Milton Nascimento

“Clube da Esquina” is one of the best-known records in Brazilian music, but its content and its role have often been misread by music critics.

When, in October 2007, Rolling Stone Brasil placed it among the ten greatest albums in the history of the country's music, the article justified the choice by pointing to an innovative fusion of “pop music, Beatles and toadas”.

On closer inspection, however, the Beatles and pop had already been thoroughly absorbed into Brazilian culture, first by the Jovem Guarda movement of the mid-Sixties, then by tropicalismo a few years later. As for the toadas, folk songs from the Amazon region, they're just one of the many strands of Brazilian music running through the album.

Things are no better with the international press: in 2018 Pitchfork ranked the album alongside Western classics like “Blonde On Blonde” or “Exile On Main Street“, right after stressing its dominance over every other Brazilian classic of its era. The equation is thus easily solved: it's the only Brazilian album of the period that holds up against the giants of Anglophone music. A declaration of cultural imperialism that the record's own creators would in all likelihood want nothing to do with.

From meeting point to double vinyl

Before becoming the title of an album, Clube da Esquina (The Corner Club) was the name of a group of friends, children of the upper-middle class of Belo Horizonte, who used to meet in a clearing in the Santa Tereza neighborhood to play music, talk and share their cultural interests [Note 1]. It began in 1963, when Milton Nascimento moved there from Três Pontas to study economics. Frequenting the venues most favored by musicians, he met the Borges brothers, Marilton, Márcio and Lô. From this nucleus a small movement was born, one that would go on to include names destined for a prominent place in the history of Brazilian popular music — some as singers (Beto Guedes, Flávio Venturini), some as songwriters (Fernando Brant, Tavinho Moura), some as producers (Ronaldo Bastos), some as session players (Nelson Angelo, Toninho Horta).

The first to break through, though, was Nascimento, whose debut album, simply titled “Milton Nascimento” (Codil, 1967), achieved immediate national success, thanks in particular to “Travessia”, an orchestral ballad co-written with Brant.

In 1971, by now an established singer, he decided to record a shared work, one in which the whole collective would have ample room.

The album's recording, organized by Milton Miranda and directed in the studio by Lindolfo Gaya (both among the most important Brazilian producers of the era), takes place in a euphoric climate of sharing: the songs are never credited to a single author, vocal duties are shared (mainly between Nascimento and Lô, the younger of the Borges brothers), and as many people as possible are brought in to participate on every song, even just for a choral part or to play the tambourine.

So much material is recorded that a double LP becomes necessary, which, in order to be sellable, is credited jointly to Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges [Note 2], with the latter's name printed in smaller type (from here on, he will be referred to by surname alone, since Marilton does not take part in the sessions and Márcio contributes only as a songwriter).

Despite this, the reception is disappointing: the album fails to break into the weekly top 10, and none of the singles pulled from it will end up among the fifty most-played songs on radio that year. The reasons are hard to pin down: perhaps excessive ambition, perhaps the government's lack of goodwill toward Nascimento, who would later recall having to rework several songs more than once before getting clearance from the censorship boards.

Since April 1964, in fact, Brazil has been ruled by a military junta which, backed by US intelligence services, wields absolute power over every sector of public life in the country: from universities to parliament (where the opposition has been marginalized), through the economy and the media. Purges and torture have become institutionalized practice, though somewhat less blatantly than in other South American dictatorships of the era (dissident artists, for instance, are sent into exile rather than killed, unlike in the regimes that will soon engulf Chile and Argentina).

Resorting to imagination and metaphor becomes the natural weapon for getting around the obstacle of censorship. A relentless challenge, which the authors have described as a genuine linguistic battle.

The specialist press of the time also shows little enthusiasm for the album, considering it derivative of contemporary works by Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso: while it's undeniable that those artists' records share similarities with “Clube da Esquina”, this is simply due to the shared cultural climate that produced them all and that, together, they helped enrich, cementing it in the collective memory as the golden age of Brazilian popular music.

“Clube da Esquina” is a kaleidoscope whose charm lies chiefly in its ability to blend Brazilian folk with the boldest orchestrations, partly drawn from the most experimental strains of Western pop at the time (baroque pop and psychedelia, but also prog), and partly from more refined local music (both the bourgeois strand, like bossa nova, and the elite one: it should not be forgotten that Brazil also had a significant school of classical composers).

