sister's electric toy train as a horn instrument, damaging it in the process.[5] This incident encouraged Ben to nickname the drummer "Comanche", and the singer can be heard throughout the album imploring him by this name.[7]

Ben performed only one take of vocals for each song, which were recorded over the improvised instrumental.[3] String and horn sections were also recorded for the final mix but went uncredited in the album's packaging.[8] Estúdio C.B.D. in Rio de Janeiro and Scatena in São Paulo were credited as the recording locations for Fôrça Bruta, which was named after the Portuguese for the phrase "brute force".[9] According to WOMEX, given the heightened political atmosphere in dictatorial Brazil at the time and Ben's gentler music for the album, "one can see a sly irony" in the title.[10]

Musical style

Fôrça Bruta has a pervasive sense of melancholy, according to Brazilian music scholar Pedro Alexandre Sanches. Songs that do not demonstrate this quality in their lyrics do so with their melodies, arrangements, and Ben's devilish guitar figures, with "Oba, Lá Vem Ela" and "Domênica Domingava" cited by Sanches as examples. He identified all the compositions as either a samba, samba lament, or samba banzo, which in his opinion gave the record an idiosyncratic sense of contrast.[1] Greg Caz, a disc jockey specializing in Brazilian music, wrote in Revive magazine that Fôrça Bruta departed from the carefree, silly sensibility that had been the singer's trademark. Instead, he believed it possessed a more melancholic, mysterious quality while Ben's idiosyncratic guitar playing showed greater facility.[11] Impose journalist Jacob McKean found the music subtle and "stripped down" when compared to Ben's previous album, with his guitar more prominently featured, his vocals "more intimate", and a "somewhat crunchy, folksy tone" established by the opening songs "Oba, Lá Vem Ela" and "Zé Canjica".[12]

"A single acoustic guitar plucks out sturdy notes against a backdrop of African drums as lush strings seep into the mix. It's all anchored by a voice as smooth and expressive as anything Sam Cooke ever put to vinyl."

—The Boston Globe[13]

Songs such as the drum-cadenced "Zé Canjica" and the cuíca-driven "O Telefone Tocou Novamente" experimented with unconventional percussion arrangements, resulting in contrasts between Trio Mocotó and Ben's instruments.[14] This rhythmic direction departed from his earlier music's innovative "chacatum, chacatum" beat, which had become popular and widely imitated by the time of the album.[6] While still samba-based with hints of bossa nova, Fôrça Bruta added understated funk and soul elements in the form of horn and string arrangements. Horn riffs were arranged in the style of Sérgio Mendes on "Pulo, Pulo", in the style of Stax Records on "O Telefone Tocou Novamente", and on the title track, which appropriated the groove of the 1968 Archie Bell & the Drells song "Tighten Up". On "Mulher Brasileira", a string section was recorded playing swirling patterns around Escovão's cuíca, while the more uptempo rhythms of "Charles Jr." and "Pulo, Pulo" were given counterpoint by more relaxed string melodies.[8]

Ben's singing provided further contrast and funk/soul qualities to the music. Along with his characteristic wails and croons, he exhibited a newfound raspy texture in his typically languorous and nasal vocal.[15] His vocals also provided an additional element of rhythm to some songs. On "Zé Canjica" and "Charles Jr.", he improvised phrases (such as "Comanchero" and "the mama mama, the mama say") as rhythmic accompaniment during parts of the song when there were no verses to be sung.[16]

Themes

Women are central figures in Ben's lyrics throughout the album, especially in "Mulher Brasileira", "Terezinha", and "Domênica Domingava"; "Domênica" is a variation on Domingas, the surname of his wife and muse Maria.[17] His preoccupation with female characters led Sanches to identify Fôrça Bruta's predominant theme as Ben's "Dionysian body", referring to the philosophical concept proposing a body that can submit to passionate chaos and suffering before overcoming itself.[18] Several of the songs deal with romantic disappointment.[6] In "Zé Canjica", the narrator apologizes for being confused, sad, and moody while sending away a lover he feels he does not deserve. "O Telefone Tocou Novamente" expresses grief and pity over an angry lover ringing the phone of the narrator, who leaves to meet, only not to find her. During the song, Sanches observed a moment of catharsis by Ben who raised his singing voice to an almost crying falsetto.[1]

