In the early 1960s, a series of albums by Stan Getz, including Jazz Samba (Verve Records, 1962), with guitarist Charlie Byrd, and Getz/Gilberto (Verve Records, 1963), with Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim, helped propel the Brazilian bossa nova to an unusually high level of popularity. But in Brazil, before there was bossa nova there was choro, an earlier instrumental music that has escaped popular attention outside its home country. On Simplicide, San Francisco Bay area's Grupo Falso Baiano takes the traditional choro sound, stretches it out, and adds an American accent.
Where bossa nova possesses a cool, sensuous, smooth-flowing feel, Grupo Falso Baiano's music has a happy, lively sound—danceable and ebullient. The quartet, featuring saxophone/flute, guitar, mandolin and percussion including pandeiro and zabumba, can sound, at times, like an freewheeling and exotic form of bluegrass ("Caminhando") and, elsewhere, like a wistful lament ("Rosa Cigana"). By DAN MCCLENAGHAN allaboutjazz.com
