So I recently discovered a Brazilian death metal band called Semblant, and the lead singer has a lovely voice:
I mean, here she is, singing Mozart for crying out loud:
So I prepared to post on my Legion of Metal Friends Facebook group that she, Mizuho Lin, might have supplanted someone as my favorite Brazilian vocalist. But who was my current favorite Brazilian vocalist? Gal Costa? Beth Carvalho?
In researching my quip, I learned that Beth Carvalho passed away this year.
I have a couple of her albums, Sentimento Brasileiro and Suor No Rosto, which I bought at a library book sale where someone had unloaded a lot of Brazilian and Mexican LPs. Which explains why I am familiar with Beth Carvalho and Gal Costa.
Here is Beth singing “O Sonho Não Acabou” from 1980:
It’s kind of early 80s pop Samba.
Funny story: We are friends with a Lutheran pastor from Brazil, and when his family was over, I spun some Carvalho on the turntable. He asked if it was in Portuguese, and I explained it was Beth Carvalho (and pronounced the name incorrectly, because how it’s spelled and sounds in Portuguese is different than my native language, Milwaukeean). But he, the pastor, was not familiar with the artist because, as he is a decade younger than I am, Beth Carvalho would have been his parents’ music.
I get that a lot, of course, with my other turntable musical tastes running to Big Band through the 1960s, but it was stark since I probably would have remembered Beth Carvalho on the radio were I in Brazil. I would not thought of it as old though.
I didn’t see any news about her passing here in the states. And although she was not my favorite Brazilian vocalist, I was sorry to hear of it.
My previous favorite Brazilian vocalist?
Astrud Gilberto, duh.
And, to be honest, since I’m a metal all day, jazz all night sort of guy, she probably still will be my favorite Brazilian vocalist after 5pm. But from 5:00am to 4:59 pm, it’s Mizuho Lin.
