Fôrça Bruta

Fôrça Bruta (Brazilian Portuguese: [fˈoxsɐ bɾˈutɐ] ( listen)) is the seventh studio
Força Bruta
album by Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist Jorge Ben. It was recorded with
the Trio Mocotó band and released by Philips Records in September 1970, during a
time of political tension in dictatorial Brazil. Its title comes from the Portuguese
term meaning "brute force".

The album introduced an acoustic samba-based music that was mellower, moodier,
and less ornate than Ben's preceding work. Its largely unrehearsed, nighttime
recording session found the singer improvising with Trio Mocotó's groove-oriented
accompaniment while experimenting with unconventional rhythmic arrangements,
musical techniques, and elements of soul, funk, and rock. Ben's lyrics explored
themes of romantic passion, melancholy, sensuality, and—in a departure from the
carefree sensibility of past releases—identity politics and elements of
postmodernism. Studio album by Jorge Ben
Released September 1970
A commercial and critical success,Fôrça Bruta established Ben as a leading artist in
Recorded 1970
Brazil's Tropicália movement and pioneered a unique sound later known as samba
rock. In 2007, Rolling Stone Brasil named it the 61st greatest Brazilian music record. Studio C.B.D. in Rio de Janeiro
That same year, the album was released for the first time in the United States by the and Scatena in São
specialty label Dusty Groove America, attracting further critical recognition. Paulo
Genre Samba soul, Tropicália
Length 40:37
Contents Language Portuguese

Background Label Philips

Recording and production Producer Manoel Barenbein
Musical style Jorge Ben chronology
Themes
Jorge Ben Força Negro É
Release and reception (1969) Bruta Lindo
Track listing (1970) (1971)
Personnel
Charts
See also
References
Bibliography
Further reading
External links

Background
In 1969, Jorge Ben re-signed to Philips Records after a four-year leave from the label due to creative differences and recorded his
self-titled sixth album.[1] It featured songs performed with Trio Mocotó as his backing band; Ben had met the vocal/percussion group
while touring the nightclub circuit in São Paulo in the late 1960s.[2] The band's members were Fritz Escovão (who played the cuíca),
Nereu Gargalo (tambourine), and João Parahyba (drums and percussion).[3] The album was a commercial comeback for Ben, and its
success created a busy schedule for all four musicians.[4] This "hectic" period for them led music critic John Bush to believe it may
have resulted in a relaxed recording ofsamba soul for Fôrça Bruta.[5]

Recording and production

Ben regrouped with Trio Mocotó in 1970 to record the album.[6] They held one
nighttime session without rehearsing most of the songs beforehand. According to
Parahyba, this was intended to give listeners an impression of the mood that
developed as they played in the studio.[7]

During the session, Ben first sang his vocal for a song before the accompanying
instrumentation was recorded. He played the acoustic guitar for the instrumentals,
and specifically the ten-string viola caipira for the songs "Aparece Aparecida" and
"Mulher Brasileira".[8] He also repurposed a tuning fork, a device traditionally used
by musicians to maintain musical tuning among instruments; the singer instead
stimulated it with his mouth to generate sounds that resembled a harmonica.[9] For
their part, Trio Mocotó attempted to develop a distinctive groove with a rhythm that
would suit the rock or "iê-iê-iê" feel of Ben's guitar playing.[7] The band played Ben (center) and Trio Mocotó in
several percussion instruments, including the atabaque and bell plates.[9] For 1971; photo originally fromCorreio
"Charles Jr." and other tracks, Parahyba used the whistle of his sister's electric toy da Manhã and later collected by the
train as a horn instrument, breaking it in the process.[8] Brazilian National Archives

String and horn sections were recorded and included in the final mix but went
uncredited in the album's packaging.[10] It credited C.B.D. in Rio de Janeiro and Scatena in São Paulo as the recording locations for
Fôrça Bruta, which was named after the Portuguese for the phrase "brute force".[11] According to Robert Leaver of Amoeba Music's
international records department, "one can see a sly irony" in the title considering the heightened political tension in dictatorial Brazil
[12]
at the time and the gentle quality of Ben's music for the album.