Ben's lyrics also appropriated thematic devices from the popular imagination. The verses of the surrealistic "Pulo, Pulo" and the caipira-influenced samba "Apareceu, Aparecida" were compared by Sanches to songs from ciranda, a traditional Brazilian children's dance.[17] In "Apareceu, Aparecida"—which employs the "rolling stone" idiom—the narrator rediscovers the euphoric joy of living after his beloved has accepted him again; this led Sanches to conclude that Ben sang of hedonism in a concentrated state.[19]

A pastel portrait of young black boy dressed in a white shirt
"Charles Jr." explores black heritage in post-slavery Brazil (Black boy by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior shown)

Other songs feature expressions of postmodern and political values.[19] Caz believed the lyrics on this album betrayed deeper concerns than the singer's previous recordings, shown most notably by the self-referential "Charles Jr.", in which Ben explored his identity as an artist and as a black man.[20] Brazilian music academic Rafael Lemos believed the song demonstrated how Ben discovered a process to "place black heritage into modernity", in the aftermath of slavery in Brazil and the continued marginalization of black people there.[21] According to one translation of the lyrics, the narrator proclaims:

"My name is Charles Jr. / And I’m an angel too / But I don’t want to be the first / Nor be better than anybody / I just want to live in peace / And be treated as an equal among equals / For in exchange of my love and affection / I want to be understood and taken into consideration / And, if possible, loved as well / 'Cause it doesn’t matter what I have / I’m no longer what my brothers once were, no, no / I was born of a free womb / Born of a free womb in the 20th Century / I have love and faith / To go into the 21st century / Where the conquests of science, space and medicine / And the brotherhood of all human beings / And the humbleness of a king / Will be the weapons of victory / For universal peace / And the whole world will hear / And the whole world will know / That my name is Charles Jr. / And I'm an angel too."[11]

Some of Fôrça Bruta's characters and stories had appeared on Ben's earlier work, albeit in slightly different manifestations. On his 1969 album, "Charles" was depicted as a heroic Robin Hood-like figure of the country. The sensually primitive "Domingas" and "Teresa", also from the previous record, were rendered here as the more sophisticated "Domênica" and the irreverent "Terezinha", respectively.[6] The latter was sung by Ben in an exceptionally nasal voice interpreted by Sanches as an ironic caricature of música popular brasileira.[19]

Release and reception

Fôrça Bruta was released in September 1970 by Philips Records.[11] It was received favorably in Veja magazine, whose reviewer found it insatiably rhythmic, full of musical surprises and suspense, and comparable to a comic book in the way familiar fantasies and characters are reformulated in strange yet delightful directions.[6] Commercially, it was a top-10 chart success in Brazil while producing the hit singles "O Telefone Tocou Novamente" and "Mulher Brasileira".[22] Its success established Ben as an integral artist in Brazil's Tropicália movement, led by fellow musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.[13] The following year on his next album, Negro É Lindo (English: Black Is Beautiful), Ben delved further into the black identity politics of "Charles Jr." while retaining the melancholic musical quality of the previous record.[11]

Fôrça Bruta's fusion of Trio Mocotó's groove and Ben's more rockish guitar proved to be a distinctive feature of what critics and musicians later called samba rock.[3] Its addition of soul and funk elements, most prominent in the title track, helped earn the album a respected reputation among soul enthusiasts and rare-record collectors.[8] In an interview for Guy Oseary's On the Record (2004), music entrepreneur and record collector Craig Kallman named Fôrça Bruta among his 15 favorite albums.[23] It was also one of recording artist Beck's favorite albums.[24] In 2007, it was re-released by Dusty Groove America, a specialty label that reissued rare funk, jazz, soul, and Brazilian music titles in partnership with Universal Music.[25] This marked the first time the album had seen release in the United States.[13] Later that year, it was ranked 61st on Rolling Stone Brasil's list of the 100 greatest Brazilian albums; in an accompanying essay journalist Marcus Preto called it "the most melancholy album of [Ben's] career".[26]

