“Brazil” (Used 33 times)

Axial, from São Paulo, melds traditional music of Brazil, Haiti and Africa with contemporary electronic and electroacustic sounds. The result is a bit like Björk mixed with Ceu. The group consists of core members Sandra Ximenez (vocals, keyboard), and Felipe Julián (bass, computers, production), with Yvo Ursini (guitar) and Leonardo Muniz Correa (sax/clarinet).

"Papaloko" is the opening track to Axial's 2004 debut LP, "Vol 1." Axial have since released two more albums under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license: Simbiose [2011], Senóide [2008].

Axial's website includes many side projects like a live soundtrack to Buster Keaton silent film and podcasts about digital culture. Their latest project, Bagagem is a free software for music distribution used by fellow contemporary Brazilian artists like Chico Correa (who Axial cover on their latest album)

Top Surprise is a four-piece from Minas Gerais in southeast Brazil. Their bedroom punk recordings that draw heavily on US underground sounds from late 80s and early 90s, from You're Living All Over Me and Daydream Nation to Slanted & Enchanted.

"Saturn (The Season)" has an especially Sonic Youth-y vibe. This jam can be found on a 7-inch as well as on the Everything Must Go cassette. Both releases are freely downloadable under a Creative Commons Music Sharing license courtesy of Pug Records.

Pug Records just released a split of Pavement covers featuring Top Surprise and Lê Almeida, available for free download here:

Top Surprise will be in the US for this year's SXSW Festival, so keep an ear out if you're heading to Austin!

Enxugando Gelo (Drying Ice) by BNegão e Os Selectores de Freqüência was not only one of the most acclaimed Brazilian music releases of 2003, but also a prominent early example of Creative Commons-licensed music in Brazil. BNegão posted the album to his website a month after its commercial release, and I found it through Overmixter, a Brazilian collaboration between Overmundo and ccMixter.

Bernardo "BNegão" Santos (born 1973 in Rio De Janeiro) is a former member of the Brazilian hip-hop collective Planet Hemp, where he shared lead vocal duties with Marcelo D2 and became the group's lyricist. Following a solo debut, Enxugando Gelo was BNegão's first album with Seletores de Freqüência, a full band featuring Gabriel Muzak on guitar, drummer Pedro Garcia, Kalunga on bass, DJ Rodrigues, vocalist Paulo dos Santos and Pedrão on trumpet. The music is an explosive fusion of hip-hop, bossa, samba, metal ("Qual é o seu nome" is super hard rock), and funk with a heavy dose of dub (dig the spaced-out "O oppositor").

BNegão is recognized for his lyrical wit, and a few of these tracks ("Nova Visão", "Enxugando Gelo" "A Verdadeira Dança do Patinho") contain lyrics that criticize the Brazilian government. You can delve into the lyrics here, and even use Google Translate to convert them from Portuguese to another language if you are so inclined.

The manguebeat movement is a cultural movement created circa 1991 in the city of Recife in Northeast Brazil as a response to the city's cultural and economical stagnation.

The original movement named itself mangue bit, "mangue" for Recife's mangroves and "bit" to the computer bit central to the movement's electronic music influences. Since then, mangue bit has been more commonly called manguebeat.

The stylistic origins of the music are in maracatu, punk rock, hip hop, samba, Brazilian folk music, and psychedelic rock. The first wave appeared in the 1990s. Mombojó is part of the second wave of the manguebeat movement. They were featured in MTV's coverage (Sintonizando Recife) of manguebeat along with fellow bands China and Maquinado.

Enjoy Mombojó's album NADADENOVO here at the FMA.

Brazillian pianist Felipe Sarro performs Opus 25 Alleluia and Opus 31 Préludes by French Romantic composer Charles-Valentin Alkan.

Alkan, one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of his day, was a friend and contemporary of Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin. He was a child prodigy, entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of six. Alkan was a favorite of his teacher, Joseph Zimmermann, who also taught fellow composers Georges Bizet, César Franck, Charles Gounod, and Ambroise Thomas. In his twenties, Alkan was a famous virtuoso and teacher in elegant social circles. Liszt once stated that Alkan had the finest piano technique of anyone he knew. This Romantic composer was a luminary of his time.

Felipe Sarro began his musical training at the age of eight and studied at Academia Musical Fátima and Santa Cecília Musical Conservatory. In this album on the FMA, Sarro performs Alkan's Opus 31 Alleluia (1844) and Opus 25 Préludes dans touts les tons majeur et mineurs (1847) in entirety.