Fernanda Porto feat. Chico Buarque - Roda Viva

Fresh for the rise of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, "Sao Paulo Fashion Week Vol. 7" brings together an all-star batch of Brazilian talent performing in styles that aren't what you'd expect to hear at a fashionista event. That's why Brazil's so cool, right? (Well, one reason ...)

Enjoy this one from Fernanda Porto, who made her name as a drum-and-bass diva (remember "Sambassim"?), along with veteran MPB star Chico Buarque. Production-wise, it's all about the Sao Paolo junglism, the liquid-funk rolling business that saved dnb from the tweaked-out heavy metal abyss. There much more, too: peep the ska guitar, the almost Tori Amos-like piano, and the delay tweaks on Porto's voice toward the end.

"Roda Vida" is taken from the award-winning Toni Venturi film "Cabra -- Cega" ("Playing in the Dark"). The movie is set during Brazil's military dictatorship of the '60s and '70s, during which many of Buarque's musical peers were jailed, exiled or kept out of work by government censors. As for the name "Roda Vida"?

Buarque took a huge career chance in 1968 writing and scoring a bleak, existential play entitled Roda Viva that was critical of obsessive fan culture. The play's pop star protagonist is torn limb from limb, his flesh consumed by his fans. In a move that sounds lifted from Julian Beck's radical Living Theater, the performers would offer the audience pieces of the dead pop star's flesh to eat (it was chicken meat). Needless to say, with a military dictatorship in power this was considered extremely controversial stuff and soldiers were sent out to disrupt performances of Roda Viva, which including destroying sets and assaulting performers, Buarque himself was jailed briefly. -- John Dougan, allmusic.com, via Yahoo! Music

If you're into the Brazilian stuff, there's plenty on this compilation to get you ready for some decent weather and some people wearing skimpy clothing. Patricia Marx, Tom Jobim, Bossacucanova and many more drop by, accompanied by gorgeous production. The packaging is top-notch, too: the insert is a little stack of handmade cardstock prints.

Buy it here. I got it for cheaper from Dusty Groove, but they're temporarily sold out.