Lula Cortes and friends

“I wish I could speak Portuguese!” I blurted out the first time a friend put Os Mutantes on a mix-tape for me back in the mid-90s. That strange amalgam of Western pop and avant garde ideas taking root among South American rhythms and Brazil’s ease with assimilating different strands bewildered me in the most delightful way, and nearly every artist I’ve explored since then from that hemisphere has spent countless hours on my headphones, even as deadlines on American bands loom. Had I started studying that fateful day, I would have a good grasp today of what is being discussed in the fuzzy reproduction of explanatory text inside of Lula Cortes and Ze Ramalho’s only duo record together (with a motley crew of friends contributing), Paebiru. Alas, I was a poor pupil, and what was written back in 1975 escapes me. The scant information available online tells of Lula Cortes coming back from time spent in Morocco to play music in his home state of Pernambuco. He did some stuff with a kindred spirit by the name of Lailson in 1972-73, their duo record called Satwa, meaning ‘the sound of balance between two opposing realities,’ a perfect descriptor for their two spirits entwining effortlessly, spinning together electric guitar and sitar on a song like “Apacidonata.” (This record was reproduced in a lovely edition by the conscientious folks at Time-Lag up in Maine, and word is that they are at work on yet another archival recording from this time.) For the unauthorized reissue by Shadoks of Lula’s double album, Paebiru (long hailed as the Brazilian version of Amon Düül), Cortes teamed with a nascent songwriter named Ze Ramalho, who would go on to stardom in his home country. Drawing inspiration from Indian carvings found up in the mountain caves (here’s where I wish I could read Portuguese), each side of this album was dedicated to an element. Lore clashes somewhat in the story that the master tapes and most of the pressings were destroyed in a flood (some say fire), and of course, you could just as easily say it was lost under the dirt of history or else vanished into thin air, completely its destruction by each element, too. Burn one to the free-folk excursion of “Omm” or the Soft Machine chug of “Nas Paredes Da Padera Encantada” and see for yourself. The new weird America is old and much further south of the equator than The Wire magazine would lead you to believe.

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