—Milton Nascimento

Milton Nascimento was born on October 26, 1942 , in Rio de Janeiro. His mother Maria do Carmo Nascimento was a singer who earned her survival as a maid. She died before Milton turned two. I don’t believe he ever met his biological father. A couple - Josino Brito Campos, a banker, maths teacher and electronic technician, and Lilia Silva Campos, a music teacher and choir singer - his mother had worked for adopted him.

So when he was four and moved from the coast to the interior of Brazil, to a small town call Tres Pontas in the hinterland state of Minas Gerais, Milton was born again.

Let me walk you through my jazz-oriented classic selections of Milton's work. The collaboration with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock is key. I don’t just mean Native Dancer, I mean if you listen you will notice that either together or singlely, Shorter and Hancock are on all but one of the jazz oriented albums that I am highlighting.

Wayne immediately strikes. His soprano sound in particular is a startingly twin to Milton’s falsetto—startling because the sound wakes us up from predictability to envision innovative possibility: it is possible for men to mate musically, even when they are men of different cultures.

As beautiful as Native Dancer is, I believe Wayne rises even higher on the April 1986 Sao Paulo concert recording A Barca Dos Amantes, from which “Nos Dois” and “Tarde” are taken.

It helps that both melodies are exquisite but it is also the sway of the rhythms fitted to those handsome arcs of sound. Rhythm is the secret sauce in all of Milton’s recipes and Wayne’s solos float with such delight we are mesmerized.

On “Saldas e Bandeiras (Exits and Flags)” Wayne is more earthy on tenor, down and dirty, dancing as it were flat foot on the dirt floor, his moves are more carnal though nonetheless subtle in their mastery of timing and tone. Sort of like how polite society looks askance at dancers who publicly shake their ass but deep down all those tsk-tskers are (or ought to be) envious; they know they can’t bounce their derriere like that, the uptight stewards of propriety just can’t make their bodies make those motions. You could point a loaded gun at them and they still couldn’t put their backfields in appropriate motion. So listen to the tenor of Mr. Shorter, there is no shortage of rump bumping.

On “Bodas” that’s Nivaldo Ornelas on sax (and flute) and Robertinho Silva on drums. When I heard that opening I knew that they knew. Then Milton follows with a full throttle declaration of independence from fear, from hesitancy, from cowardice. Milton confronts the world: here I am.

“Outubro” (October) is one of Milton’s signature songs. Here, he out-sings a full orchestra of over thirty musicians. Man, I wish I had been in the Teatro Municipal do Sao Paulo on the 7th and 18th of May 1974, to witness this magnificent merger of jazz and classical music. Especially since Milton was at the top of his power as a vocalist; don’t miss that last note on “Outubro.”

And less someone think I am exaggerating, think I am just throwing words on paper as journalists do when they are trying to impress readers, check out what Milton had to say in an interview for Fader magazine about these times and that recordings. Milton starts of speaking about the album 1973 Milagro Dos Peixes and then references the subsequent 1974 concert from which the live album was taken:

"This album was a cry against the violence against our lives and it was conceived at the worst point in my life. We lived under a very cruel dictatorship and many artists were forced to leave the country. I decided to stay and that was very hard to deal with. I just received a copy of some footage from two concerts we did in Sao Paulo for a live version of this album in 1974. One night I played with a symphonic orchestra and the next day I played for 50,000 students. It was magic."

   - Milton

The legend is that when Milton first released Milagro Dos Peixes, he stripped off most of the lyrics as a protest against government censorship. What was left was mostly pure sounds, sounds that unmistakably declared opposition to government death and oppression. Is it any wonder that Milton was regarded as Brazil’s most important artist of his era?

Milton’s voice was literally Brazil’s cry. Listen again to “A Chamada,” which first appeared on  Milagro Dos Peixes; listen and understand what Milton meant when he told writer Pamela Bloom in an interview published in Musician magazine that the Nascimento solution to government censorship was to “tranform my voice into an instrument. We’d write something, the censors would send it back, stamped No Way. We’d have to write the same thing in a way that the censors wouldn’t notice but the people would understand.”
 
The silence of slaves, the muteness of the oppressed is not consent to their conditions but rather an unuttered cry for release, for freedom. Milton’s voice expresses that.

At the core of jazz is the freedom of spontaneous creation. I think it is this freedom, more than any particular musical element, that Wayne Shorter and many other jazz musicians empathize with in Nascimento’s music. If you understand the freedom principal then there is no surprise in Milton’s jazz connection.

To fully illustrate the difference, I also include the original version of “A Chamada” from Milagre dos Peixes. As beautiful as the 1976 American recording is, that version is denuded of the political context and thus is abstracted into something simply beautiful: we do not see the scars on the body because of the silk raiment covering the welts and wounds.
 
You can hear so much more when you know what you’re listening to.

The second version in the jukebox, the original 1973 recording, sounds like 1973 jazz did—all those wild voices, everything is there. While the American version is simply beautiful, the original is complexly beautiful. One is a beauty to relax to, the original is a beauty that encourages struggle. We need both today. I am so glad Milton understands both the complexity of life and also knows when and how to keep it simple.