Musical style
Fôrça Bruta has a pervasive sense of melancholy, according to Brazilian music scholar Pedro Alexandre Sanches. Songs that do not
demonstrate this quality in their lyrics do so with their melodies, arrangements, and Ben's "devilish" guitar figures, with "Oba, Lá
Vem Ela" and "Domênica Domingava" cited by Sanches as examples. He identified each composition on the album as either a samba,
samba lament, or "samba-banzo", which in his opinion gave the record an idiosyncratic sense of contrast.[6] Greg Caz, a disc jockey
specializing in Brazilian music, believed Fôrça Bruta possessed a melancholic, mysterious quality that departed from the carefree
sensibility that had been the singer's trademark. He also observed a heightened progression in Ben's idiosyncratic guitar playing.[1]
Music journalist Jacob McKean found it subtle and "stripped down" when compared to Ben's previous music, with his guitar more
prominently featured, his vocals "more intimate", and a "somewhat crunchy, folksy tone" established by the opening songs "Oba, Lá
Vem Ela" and "Zé Canjica".[13]

Songs such as the cuíca-driven "O Telefone Tocou Novamente" and "Zé Canjica", featuring a drum
cadence, experimented with unconventional percussion arrangements, resulting in rhythmic contrasts
"A single acoustic
guitar plucks out
between Trio Mocotó and Ben's instruments.[15] This rhythmic direction departed from his earlier sturdy notes against a
music's innovative "chacatum, chacatum" beat, which had become popular and widely imitated by the backdrop of African
time of the album.[9] While still samba-based with hints of bossa nova, Fôrça Bruta added understated drums as lush strings
funk and soul elements in the form of horn and string arrangements. Horn riffs were arranged in the seep into the mix. It's
all anchored by a
style of Sérgio Mendes on "Pulo, Pulo", in the style of Stax Records on "O Telefone Tocou
voice as smooth and
Novamente", and on the title track, which appropriated the groove of the 1968
Archie Bell & the Drells expressive as
anything Sam Cooke
ever put to vinyl."
song "Tighten Up". On "Mulher Brasileira", a string section was recorded playing swirling patterns —The Boston
around Escovão's cuíca, while the more uptempo rhythms of "Charles Jr." and "Pulo, Pulo" were given Globe[14]
contrast by more relaxed string melodies.[10]

Ben's singing provided further contrast and funk/soul qualities to the music. Along with his
characteristic wails and croons, he exhibited a newfound raspy texture in his typically languid and nasal vocal.[16] His singing also
functioned as an additional element of rhythm to some songs.[9] According to Peter Margasak, Ben can be heard "reinforcing the
rhythmic agility of his songs with pin-point phrasing, surprising intervallic leaps, and a plaintive kind of moan".[17] On "Zé Canjica"
and "Charles Jr.", he improvised phrases (such as "Comanchero" and "the mama mama, the mama say") as rhythmic accompaniment
during otherwise instrumental sections of the songs.[9] The singer also implored the name of "Comanche" occasionally on the album.
As Parahyba explained, it was a nickname given to him by Ben, who originally recorded it as a joke on "Charles Jr." A different
[18]
explanation came in the form of a lyric in Ben's 1971 song "Comanche": "My mother calls me / Comanche".

Themes
Women are central figures in Ben's lyrics throughout the album, especially in "Mulher Brasileira", "Terezinha", and "Domênica
Domingava"; "Domênica" is a variation on Domingas, the surname of his wife and muse Maria.[19] His preoccupation with female
characters led Sanches to identify Fôrça Bruta's predominant theme as Ben's "Dionysian body", referring to the philosophical
concept of a body that can submit to passionate chaos and suffering before overcoming itself.[20] Several of the songs deal with
romantic disappointment.[9] In "Zé Canjica", the narrator apologizes for being confused, sad, and moody while sending away a lover
he feels he does not deserve. "O Telefone Tocou Novamente" expresses grief and pity over an angry lover ringing the phone of the
narrator, who leaves to meet, only not to find her. During the song, Sanches observed a moment of catharsis by Ben, who raised his
singing voice to an almost crying falsetto.[6]

Ben's lyrics also appropriated thematic devices from the popular imagination. The verses of the caipira-influenced samba "Apareceu
Aparecida" and "Pulo, Pulo" were compared by Sanches to songs from ciranda, a traditional Brazilian children's dance.[19] In
"Apareceu Aparecida"—which employs the "rolling stone" idiom—the narrator rediscovers the euphoric joy of living after his
hedonism in a concentrated state.[21]
beloved has accepted him again; this led Sanches to conclude that Ben sang of

Some songs feature expressions of political values.[21] The nationalistic "Mulher Brasileira" celebrates Brazilian women regardless
of their physical appearance and was cited by Brazilian journalist Gabriel Proiete de Souza as an early example of Ben's attempt to
empower Afro-Brazilian women through his music.[22] In Caz's opinion, the lyrics on Fôrça Bruta reveal deeper concerns than were
found in the singer's previous recordings, shown most notably by "Charles .",
Jr in which Ben explores his identity as an artist and as a
black man.[1] Brazilian music academic Rafael Lemos believed it demonstrates Ben's process of placing "black heritage into
modernity", in the aftermath of slavery in Brazil and the continued marginalization of black people there.[23] According to one
translation of the lyrics, the narrator proclaims:

"My name is Charles Jr.

