The history of Brazilian pop in the 1960s and ’70s parallels the development of North American rock during the same period. But the aims of bossa nova inventor João Gilberto — whose death at age 88 was reported July 6 — and rock ’n’ roll avatar Chuck Berry diverged in fascinating ways. Gilberto’s epochal late-’50s and early-’60s recordings, like “Chega de Saudade” and “Desafinado,” modernized Brazilian samba by turning its cut-time rhythms jazzy, while Berry, Elvis Presley and The Beatles used the 4/4 rhythms of blues to chronicle a wild period in Anglo-American culture. As it developed in the late ’60s and ’70s, post-bossa nova Brazilian pop drew from rock, but the recordings of what came to be known as MPB (música popular brasileira, or popular music of Brazil) by artists like Elis Regina, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil are among the most aestheticized artifacts in popular music.
On Monday at Little Harpeth Brewing, Nashville nonprofit FMRL will bring Brazilian post-bossa nova, post-MPB singer and songwriter Sessa to Nashville. A native of the explosive metropolis of São Paulo, Sessa is a young exponent of the quasi-pop that Veloso, Gil and fellow paulistano Tom Zé perfected 40 years ago. Like much of modern rock, which has only the most tenuous affiliation with the blues, Sessa’s new full-length Grandeza gently alludes to its foundational music, which in this case is samba. Grandeza is sung in Portuguese and was produced by former Monotonix guitarist Yonatan Gat, with whom Sessa has performed. The album is as beguiling as, say, Gil’s 1972 track “Oriente,” and like much of MPB, it makes a case for pop as an essentially syncretic medium.
Raised in São Paulo in a Sephardic Jewish family, Sessa became a student of progressive jazz and North American rock. As he says via email from São Paulo, he has integrated elements of those styles into his latest music.
“Everything is a bit off, crooked or faded, but I take pleasure in what gets lost in translation,” says Sessa about Grandeza. “When I was in my early teenage years and getting into records, I fell in love with North American rock ’n’ roll and soul music. I loved — and I still do — the music of The MC5, The Stooges, The Sonics, Irma Thomas, Curtis Mayfield and Sly and the Family Stone.”
Grandeza evokes the music of British folk-rockers like The Incredible String Band, but it often reminds me of the acoustic-guitar-driven psych of Lula Côrtes and Zé Ramalho’s now-classic 1975 full-length Paêbirú. The Grandeza track “Tanto” uses a basic blues structure, and saxophones take it into something close to free-jazz territory. Meanwhile, “Sangue Bom” features a line that translates to: “In the Lusophone fun fornicating cacophonies.”
Not all of Grandeza is avant-garde. That places it firmly in the tradition of Gil and Veloso, whose melodic invention rivaled that of The Beatles. Grandeza is intensely pleasurable, as in “Infinitamente Nu,” which echoes Gilberto’s bossa nova style. Like Gilberto’s supremely introspective self-titled 1973 album, Grandeza demonstrates how memory serves to inform notions of modernist popular music.
Sessa’s touring ensemble includes vocalists Laura Pereira, Joana Bem-Haja and Sabien Holler, along with percussionist Cem Misirlioglu. He says he views Grandeza as hybrid music, which makes him a worthy successor to Gil, Veloso and Gilberto.
“As much as my music is very Brazilian, it deals with North American music here and there,” Sessa says. “[It’s] in the rawness and bareness of the album production, [and] in the rigorous dedication spiritual-free-jazz players have towards their practice, which I admire and try to learn from every day.”