* * *

"I’m used to being the friend of my songwriting partners. So I would get there to the United States, and first you had to talk with the agent, then the publishing company, then the lawyer. The last thing would be the person himself, and by then I’d generally be tired and discouraged."
—Milton Nascimento

Yes, Milton lived in Brazil during most of the dictatorship, but it was not because he did not have an opportunity to leave. In fact in 1968, less than two years after his career took off in Brazil, Milton was recording an album in Rudy Van Gelder’s famous studios for CTI records. A&M thought they had the next Jobim, the leader of the next Brazilian wave after Bossa Nova. The title of the album: Courage. Ironic, isn’t it?

In some ways America drove Milton back to his comrades in Brazil, like Harriet Tubman returning south, Milton returned to Brazil to face the music of his life experiences and produce his masterpieces in collaboration with old friends.

Oh, by the way, Herbie Hancock played piano on that 1969 session, recording with Nascimento long before Wayne Shorter did although Shorter’s Native Dancer is usually pointed to not only as Nascimento’s jazz introduction but also as Nascimento’s first major collaboration. The truth is far, far different from the conventional wisdom. Moreover, as far as Nascimento’s work with American jazz musicians goes, the  brilliance of the Wayne Shorter collaboration notwithstanding, it is Herbie Hancock’s contributions that surprise me the most.

I have not been a big, big fan of Herbie as a piano soloist. I love, respect and admire his compositional talents and his sensitive accompaniment to others, and recognize that he is an important band leader, but his soloing never rose to the heights of the masterful except when he is playing with Milton and especially every time Hancock takes flight on Miltons, the 1989 Columbia recording.

If I had to take one Milton Nascimento recording to heaven (or wherever pleasant one goes after death—there is no music in hell, no music!), it would be Miltons.

Listen to those gracefully passionate piano solos, especially on “San Vicente” but also on everything else on the record. The elegance of “Don Quixote” is extremely attractive and the stately abstractness and dexterity of Herbie’s staccato figures on "Like Us" reminds me of a straight up flamingo dancer. But on “San Vincente” Herbie is dancing, full out, using all his moves. This is possibly Herbie’s single best solo on record.

Notice at the halfway mark how they drop out all the other musicians, just Herbie atop Milton’s rhythm guitar. You can hear them growling, literally, they are making those sounds one makes when you exert yourself with everything you have. Herbie’s hands dance with almost demonic exaltation. What a sublime duet. Damn!
 
And that’s how I fell, head over heels, inescapably - "don’t save me cause I ain’t dying, I‘m simply and voluntarily, blissfully drowning in Milton’s musical sea." If I don’t make it back to shore, so be it. So what. Ask Herbie, he knows. He’s been out there a minute, awash in this beautiful, beautiful whirl of Nascimento sounds.

 

I don’t understand longing for a path
That ended long ago
I still have unexplored lines on my palm
And they are numerous, innumerable
No one has yet unveiled the news
Even the wisest of men
Still asks himself
Where did I come from?
Teach me to feel!
—from Don Quixote
by Cesar Camargo Mariano and Milton Nascimento

I’m going to make it easy to get your Nascimento on. Here are five albums (and their covers so you can see what your are doing), one for each finger on your hand. Here we count like little childen; one, two, three, four, FIVE!

1. Milagre Dos Peixes – Ao Vivo (EMI 1974)
Contains “Bodas” and “Outubro”

This is one of Milton’s proudest moments. Democracy was still a decade away. The miltary was running things. Now listen again to that opening on "Bodas." Got it? This album clarified for me that Milton was far, far beyond pop music or even sentimental paens to his homeland. This was music deeply involved in the struggles of its day.

2. Wayne Shorter, Native Dancer (Columbia – 1974)
Contains “Ponta De Areia”

A jazz classic; pure and simple. If you don’t have it, get it; if you do have it, listen to it again.

3. Milton – (Verve-A&M – 1976)
Contains “The Call (A Chamada)” and “Saidas e Bandeiras (Exits and Flags)”

This is one of the best albums Milton cut in the United States. Both Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock are on this one, plus it includes wonderfully realized versions of a number of Milton’s signature compositions.

4. A Barca Dos Amantes – Verve – 1986)
Contains “Nos Dois” and “Tarde”

Except for Wayne Shorter, all the musicians here are South American. Joining Milton are Ricardo Silveira on guitar, Luiz Avellar on keys, Nico Assumpacao on electric bass, Robertinho Silva on drums and percussion. Wayne Shorter plays on three cuts. It’s out of print right now so it’s either hard to find or very expensive when you do find it.

5. Miltons (Columbia – 1989)
Contains “Don Quixote,” “Like Us (Feito Nos)” and “San Vicente”

This is absolute, without any doubt nor reservations the best album Milton cut. Inspired and Herbie Hancock out does himself. Absolute gorgeous (I’m repeating myself but really, it’s just that good.)!

The basic band is all-star trio: Milton on vocals and guitar (you get to hear more of his guitar playing on this album than is usually presented), Brazil master percussionist Nana Vasconcelos (who also adds vocals to the mix), and Herbie Hancock on piano and synthesized bass. Drummer Robertinho Silva plays on two cuts and bassist Joao Baptista plays on one cut.

There are also two choruses: an adult choir of six voices and a children’s chorus also containing six voices. Over twenty years after his 1967 debut, Milton delivers an amazing collection of music. This is a gem.

Be careful, Milton has recorded many different versions of most of these songs. If you want the versions that are in the jukebox, be sure to get the specific albums.

Kalamu ya Salaam is a New Orleans-based writer and filmmaker. He is also the founder of Nommo Literary Society - a Black writers workshop.