“Tudo que você podia ser” introduces some of the album's defining traits: Milton Nascimento's angelic, powerful voice, the heavy use of guitars (three of them, for the occasion, with Borges on acoustic, Tavito on 12-string, and Horta on electric) and a dense rhythm section featuring drums, conga and caxixi (an idiophone instrument of African origin).

The songs' atmospheres come across as pleasant and never overbearing, with delightful melodies that combine sophisticated harmonies with catchiness (the samba of “Cravo e canela”), remaining delicate even in the most tense moments (the minor-key tonalities of “Cais”).

The arrangement of “Nuvem cigana”, courtesy of Wagner Tiso, weaves a rippling movement of strings, French horn and flute, with the guitar acting as counterpoint over an almost swing-like feel.

“Clube da Esquina nº 2” is driven by Borges's guitar and Luiz Alves's bass. Nascimento's voice indulges in abstract sounds, gradually dissolved into the echo-laden instrumental backdrop, while the mood shifts from tense to liberating when the main chord pattern (G maj7, F# min, E min7, F# min) is broken by A major, coinciding with the orchestra's grand entrance.

Yet, despite Nascimento's prestige, it is the five songs sung by Borges alone that have gathered the most fervent cult following over time. Among them stand out “O trem azul” — a hybrid of folk and blues, with relaxed vocal harmonies and freely flowing electric guitar embroidery — and “Um girassol da cor de seu cabelo”, a piano ballad with dreamlike orchestral arrangements courtesy of Eumir Deodato and an unexpected uptempo coda propelled by syncopated guitar and brass.

Despite the lukewarm reception it received at the time, time has done these songs justice, and today the album is celebrated as a masterpiece. Its reappraisal has come both through Nascimento's commercial success in the years that followed and through the enormous influence it has exerted on entire generations of musicians: the tracklist has in fact become the subject of continuous reworkings, from the most varied of fields.

In Brazil, dozens of high-profile artists have tackled it, from the vocal group Quarteto Em Cy to the jazz-funk trio Azymuth, from the father of bossa nova Tom Jobim to legendary female vocalists such as Elis Regina and Nana Caymmi, not to mention the famous rock band Ira!, the standard-bearer of Brazilian music in the United States Sérgio Mendes, as well as some of the most important songwriters of yesterday (Caetano Veloso) and today (Seu Jorge).

Its legend has since crossed borders, captivating both neighboring Argentina, through the voice of the negra Mercedes Sosa, and North American jazz, from George Duke to Wayne Shorter, from Sarah Vaughan to Herbie Hancock.

The members of Clube da Esquina themselves would revisit the album's songs more than once: in 1979 Borges sang a new version of "Clube da Esquina n° 2", with lyrics written in the meantime by his brother Márcio, and then again in 1981 "Nuvem cigana", in a sophisticated version dressed up with piano, a bed of synths and electric guitar; Beto Guedes (multi-instrumentalist or backing vocalist on sixteen of the tracks in the running order) had a hit with an elaborate jazz-pop version of "Paisagem da janela" in 1983; and finally, dating from 1994, there's the most famous version of "Clube da Esquina n° 2", sung by Flávio Venturini, who hadn't taken part in the album despite having been a regular presence around the group.

Afterword – A disputed image

Even though many believe the cover depicts Nascimento and Borges as children, it is in fact a shot taken by photographer Cafi (real name Carlos da Silva Assunção Filho), who, while passing through Rio Grande de Cima, wanted to capture two children playing in the street. At a time when far less attention was paid to such matters, no one thought it necessary to obtain their parents' consent.

For a long time those children remained unaware of how the photograph had been used, living in a poor rural area where buying records is still a luxury today. That lasted until 2012, when journalist Ana Clara Brant tracked them down and told them the story.

Since then a legal dispute has been underway, pitting José Antônio Rimes and Antônio Carlos Rosa de Oliveira (their real names) against Emi, the record label that currently owns the album, which could result in a ban on using the cover for future reissues — unless Emi is willing to pay out a hefty settlement (the sum requested is around 100,000 euros).

[Note 1] Nascimento would reveal years later that it was watching "Jules et Jim" by François Truffaut that inspired him as a songwriter, more than any musician of the time.

[Note 2] Within the track listing, however, a different approach is taken, with each song credited solely to its specific performer, regardless of who else took part or who wrote it. For example: on the opening "Tudo que você podia ser", Lô Borges appears as composer and guitarist, but since it's sung by Nascimento, the track is credited to him alone.

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10/04/2022