Comeback special
A Brazilian singer returns from the dead. By Jim Irvin.
“Achieving a sense of wonder.”
IN SEPTEMBER 2016, when the Far Out label reissued Obnoxius, the strikingly assured 1970 debut album by mysterious young Brazilian singer José Mauro, the publicity material surrounding the release clearly suggested that Mauro was dead. The album, not exactly a hit in its day, had become a favourite of such renowned deep crate-diggers as Floating Points (“One of my Top 5”), Madlib and Gilles Peterson, who described it as “a holy grail”. But as the record’s fame grew, the amount of accurate information about the fate of its creator seemed to diminish. No one was sure how this beautiful young man had died – there were rumours circulating in forums that he’d perished in a car crash even before the album was released (though that was reasonably easy to disprove). Others claimed he had been “disappeared”, a victim of the military dictatorship that ruled in Brazil during the ’70s – but he must have died, so total had his silence been for so long.
Imagine the surprise, then, in 2018, when someone posted in the comments section of Far Out’s website: “José Mauro is alive.
I was talking with Lucas his friend, and he says that one label is stealing the copyrights of his album, but now he is sick and old, and [doesn’t] have money for a lawyer.” Two years later, Mauro’s lyricist, Ana Maria Bahiana (pictured above and with Mauro on the front cover of Obnoxius), confirmed that he was still alive. A year on, finally, and with Mauro’s blessing, here comes the first full release of his planned second album, A Viagem Das Horas (Far Out) HHHH.
A record with that title had appeared in 1976. Producer and label boss Roberto Quartin had overseen the recording of enough material for two albums. But when his self-named label closed, Quartin moved to the USA and licensed the material to Tapecar, who issued nine of the songs on a 12-track album, bulked up with three cuts from Obnoxius. Those have been removed and replaced by three other, previously unreleased songs from the period, to restore the album Mauro had initially planned, housed in a sleeve mimicking the distinctive Quartin releases, which carried an image in a quarter circle on the front.
The songs fuse MPB, folk and bold, sometimes eerie orchestral arrangements by Lindolfo Gaya that are what really make these records sonically distinctive. Mauro sounds more mature and serious than he looks, his sonorous baritone tuneful, but dramatic. I can’t comment on the Portuguese lyrics, but suddenly finding themselves living under a brutal dictatorship, Mauro and Bahiana, who shared an interest in Candomblé, a meld of traditional West African religions and Roman Catholicism, wanted their music to be a spiritual response. “Not believing in either civil war or fascism, we were part of a generation in transit, searching for another option,” says Bahiana.
So what had become of Mauro in the years since? After the 1976 edition of
A Viagem Das Horas was released, he worked for a while as music director at Rio’s prestigious O Tablado Theatre School, and as a guitar teacher. But soon he fell ill – what with isn’t specified – and became too frail to work. “My body pushed me away from music, health became a stumbling block for me,” he says. “If I had the strength to carry on with composing, I would have always focused on achieving a sense of beauty, a sense of wonder.”
It’s a shame he lost years when he might have continued to make the stirring, emotive music heard on his two albums. It may be a small body of work, but it’s one certainly worth getting to know.