And I’m an angel too
But I don't want to be the rst
Nor be better than anybody
I just want to live in peace
And be treated as an equal among equals
For in exchange of my love and affection
I want to be understood and taken into consideration
And, if possible, loved as well
'Cause it doesn't matter what I have
I’m no longer what my brothers once were, no, no
I was born of a free womb
Born of a free womb in the 20th Century
 I have love and faith
To go into the 21st century
Where the conquests of science, space and medicine
And the brotherhood of all human beings
And the humbleness of a king
Will be the weapons of victory
For universal peace
And the whole world will hear
And the whole world will know
That my name is Charles Jr.
And I'm an angel too."[1]

"Charles Jr." explores black heritage

in post-slavery Brazil; O Negrinho
(English: The Black Boy) by José
Ferraz de Almeida Júniorshown
above

"Charles Jr." and other songs also use elements of postmodernism, such as self-reference, irony, and surrealism (as in the lyrics of
"Pulo, Pulo").[24] Some of Fôrça Bruta's characters and stories had appeared on Ben's earlier work, albeit in slightly different
manifestations. On his 1969 album, "Charles" was depicted as a heroic Robin Hood-like figure of the country. The sensually
primitive "Domingas" and "Teresa", also from the previous record, were rendered here as the more sophisticated "Domênica" and the
irreverent "Terezinha", respectively.[9] Ben sang the latter song in an exceptionally nasal voice interpreted by Sanches as an ironic
caricature of música popular brasileira.[21]

Release and reception

Fôrça Bruta was released by Philips in September 1970.[1] It was received favorably in Veja magazine, whose reviewer found it
impressively rhythmic, full of musical surprises and suspense, and comparable to a comic book in the way familiar fantasies and
characters are reformulated in strange yet delightful directions.[9] Commercially, it was a top-10 chart success in Brazil and produced
the hit singles "O Telefone Tocou Novamente" and "Mulher Brasileira".[25] Its success established Ben as an integral artist in Brazil's
Tropicália movement, led by fellow musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.[14] The following year on his next album, Negro É
Lindo (English: Black Is Beautiful), Ben delved further into the black identity politics of "Charles Jr." while retaining the melancholic
musical quality of the previous record.[1]

Fôrça Bruta's fusion of Trio Mocotó's groove and Ben's more rockish guitar proved to be a distinctive feature of what critics and
musicians later called samba rock.[7] Its soul and funk elements, most prominent in the title track, helped earn the album a respected
reputation among soul enthusiasts and rare-record collectors.[10] In an interview for Guy Oseary's On the Record (2004), music
entrepreneur and record collector Craig Kallman named Fôrça Bruta among his 15 favorite albums.[26] Recording artist Beck also
named it one of his favorite albums.[27]

In 2007, the album was re-released by Dusty Groove America, a specialty label in Chicago that reissued rare funk, jazz, soul, and
Brazilian music titles in partnership with Universal Music.[28] The reissue marked the first time the album had seen release in the
United States.[14] Dusty Groove asked Chicago Reader critic Peter Margasak to write liner notes for the release, but he declined,
citing in part the lack of American literature available on Ben.[17] New York-based retailer Other Music later named it the fourth best
reissue of 2007 and one of Ben's "deepest, most emotional albums".[29] That same year, Fôrça Bruta was ranked 61st on Rolling
Stone Brasil's list of the 100 greatest Brazilian albums; in an accompanying essay journalist Marcus Preto called it the singer's most
melancholy album.[30]

