Genre
MPB and samba. A tribute album devoted entirely to the songs of Ary Barroso, the greatest Brazilian popular composer of the 1940s and 1950s, the album reinterprets twelve of his compositions - including "É Luxo Só," "Na Baixa do Sapateiro," and "Aquarela do Brasil" - with arrangements that bear slight traces of the nascent Italo-disco production then reshaping Brazilian pop, while remaining overwhelmingly a showcase for Gal's extraordinary interpretive range and vocal authority.
Release
Released in 1980 by Philips / PolyGram, Brazil. The album features a guest duet with Caetano Veloso on "No Tabuleiro da Baiana," and closes, as a culminating gesture, with the title track.
Production
Produced by Roberto Menescal and Guilherme Araújo - both longstanding figures in Gal Costa's recording history. Menescal, musician, composer, and producer of the bossa nova generation, also contributed violin to the sessions. José Roberto Bertrami of Azymuth played Oberheim synthesizer on five tracks.
Reception
The album was a major commercial success and became one of the defining releases of Gal Costa's career. Scream & Yell awarded it a score of 7 and described it as having "turned into one of the great successes of the decade, bringing 'Aquarela do Brasil' into Costa's standard repertoire and proving that Gal has the knack for revitalising fundamental composers of the Brazilian songbook."
Gal Costa
Maria da Graça Costa Penna Burgos (September 26, 1945, Salvador, Bahia – November 9, 2022, São Paulo), known as Gal Costa, was a Brazilian singer described by The New York Times as "one of Brazil's greatest singers" and regarded by many critics as the greatest Brazilian female voice of her generation. Born in Bahia, she met Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil at eighteen and became a central figure of the Tropicália movement through recordings including the landmark compilation Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis (1968). When Gil and Veloso were exiled to London by the military dictatorship, she remained in Brazil to champion their music. Her defining solo albums include Índia (1973), Cantar (1974), and Gal Canta Caymmi (1976). She received the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011; Rolling Stone placed her 90th on its 2023 list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. She died in São Paulo in November 2022, at the age of 77.
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