Various

A definitive presentation of classic Brazilian music from the 1960s in typical Soul Jazz quality. Replete with extensive sleeve notes and photos across the two gatefold double LP sets, this compilation distinguishes Bossa Nova as a revolutionary modern music miles away from the cocktail-sipping image it accrued, a music richly informed by American Jazz and the innate Brazilian spirit of the genre's most important auteur, João Gilberto.

Against a backdrop of social revolution catalysed by president Juscelino Kubitschek, the modernist architecture of Oscar Niemeyer and the cinema novo films of Glauber Rocha, the traditional national style of samba had become stale and failed to reflect the ambitions of the country. During the 1950s a number of American jazz artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald visited the country to enhance inter-American political relations, providing inspiration to a generation including talented young composer Antônio Carlos Jobim and songwriter Vinicius de Moraes. Jobim de Moraes and Gilberto established a new sound with the release of 'Canção do Amor Demais', introducing sophisticated melodic and harmonic structures around Gilberto's unique syncopated guitar style which would soon be adopted as he naional pop sound and play a return influence on west coast American jazz and infect the wider world with its exquisitely crafted identity.

This 2nd volume features a further 17 songs by Antônio Carlos Jobim, Tamba 4, Pery Ribiero, Maria Bethânia, Jorge Ben, Geraldo Vandré and more.