The genre of collaborative albums between a younger fan and an older hero has started to take on several distinct forms in recent years. Sometimes the artists collaborate as equals, writing new songs together – take Franz Ferdinand and Sparks’ 2015’s album FFS, or Elton John’s 2010 LP with Leon Russell, The Union. Sometimes, the younger fan coaxes the older legend into writing new songs, as Jack White did with Loretta Lynn on Van Lear Rose in 2004, or as Dan Auerbach did with Dr John on 2012’s Locked Down. Then there are those collabs where the ageing legend seems barely aware he’s making an album at all, as with Richard Russell’s <Bowfinger>-style LP with Gil Scott Heron in 2010, I’m New Here.
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There’s also the collaboration that’s actually a tribute in disguise, like Elvis Costello’s 2005 album with Allen Toussaint, The River In Reverse, where Costello revived seven obscure old Toussaint songs and co-wrote a few hymns to his hero. This is very much the approach that Esperanza Spalding has adopted here with Milton Nascimento.
Nascimento has been a legend of Brazilian music since the late ’60s. He absorbed some of the psychedelic innovations of his more provocative contemporaries, like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, but was more musically adventurous, mixing samba and bossa nova with the religious music of Minas Gerais where he grew up, the folksongs of Brazilian cowboys and the music of indigenous people. He also engaged with American jazz, recording several albums with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter from the 1970s onwards, and has collaborated with everyone from Peter Gabriel to Duran Duran.
Now aged 81, Nascimento is pretty much retired. He no longer plays live and his only album in the last decade was another collaboration with a bass player – 2015’s Tamarear, where Dudu Lima and his jazz-rock trio persuaded Nascimento to revive some of his 1970s material. Singer and bassist Spalding, one of the leading breakout stars of American jazz in recent years, adopts a similar approach. Backed by her regular band, she duets on some of her favourite Nascimento songs, singing an octave apart from him, imitating his deliciously chewy brand of Brazilian Portuguese.
“Cais” is a track from Nascimento’s landmark 1972 album Clube Da Esquina. The original is slow and dreamy, just an acoustic guitar and light percussion; here it acquires a sense of urgency with a minimalist piano backing. “Outubro”, a dramatic, string-drenched psychedelic ballad from Nascimento’s 1969 album Courage, is transformed into a piece of mid-’70s CTI-style style funk, complete with a propulsive bassline and a terrific flute solo from Elena Pinderhughes. “Morro Velho”, a delicate, guitar-led ballad from 1967’s Travessia, becomes a dreamy piece of chamber jazz, as does “Saudade Dos Avioes Da Panair”, from the 1975 album Minas.
There are several delightfully odd cover versions. Nascimento’s world-weary growl adds a wonderful piquancy to the John Lennon section of “A Day In The Life”, here presented as a crazed, Os Mutantes-style orchestral wig-out. He duets with Dianne Reeves on a slightly overwrought version of Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song”, but one that drives home the environmental message. “When You Dream”, from Wayne Shorter’s 1985 album Atlantis, is taken into Rio carnival territory. Even better is “Saci”, a ballad by the Brazilian songwriter Guinga (who also guests on guitar), whose title refers to the black, one-legged highwayman of Brazilian myth. Guinga’s lyric presents Saci as a mysterious, gleefully disruptive spirit, here evoked by the delicate, unresolved guitar and piano chords.
Spalding has also written several songs inspired by Nascimento. Some are just fragments – “Late September” is a one-and-half-minute freakout, featuring a garrulous Shabaka Hutchings tenor sax solo; “The Way You Are” is an intriguing 44-second mantra intoned over quizzical piano chords – while others feature snippets of in-studio conversation between Spalding and Nascimento. But some are superb pieces in their own right. “Wings For The Thought Bird” is based around a flute riff that resembles birdsong, and taps into Nascimento’s most magical, folkloric material. “Get It By Now”, meanwhile, is a dense, proggy piece that recalls early ’80s Kate Bush.
Best of all is “Um Vento Passou”, a dreamy ballad filled with traditional percussion and sweeping strings, where Nascimento duets with his longtime collaborator Paul Simon: two croaky octogenarian geniuses singing in Portuguese and bringing decades of wisdom and warmth to a fine song.
This is much more of an Esperanza Spalding album than a Milton Nascimento one. But what Spalding has been able to do successfully is subsume herself into the world that Nascimento has created over the last 50 years – a dream-like realm of folkloric myth, plugged into nature’s heartbeat.
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