In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Bush gave Fôrça Bruta four-and-a-half out of five stars and regarded it as one of Ben's best records; "a wonderful album because it kept everyone's plentiful musical skills intact while simply sailing along on a wonderful acoustic groove that may have varied little but was all the better for its agreeable evenness."[4] A reviewer for The Boston Globe said Ben's masterful performance of this music—"a fusion of bright samba and mellow soul"—still sounds original and essential nearly forty years after its recording; recommended even for non Lusophones, it "transcends language and era with an organic vibe and breezy spontaneity".[13] NOW Magazine's Tim Perlich called it a "samba-soul heater"; while Matthew Hickey from Turntable Kitchen deemed it "one of the most buoyantly textured and warmly melodic LPs ever recorded", and "Oba, Lá Vem Ela" "arguably one of the record's loveliest tunes".[27] In Impose, McKean believed Trio Mocotó were incomparable in their backing performance for Ben and also highlighted the two opening tracks; he found "Zé Canjica" in particular "arrestingly gorgeous" while citing "Apareceu Aparecida"'s hook as the most memorable of all the songs. Overall, the album was an elegant and exquisite listen in his opinion, in spite of the unusual singing on "Terezinha" and what he deemed "Muhler Brasileira"'s slightly overused string section.[12]

According to Peter Shapiro, other listeners had complained the album was overly "dainty" or not adventurous enough, lacking the "wild pan-genre promiscuity" generally found in Tropicália music. His own appraisal in The Wire judged it to be "something of a minor masterpiece of textural contrast" and "a stone cold classic of Brazilian modernism", representative of the country's flair for "weaving beguiling syncretic music from practically any cloth".[8] Upon discovering Ben's music in 2009, film critic Richard Corliss wrote in his Time magazine column that Fôrça Bruta was a classic of "raw and soulful Tropicália" while observing a "pleading quality" in his singing, "as if he can't contain that feeling of sadness and joy at the same time."[28]

Track listing

All songs were composed by Jorge Ben.[29]

Side one
No.TitleLength
1."Oba, Lá Vem Ela"4:13
2."Zé Canjica"3:53
3."Domênica Domingava num Domingo Linda toda de Branco"3:50
4."Charles Jr."6:09
5."Pulo, Pulo"2:50
Side two
No.TitleLength
1."Apareceu, Aparecida"3:17
2."O Telefone Tocou Novamente"3:51
3."Mulher Brasileira"4:27
4."Terezinha"3:13
5."Fôrça Bruta"5:15

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[30]

  • Jorge Ben – guitar, vocals
Trio Mocotó
  • Fritz Escovão – cuica
  • Nereu Gargalo – percussion
  • Jõao Parahyba – drums
Production
  • Ari Carvalhaes – engineering
  • Manoel Barenbein – production
  • Chris Kalis – reissue production
  • João Kibelkstis – engineering
  • João Moreira – engineering

Charts

Chart (1971) Peak
position
Brazil LP's (Amiga)[31] 7
Brazil LP's – Rio de Janeiro (Billboard)[32] 9