In a retrospective review for AllMusic, John Bush gave Fôrça Bruta four-and-a-half out of five stars. He regarded it as one of Ben's
best records and said it retained each musician's abilities over the course of "a wonderful acoustic groove that may have varied little
but was all the better for its agreeable evenness".[5] A reviewer for The Boston Globe said Ben's masterful performance of this music
—"a fusion of bright samba and mellow soul"—still sounded original and essential nearly forty years after its recording;
recommended even for non-Lusophones, it "transcends language and era with an organic vibe and breezy spontaneity".[14] NOW
Magazine's Tim Perlich called it a "samba-soul heater", while Matthew Hickey from Turntable Kitchen deemed it "one of the most
buoyantly textured and warmly melodic LPs ever recorded" and "Oba, Lá Vem Ela" among its "loveliest tunes".[31] In Impose
magazine, Jacob McKean highlighted the two opening tracks, finding "Zé Canjica" particularly attractive, and believed "Apareceu
Aparecida" features the album's most appealing hook. He also found Trio Mocotó incomparable in their performance and the album
elegant and exquisite overall, but added that Ben's nasally singing on "Terezinha" sounded unusual and the string section was given
[13]
slightly too much emphasis on "Mulher Brasileira".

According to Peter Shapiro, Fôrça Bruta may be "too dainty" or not adventurous enough for some listeners, lacking the stylistically
eclectic abandon of other Tropicália music. But in his appraisal in The Wire, Shapiro judged the album to be "something of a minor
masterpiece of textural contrast" and "a stone cold classic of Brazilian modernism", representative of the country's flair for "weaving
beguiling syncretic music from practically any cloth".[32] Upon discovering Ben's music in 2009, indie rock musician Andrew Bird
wrote in a guest column for Time that Fôrça Bruta is a classic of "raw and soulful Tropicália" and observed in Ben's singing a
"pleading quality" that projects a simultaneous sense of melancholy and delight.[33] Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff also
listened to it while making her band's 2017 album The Navigator, later citing Fôrça Bruta's string arrangements as an influence on
her "cinematic" approach to the album's lyrics.[34]

Track listing
All songs were composed byJorge Ben.[11]

Side one
No. Title Length
1. "Oba, Lá Vem Ela" 4:13
2. "Zé Canjica" 3:53
3. "Domênica Domingava num Domingo Linda toda de Branco" 3:50
4. "Charles Jr." 6:09
5. "Pulo, Pulo" 2:50
Side two
 No. Title Length
1. "Apareceu Aparecida" 3:17
2. "O Telefone Tocou Novamente" 3:51
3. "Mulher Brasileira" 4:27
4. "Terezinha" 3:13
5. "Fôrça Bruta" 5:15

Personnel
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[11]

Jorge Ben – guitar, vocals

Trio Mocotó

Fritz Escovão – cuíca

Nereu Gargalo – percussion
Jõao Parahyba – drums
Production

Ari Carvalhaes – engineering

Manoel Barenbein – production
Chris Kalis – reissue production
João Kibelkstis – engineering
João Moreira – engineering

Charts
Peak
Chart (1971)
position

Brazil LP's (Amiga)[35] 7

Brazil LP's – Rio de Janeiro (Billboard)[36] 9

See also
Cinematic soul
Jovem Guarda
Music of Brazil
Postmodern music

References
1. Caz 2011.
2. Sanches 2000, p. 176; Caz 2011.
3. Guima 2017.
4. Caz 2011; Bush n.d.
5. Bush n.d.
6. Sanches 2000, p. 176.
7. Parahyba 2005.
8. Parahyba 2005; Anon. 1970, p. 61.
9. Anon. 1970, p. 61.
10. Shapiro 2007, p. 66.
11. Anon. 2008.
12. Leaver n.d.
13. McKean 2008.
14. Anon. 2007.
15. Sanches 2000, p. 176; Anon. 1970, p. 61.
16. Shapiro 2007, p. 66; Anon. 2007.
17. Margasak 2007.
18. Sanches 2000, p. 176; Parahyba 2005.
19. Sanches 2000, p. 177; Anon. 1970, p. 61.
20. Sanches 2000, p. 177; Gooding-Williams 2001, p. 117.
21. Sanches 2000, p. 177.
22. Proiete de Souza 2017.
23. Lemos 2018, p. 42.
24. Sanches 2000, pp. 176-7.
25. Anon.(a) 1971; Caz 2011.
26. Oseary 2004, p. 353.
27. Anon. 1997.
28. McKean 2008; Perlich 2007.
29. Madell 2007.
30. Preto 2007.
31. Perlich 2007; Hickey 2013.
32. Shapiro 2007, p. 62.
33. Bird 2009, p. 67.
34. Willems 2017.
35. Anon.(a) 1971.
36. Anon.(b) 1971, p. 56.

