Jorge Ben — País Tropical
Jorge Ben · 1969
Label: Philips · Genre: Soul / Samba-Rock / Tropicália · Country: Brazil · From: Rio de Janeiro, South America
Jorge Ben's 1969 self-titled album was his psychedelic peak — samba-rock, tropicália, and soul colliding in arrangements that felt simultaneously ancient and futuristic. País Tropical became one of Brazil's most beloved songs, an irrepressibly joyful hymn to the country that has been covered hundreds of times. Ben invented his own guitar tunings, invented his own chord shapes, and wrote in a style that synthesised everything around him while sounding like nothing else. The album was released the same year Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were jailed and exiled — Jorge Ben found another way to survive the dictatorship, which was to be too joyful to suppress.
Did you know: Rod Stewart's 1978 global hit Da Ya Think I'm Sexy famously borrows its melody from Jorge Ben's Taj Mahal, recorded six years earlier. Stewart and his publishers settled out of court. Ben donated his share of the settlement to UNICEF. He has never spoken about the episode with anything other than grace.
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