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Sanches 2000, p. 176.
  2. ↑ Guima 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Parahyba 2005.
  4. 1 2 Bush n.d.
  5. 1 2 Parahyba 2005; Anon. 1970, p. 61.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Anon. 1970, p. 61.
  7. ↑ Parahyba 2005; Sanches 2000, p. 177.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Shapiro 2007, p. 66.
  9. ↑ Anon.(a) n.d.; Shetty 2017.
  10. ↑ Anon.(b) n.d.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Caz 2011.
  12. 1 2 McKean 2008.
  13. 1 2 3 4 Anon. 2007.
  14. ↑ Sanches 2000, p. 176; Anon. 1970, p. 61.
  15. ↑ Shapiro 2007, p. 66; Anon. 2007.
  16. ↑ Anon. 1970, p. 61; Anon. 2007.
  17. 1 2 Sanches 2000, p. 177; Anon. 1970, p. 61.
  18. ↑ Sanches 2000, p. 177; Gooding-Williams 2001, p. 117.
  19. 1 2 3 Sanches 2000, p. 177.
  20. ↑ Caz 2011; Sanches 2000, p. 176.
  21. ↑ Lemos 2018, p. 42.
  22. ↑ Anon.(a) 1971; Caz 2011.
  23. ↑ Oseary 2004, p. 353.
  24. ↑ Anon. 1997.
  25. ↑ McKean 2008; Perlich 2007.
  26. ↑ Preto 2007.
  27. ↑ Perlich 2007; Hickey 2013.
  28. ↑ Corliss, Grossman & Poniewozik 2009, p. 67.
  29. ↑ Anon.(a) n.d.
  30. ↑ Anon. 2008.
  31. ↑ Anon.(a) 1971.
  32. ↑ Anon.(b) 1971, p. 56.

Bibliography

  • Anon. (30 September 1970). "O super-ritmo". Veja (in Portuguese).
  • Anon.[a] (19 January 1971). "LPs". Amiga (in Portuguese). No. 35.
  • Anon.[b] (30 January 1971). "Hits of the World". Billboard.
  • Anon. (30 January 1997). "Ingleses detonam o Ano Rock com Krishna e Ácido". Manchete (in Portuguese).
  • Anon. (23 November 2007). "Sound Advice on Reissues". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  • Anon. (2008). Fôrça Bruta (LP liner notes). Jorge Ben. 4 Men With Beards. 4M168.
  • Anon.[a] (n.d.). "Força bruta [sound recording] / Jorge Ben". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  • Anon.[b] (n.d.). "Jorge Ben Jor". WOMEX. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
  • Bush, John (n.d.). "Força Bruta – Jorge Ben". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  • Caz, Greg (15 December 2011). "Brute Force: A Look At Jorge Ben's Recorded Work". Revive. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  • Corliss, Richard; Grossman, Lev; Poniewozik, James (20 April 2009). "Short List". Time.
  • Gooding-Williams, Robert (2001). Zarathustra's Dionysian Modernism. Standford University Press. ISBN 978-0804732956.
  • Guima, Vítor (23 February 2017). "Discos Escondidos #039: Jorge Ben - Força Bruta (1970)". Jardim Eletrico (in Portuguese). Retrieved 24 September 2018.
  • Hickey, Matthew (16 October 2013). "Single Serving: Junip – Oba, Lá Vem Ela (Jorge Ben Cover)". Turntable Kitchen. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
  • Lemos, Rafael (May 2018). "Jorge Ben Jor and the 60's: A Black Man in the Modern Patropi" (PDF). Bossa Magazine. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
  • McKean, Jacob (2008). "Jorge Ben Jorge Ben (1969) + Força Bruta". Impose. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  • Oseary, Guy (2004). On the Record: Over 150 of the Most Talented People in Music Share the Secrets of Their Success. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0142003046.
  • Parahyba, Jõao (21 September 2005). "Uma Noite Ben Jor". Trip (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  • Perlich, Tim (9 August 2007). "Perlich's Picks". NOW Magazine. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
  • Preto, Marcus (October 2007). "Listas – Os 100 Maiores Discos da Música Brasileira – Força Bruta – Jorge Ben (1970, Philips)". Rolling Stone Brasil (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  • Sanches, Pedro Alexandre (2000). Tropicalismo: Decadência Bonita do Samba (in Portuguese). Boitempo Editorial. ISBN 978-8585934545.
  • Shapiro, Peter (November 2007). "The Boomerang". The Wire. No. 285.
  • Shetty, Arnav (30 November 2017). "Oba, Lá Vem Ela". Medium. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.

Further reading

  • Rowland, John (8 February 2016). "'Pulo, Pulo' and the Universal Language of Expectation". Subdivider. An essay on the album's fifth track, "Pulo, Pulo".
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