Various Artists: Glucklich V1: A Collection Of Brazilian Flavours From The Past And Present

Collectors of Brazilian popular music from the mid and late twentieth century, who do not have the time or resources to visit the country for a spell of crate digging, can turn to European and Japanese DJs who do the digging for them, releasing their finds on compilation albums. In 2023, most of those crates have been picked clean, largely by Japanese obsessives, but some bin-ends remain to be discovered.

Italian club DJ, spiritual-jazz auteur and card-carrying Brazilophile Nicola Conte's highly recommended Viagem series, which concluded with its fifth edition in 2013, on London's Far Out label, specialized in obscure Brazilian samba and bossa nova singles from the 1960s. Viagem albums have now become collectors' items themselves.

Just across the Alps in southern Germany, another DJ and Brazilophile, Rainer Truby, has been ploughing a different furrow. Truby's specialization is disco-orientated MPB-flavoured nu-jazz/broken-beat rarities, some recorded in Brazil, others in Europe, from more recent decades. After a hiatus of almost twenty years, Truby has in summer 2023 revived his Glucklich compilation series with a sixth edition.

As previously, Truby has cast his net wide, chronologically and aesthetically. The twelve tracks on the 2-LP Glucklich V1 were recorded between 1974 and 2011. Most are in questionable taste and some are so kitsch as to be positively grotesque. For collectors of obscure Braziliana, however, they are all fascinating.

Highlights, if that is the right word, include Brazilian singer Marcia Maria's Paris-recorded version of Danilo Caymmi and Paulo Pinheiro's "Brasil Nativo," from 1987, and German keyboardist Christian Knobel's eight-minute samba-jazz-fusion workout of his own "Sambomambo," from 1982 (view the YouTube below).

American expatriate duo Debbie Cameron and Richard Boone's "Stop Foolin' Yourself," from 1978, was produced in Denmark by Kenny Drew and Sahib Shihab, and Boone was once a member of the Count Basie orchestra. But if one had not been told, one would never have guessed any of that; the track is Euro trash with barely a trace of Brazil.