Heaven is Caetana Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and gang.

This C.D. will rock your world.

The music on this record is old, almost as old as that Bossa Nova stuff most people associate with Brazil. You can tell when you listen that most of these recordings are from the late 1960's. But, as in pop music of the English speaking world, the late 1960's were a period of light-speed evolution, growth, eperimentation, whatever you want to call it in Brazilian music. The music and artists featured here transformed Brazilian music from a handful of folcloric sounds and rhythms to a truly cosmopolitan and progressive expression of the most radical artistic aspirations. Anyone who wants to deepen their appreciation for the music made in Brazil over the last 30 years would do well to learn this album, the songs on this album, and the artists who appear here, because after making this album they all moved on to very long and influential solo careers. In sum, Tropicalia produced some truly amazing works of art, and many of them are featured here on this disc.

Great stuff, and translations make it, as the editors say, something even those of us who have a lot of this material should buy. I consider Gilberto Gil easily the equal of John Lennon or Paul McCartney; I never listen to the Beatles any more but I can always hear the early Gil material, any time. One reviewer above referred to that "bossa nova stuff," which may reveal a certain ignorance of where the tropicalists came from in the first place. Gilberto Gil is the equal of Lennon; I would say that João Gilberto, the inventor of bossa nova, is the equal of Miles Davis. And I would go further and say that bossa nova, which began around 1958, is more important to the history of popular music than the Beatles. But, you know, North Americans tend to be rather closed-minded about the world. Buy this if you have the songs, or if you want great intro to the world of Brazilian pop music.