Tom Ze

Tom Zé was a legend in Brazil years before he was introduced to North American audiences on David Byrne's eclectic world-music label Luaka Bop. Born Antônio José Santana Martins, Zé was a pioneer of the late-'60s tropicália movement, which blended Brazilian folk and dance traditions including bossa nova and samba with the metaphorical politics of a Bob Dylan or George Clinton, and the experimentation of psychedelic rock, jazz, and funk. Zé's Brazilian contemporaries include the great Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Gal Costa.

After nearly two decades away from the music business (the singer was working in a gas station when Byrne caught up with him), Zé came back into the public eye with Massive Hits, a collection of his songs from the 1970s. The album is a feast of jarring guitar hooks and gorgeous melodies, all mixed with layered, rhythmic percussion, horns, and experimental found instruments. This music had a notable influence on budding American and European avant-pop acts of the early '90s such as Beck, Stereolab, the High Llamas, Tortoise, and various electronics artists. With Byrne at the production helm, The Hips of Tradition finds Zé working alongside a group of New York experimental musicians including the Brazilian-born guitarist Arto Lindsay, formerly of the downtown avant-punk band DNA; Lindsay by then had begun mixing his dissonant guitar textures with jazz, rock, funk, and Latin rhythms, and sweet Brazilian mel-odies. On Hips, Lindsay, Byrne, and the other musicians never overwhelm Zé's vision; the album simply adds updated tape loops and grooves to the bedrock quirkiness of his earlier music.

Following another, shorter hiatus, Zé came back with an ambitious concept album, Com Defeito de Fabricacao, wherein his dark emotional-political narrative of an overpopulated Brazil takes a front seat to the music. The odd rhythms and melodies are still very present, but Zé puts a series of powerful stories to the music: Tales of a poverty-stricken third world in which first-world capitalism has forced the poor to become mindlessly toiling androids with "defects" -- the abilities to think, create, dream, and dance. People not unlike Zé himself. (MARK KEMP)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide