Tim Maia / Racional

Welcome to the world of Tim Maia, the father of brazilian soul!

We believe it is an amazing interesting artist you absolutely need to discover, therefore, we have been looking for some great existing content about his life and early work with the intention to introduce you to two excellent album named "Racional" which results being an amazing mix of psychydelic trip and rational thinking. 

Also we  would like to introduce you to a recent compilation from "Luaka Bop Record" named "Nobody Can Live Forever - The Existential Soul of Tim Maia". Released in 2011, the compilation presents a fifteen track survey of Maia’s 1970s recordings, completely remastered.  


Hope you will enjoy this first post from La Musica en Verite.
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Maia
Maia shows an outsize talents and appetites for music since he is young, it enabled him to progressively enter the music business and suddently revolutionize the popular gender in Brazil in the '70s.  Tim had a potent and flexible baritone tone and was not only able a happy and energetic dance feel, but also capable of inspiring sentiment.  Throughout his career, this flexibility was evidenced through the multitude of styles he embraced: soul, funk, bossa nova, romantic songs, American pop, samba, baião and popular brazilian music.  

Today, Tim is recognized as one of the greatest brazilian artists ever. He is remembered as being an iconoclastic, an ironic and an outspoken character. He is also recognized as being the funniest, the most disrespectful character and an authentic "punk". He has the reputation that he never hid his true nature from his fans, his prospective employers, or the law. Polemical (but always humorous), he was openly addicted to cocaine and marijuana and known for lightheartedly missing appointments and even big-time gigs. In his career he has been boycotted by recording companies, major TV networks such as Globo, and other media that didn't swallow his disturbing presence.

Tim and the Music
There is no doubt about it: Tim Maia’s story is definitely the stuff of legend...
He started to write his earliest songs at age eight, and at fourteen as a drummer, he formed the group "Os Tijucanos do Ritmo" which lasted one year. He then took guitar classes and was soon teaching the kids in the neighborhood of Tijuca, in Rio. He soon joined the "Matoso Gang", along with  other kids like Jorge Ben and Erasmo Esteves. They named their group after the street where they used to hang out.
 
In 1958, a new friend Roberto Carlos (today considered as one of the main representative of Música Popular Brazileira ), joined the gang and started to follow Tim's guitar classes. As previously mentioned Tim was already teaching  Erasmo Esteve, and with Roberto Carlos, they quickly decide to form a band named "the Snacks".  

Later the band turned into "the Sputniks" and they started to play shows and perform on TV.  They appeared on the famous Carlos Imperial's Clube do Rock, On TV Continentalwhere Roberto Carlos was already a regular. It is maybe why he got more attention than Tim, it didn't please him and he started to argue with Carlos which lead to the splitting of the band.


In 1959, aged 17 and frustrated by the group spliting, he illegally emigrated to Tarrytown, NY where he studied communications, and joined a new band, The Ideals . Four years later he was jailed and deported for smoking marijuana in a stolen car. He returned to Brazil deeply inspired by American soul music and the civil rights movement and began writing songs in earnest.

In 1969 he recorded his song "These are the songs" in a duo with the mega star Elis Regina; it jumpstarted his career and become an overnight sensation in Brazil. Recomended by Os Mutantes, he soon sign with the Polydor/ Philips Label and recorder his sucessfull single Primavera.
 

 


In the '70s, Maia started to record albums and do shows promoting his indigenous synthesis of American Soul and Brazilian Music with elements of samba and baião.
 
Maia’s 1970 debut LP has been called “a massive cannonball into the pool” of Brazilian culture, the ripples of which are still visible today. The album linked Brazilian pop music and American soul in a way that was genuinely new, and it spent 24 weeks on the charts.  
We advice you to listen to the album and feel the soul of the Man at the beginning of his musical career.

   

In 1974, Tim is close to the top of his career. He takes the decision to leave the Polydor label for a double-album deal with RCA label. To get inspired, he decides to retire with his band to a house to spend their days smoking marijuana and experimenting with hallucinogens while working on new material. 

The result is really good as in a short time period they had a few dozen songs worked out instrumental grooves of true samba-soul formula, the only problem is that they had few lyrics

"The Revelation"
Close to putting the finishing touches on his fifth album he visits a friend and during one occasion he picked a book up from the table. Intrigued by what he read he took the book home with him. A couple of days later he rang his guitarist. He wanted an emergency band meeting to discuss this book that had taken over his thoughts. 

The book was called "Universo em Desencanto" and appears to be the manifesto of an obscure religious cult known as "Rational Culture". The sect teaches that there are no miracles, everything is natural. In order for the world to exist there needs to be a natural balance, and for a human being to achieve that natural balance they would need to read the book.