Bibliography
Anon. (30 September 1970). "O super-ritmo".Veja (in Portuguese).
Anon.[a] (19 January 1971). "LPs".Amiga (in Portuguese). No. 35.
Anon.[b] (30 January 1971). "Hits of the World". Billboard.
Anon. (30 January 1997). "Ingleses detonam o Ano Rock com Krishna e Ácido".
Manchete (in Portuguese).
Anon. (23 November 2007)."Sound Advice on Reissues". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 1
October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
Anon. (2008). Fôrça Bruta (LP liner notes). Jorge Ben. 4 Men With Beards. 4M168.
Bird, Andrew (20 April 2009). "Andrew Bird's Short List".Time.
Bush, John (n.d.). "Força Bruta – Jorge Ben". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved
23 September 2018.
Caz, Greg (15 December 2011)."Brute Force: A Look at Jorge Ben's Recorded Work". Revive. Okayplayer.
Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
Proiete de Souza, Gabriel (30 June 2017)."Jorge Ben Jor e a independência da mulher negra"
. Medium. Archived
from the original on 27 November 2018. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
Gooding-Williams, Robert(2001). Zarathustra's Dionysian Modernism. Standford University Press.ISBN 978-0-
8047-3295-6.
Guima, Vítor (23 February 2017)."Discos Escondidos #039: Jorge Ben - Força Bruta (1970)" . Jardim Elétrico (in
Portuguese). Archived from the original on 17 October 2018. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
 Hickey, Matthew (16 October 2013)."Single Serving: Junip – Oba, Lá Vem Ela (Jorge Ben Cover)". Turntable
Kitchen. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
Leaver, Robert (n.d.). "Jorge Ben - Biography". Amoeba Music. Archived from the original on 27 November 2018.
Retrieved 26 November 2018.
Lemos, Rafael (May 2018)."Jorge Ben Jor and the 60's: A Black Man in the Modern Patropi"(PDF). Bossa
Magazine. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
Madell, Josh (12 December 2007)."The Other Music Update". Other Music. Archived from the original on 17
December 2018. Retrieved 18 December 2018.
Margasak, Peter (12 July 2007). "Dusty Groove Gets Groovier". Chicago Reader. Archived from the original on 17
December 2018. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
McKean, Jacob (2008)."Jorge Ben Jorge Ben (1969) + Força Bruta". Impose. Archived from the original on 1
October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
Oseary, Guy (2004). On the Record: Over 150 of the Most T
alented People in Music Share the Secrets of Their
Success. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-200304-6.
Parahyba, Jõao (21 September 2005)."Uma Noite Ben Jor". Trip (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on 1
October 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
Perlich, Tim (9 August 2007). "Perlich's Picks". NOW Magazine. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018.
Retrieved 24 September 2018.
Preto, Marcus (October 2007)."Listas – Os 100 Maiores Discos da Música Brasileira – Força Bruta – Jorge Ben
(1970, Philips)". Rolling Stone Brasil (in Portuguese). Archived fromthe original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved
23 September 2018.
Sanches, Pedro Alexandre (2000).Tropicalismo: Decadência Bonita do Samba(in Portuguese). Boitempo Editorial.
ISBN 978-85-85934-54-5.
Shapiro, Peter (November 2007). "Jorge Ben: Força Bruta Dusty Groove CD". Soundcheck: The Boomerang.The
Wire. No. 285 – via Exact Editions. (subscription required)
Willems, Jasper (2 March 2017)."Radical Roots: DiS meets Hurray For The Rif
f Raff". Drowned in Sound. Archived
from the original on 20 December 2018. Retrieved 20 December 2018.

Further reading
Anon. (25 July 2016). "Snapshots: 'País Tropical' Jorge Ben, 'Zé Canjica' Força Bruta". The Art of the Mixtape.
Archived from the original on 17 February 2019.An essay on Jorge Ben and Fôrça Bruta.
Rowland, John (8 February 2016)." 'Pulo, Pulo' and the Universal Language of Expectation" . Subdivider. Archived
from the original on 1 October 2018. An essay on the album's fifth track, "Pulo, Pulo".
Shetty, Arnav (30 November 2017)."Oba, Lá Vem Ela". Medium. Archived from the original on 17 February 2019.An
essay on the first track, "Oba, Lá Vem Ela".

External links
Fôrça Bruta at Discogs (list of releases)

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