Pianist and composer
Dom Salvador's impact on Brazilian music is incalculable. He is the architect of the influential 1971 album
Som, Sangue e Raça with his group
Abolição; for that album he combined Black American funk and soul with Afro-Brazilian samba and bossa. This work set the stage for bands like
Banda Black Rio and
Tim Maia.
Salvador has been living in the U.S. since 1973 and, for more than 40 years, plays a steady gig with his trio at the River Cafe in Brooklyn.
Jazz Is Dead label bosses
Adrian Younge and
Ali Shaheed Muhammad focused on Brazilian music in 2025. Their collaboration with the pianist is a cross-cultural conversation and an homage to
Salvador's achievement. He plays piano and electric piano here; his collaborators hired a band of North American and Brazilian musicians, an orchestra, and a choir to record at
Younge's Linear Labs studio. At the pianist's insistence,
JID024 was recorded in analog without edits, to deliver an accurate record of the spontaneous, exploratory celebration.
The principals jointly composed these eight pieces -- sometimes on the spot. Opener "Os Ancestrais" weds a simple samba groove with East Indian-sounding guitars, an insistent
Leo Costa tom-tom/hi-hat beat, whistles, strings, and
Salvador's celebratory, syncopated, wordless scat singing. By contrast "Nao Podermos o Amar Para" sounds like a funkier
Sergio Mendes & Brasil '77 with chorus vocals in Portuguese flowing over polyrhythms,
Salvador's Afro-Brazilian funk vamps with interlaced guitars, rumbling bass, hand percussion, and modal horns, all gradually increasing dynamics and drama. "Debaixo da Ponte" is a highlight with its mantra-like piano vamp laying a foundation for dueling hand drums, trap kit, and swinging horns as funk, samba, and driving post-bop deliver a hard, danceable groove as piano, baritone, and alto saxophones, bleating trombone, swirling flutes, and a circular bassline delve deep into the Afro-Brazilian jazz-funk maelstrom. While the gorgeous "Musica Faz Parte de Mim" is a lush, sultry bossa-jazz love song carried by the choir, flutes, trap kit, and basslines lie under
Salvador's brightly illustrative pianism (as an alto saxophone quotes from
Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On") while
Younge delivers telegraph-key pulses via electric harpsichord. "Minha Melanina" offers elegant, swinging, samba funk with a swelling horn section entwined with the choir.
Salvador digs montunos and Afro-Caribbean grooves out of his instrument, adding color, texture, and depth. The driving, jittery "Eletricidade," is a harmonically advanced rhythm orgy involving hand drums, a trap kit, marimba, and organ crisscrossing deep funk, samba, soul, and post-bop with mid-register Fender Rhodes harmonies from
Salvador amid kinetic drum breaks and horns channeling
Fela Kuti. Closer "Safira" reflects
Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" and
Bob Marley's "Jammin" in a humid collision of hypnotic polyrhythms, reeds, and brass. The
Jazz Is Dead crew outdid themselves here.
JID024 reveals that
Salvador, at age 87 in 2025, is still capable of breaking new ground while continuing to connect the harmonic and rhythmic cultures of Black American jazz-funk and Afro-Brazilian samba with abundant skill, creative vision, and melodic intensity. ~ Thom Jurek