Within weeks, he started to dedicate his life to the cult and bended on a new direction for his double album. He convinced his entire band to join and live by its strict precepts (no drugs, no alcohol, no red meat, and no sex except for the purpose of procreation) . He started to dress in white robes, threw all material elements out of his life, painted all the instruments in white while performing and recording only for cult members...

Tim Maia had conceived a new sort of lunatic gospel music using images fron Science fiction and real evangelism . "Read the book, the only book!" was Tim's mantra, repeated dutifully on every track. Clearly, he was obsessed, but whatever dubious logic and deception were behind it, the end result is astonishing. 

The singer was in top form ( free from drugs and well balanced), his already powerful voice infused with a passion and range heretofore unheard.  His meticulous arrangements move seamlessly from pre-disco funk to thick, bluesy grooves, incorporating elements of reggae, psychedelic rock, and Motown-inspired soul, are really good, nevermind the lirycs.

In 1975,  Racional Vol.1 album was ready,  Tim was openly declaring "We came from a superworld, a world of rational energy, and we live in an anti-world, a world of animal energy." RCA  refused to be associated with the rational cult and refuse to distribute it so Tim quicly decided to found his own company,  Seroma and distribute the two albums independently in 1975.  

Few record stores agreed to stock the albums; fans were put off by the strange covers (drawings that explains the cult's philosophy) and abstruse song titles. While one track, the brooding samba-reggae "Imunização Racional (Que Beleza)," received some airplay, the albums were universally panned by critics. 

Commercially,  Racional represents the low point of Tim Maia's career. A year later, disenchanted with Cultura Racional, Tim broke with the cult once and for all, recalled both volumes from store shelves, and destroyed all the copies he could

Racional became a shameful footnote, one that Maia strove to erase from the public's memory, and it remained so until years later, when other Brazilian artists such as Marisa Monte and Gal Costa starting covering "Imunização Racional (Que Beleza)."

ORIGINAL SONG 
Here is the original Imunização Racional (Que Beleza) on Youtube


  
LISTEN TO THE ALBUMS
 Here are the two Racional full albums available on Youtube


While both volumes of Racional remained out of print throughout Tim Maia's lifetime, its legend grew. The few copies in circulation became coveted collector's items and, over the years, many have come to regard Racional as Maia's finest work. In 2006, Racional Vol.1 finally appeared for the first time in CD form on the Trama label. Today the album features at number 17 on the 50 best brazilian albums.

Available at the time of the post
 Check out this link to see the vinyl at Discogs


Available at the time of the post  
 Check out this link to see the CD at Discogs

 


We unfortunately can't go through his whole life. Despite his notoriety for missing shows and sabotaging his own recording sessions, Tim continued to receive invitations to perform and record for the simple reason that when he was sober enough, he could put on a masterful show or record a chart-topping hit. It just depended on what day you caught him and how badly he needed the money.  Tim was also famous for his drug addiction, his favorite cocktail was whisky-marijuana and coke; here is an interesting small video where he talks openly to young people about drugs on a TV show.

 


We would like to advice you to take a look to the Tim Maia Full Discography . As originally mentionned,  there is a recent compilation that was released by Luaka Bop ; a world music-oriented record label established by musician and record producer David Byrne, the former lead singer and guitarist for the art rock new wave band Talking Heads

The compilation is named ‘Nobody Can Live Forever: The Existential Soul of Tim Maia’.
and consist of a fifteen track survey of Maia’s 1970s recordings, completely remastered, commemorating what would have been the Brazilian musical legend’s 70th birthday on September 28.  

The release is the fourth in the label’s World Psychedelic Classics series, known for unearthing long neglected masterworks by Os Mutantes, Shuggie Otis, and one of the first compilations of African psychedelia and funk. (Really a worth to discover too).

 

LISTEN TO THE ALBUM
Here is the Youtube link ito listen to the compilation.
Here is the Spotify shortcut.
 



ON ITUNES 
 

ORDER IT ONLINE
At this time they are available at PLAY.COM at a cheap price.
Don't hesitate to group your buyings to reduce the delivery price per CD.

There is a special video that has been made for the launch
 of the compilation whose narrator is the great Devendra Banhart
A great annimation movie with the story of the man 
and the announcing of the compilation release.



There is another video released by Luaka Bob label
 "An introduction to Tim Maia"



An Introduction to Tim Maia from Luaka Bop on Vimeo.
We advice to follow them on Vimeo as they publish great content. 


SOME ADDITIONAL LINKS

  MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
  Official page of Tim Maia's Family
 Wikipedia
 Lukua Bob




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