Juçara Marçal - Delta Estácio Blues [2021]

Published on Sounds and Colours

Throughout history, the musical innovations of the African Diaspora have had a defining role in the musical identity of entire nations. Any serious look into the musical history of countries such as the United States and Brazil will show this influence. Juçara Marçal explores these parallel worlds in the title track of Delta Estácio Blues. The song mystically connects African-American blues legend Robert Johnson with his Afro-Brazilian contemporaries, Bide, Baico, and Ismael, who, among other musicians, founded the first samba school. Starting off with an acoustic guitar sample loop that eventually gives way to punchy bass, cuíca cackles and shrieks, "Delta Estácio Blues" warps the referenced tradition. 

Juçara Marçal - Encarnado [2014]

How one takes to the most jarring and immediately apparent feature of Encarnado, the solo debut of Juçara Marçal, will likely be the single most determinative factor in whether the listener enjoys it or not. This is of course, the complete lack of a rhythm section throughout the entire LP - 41 minutes with no drums or bass. This is an aspect of this record that, on it's own, is quite odd, but when you factor in that this is an album coming out of Brazil - a country that is known for it's danceable samba and breezy bossa nova rhythms, it makes the absence of a rhythm section even more glaringly apparent. Despite the fact that at times, the minimalism can give the album quite a skeletal feel, Marçal and the band she has enlisted to accompany her beautiful singing can do so much - sound so grand - with so little, that the listener could be forgiven for forgetting that at it's core, Encarnado is a brilliant and experimental conversation between, in most cases two or three - at times four, instrumentalists on each track and one vocalist. Although there are things like the bleeps and bloops on "E o Quico?" and Marçal herself playing kalimba on the sweet "Canção pra ninar Oxum", more than anything, a large bulk of the album's sound consists of two guitars.