Gira cover

Gira

Released

Sometimes it’s easy to slip into thinking that Brazilian musicianship is something based in the 60s and 70s – such is the power of bossa nova and tropicália – but Marcelo Frota is here to blow that idea away. He’s lived and recorded in Brazil, Angola, the US, Spain and Portugal, and his eighth album is recorded in London with the cream of the city’s jazz community, but it radiates Brazilian spirit in a potently 21st century mode. The single “Pára”, especially with its video, is a love letter to tropical city life, and snuck up as an anthem of 2024 – but the rest of the album easily matches it for sultry, modernist groove and adherence to the pleasure principle.

Joe Muggs

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