Review Summary: The second album from actor and singer Larissa Luz, from Salvador, Bahia, is intensely political, genre-blending, and an entirely successful work.
Bahia is the state where Brazilian roots music and electronic music collide. The astonishingly vibrant music scene of Salvador is a true melting pot where African music, samba, and other typical Brazilian musical forms collide with influences like reggae and rock, and more recent imports such as dubstep and trap. If you're looking for new sounds and fusions, it's a city almost without peer. In particular, African influences are abundant, musically, spiritually and philosophically.
The actor and singer Larissa Luz is a natural fit to this scene, and her second album Território Conquistado is a consummate example of the musical spirit of experimentation and genre blending that is typical of Salvador. It's an intoxicating brew - pretty much every genre I mentioned in the first paragraph is exemplified somewhere on the album - but what is particularly impressive is how natural it all sounds. The blend of reggae, dubstep and African rhythms with a samba-esque style of melodic songwriting on album opener Descolonizada is unforced and has a lightness of touch to it that belies the song's - and the album's - ambitiousness. Tracks like Nollywood successfully incorporate rock riffing into the mix, accentuating the anger that underlies many of the album's lyrics.
The album is not just anger, though - it's just as much about pride and spirituality as it is about raging against the machine. The album's ten tracks each honour a different black person who has in some way inspired Luz, in some cases people close to her, such as the tribute to her mother on Mama Chama, and in other cases people who inspire her, such as the legendary singer Elza Soares, who appears on the album's title track, delivering an absolute knockout of a verse. Being an ignorant white gringo who only arrived in Brazil a couple of years ago, I'm not able to identify all the lyrical references, but I find the album's mix of feminism and black empowerment to be inspiring and technically well executed.
The album finishes with a bang, the excellent title track being followed by the awesome closer, Violenta, which I read as a renunciation of violence and an endorsement of taking the high road - but one which is, paradoxically, full of anger at people who act in an unjust and oppressive manner. And with this track's explosive ending, the album is over. 10 tracks, 35 minutes. All killer, no filler.
There was some discussion between my wife and I as to whether Território Conquistado should get a 4 or a 4.5. In the end I went with the 4, despite the technical excellence of the album and its success in realising its concept. I feel that a couple of moments of pathos would elevate it into a greater work of art - although I found it to be a very enjoyable and thought-provoking album, for me to dish out a 4.5 I need it to move me.
This isn't a flaw as such, though. It's just an absence - possibly a deliberate absence - of ballads, and even of balladic moments. On its own terms, Território Conquistado is a triumph, and one of the best albums to come out of Brazil in 2016.
