Marisa Monte - Universo ao Meu Redor (2006)

Since her father was a director of Portela, one of Rio's most prominent escolas de samba (samba schools -- the huge, wildly costumed gatherings of percussionists, instrumentalists, singers, and dancers that make the annual carnival so unforgettable), Brazil's most-famous export is obviously in Marisa Monte's very blood. Thus, it's surprising that she's only now gotten around to recording an album completely dedicated to the style, but happily, it's turned out to be worth the wait. She wraps her dulcet, spicy mezzo-soprano, with its clarinet-like timbre that sometimes recalls that of Gal Costa, around a well-chosen set of hip-swinging charmers, accompanied by traditional instruments like cavaquinho (a harp-like small guitar) and assorted drums and shakers long associated with the genre, plus tubas, woodwinds, strings, nostalgic Fender Rhodes organs, and, notably, the guitar of Paulinho da Viola. Songwriters of various periods are represented, including Jayme Silva from the fifties, Moraes Moreira from the 1960s, and for modern times, Carlinhos Brown and the singer herself. Hers is the kind of artistry that awes as it soothes; it draws no attention to itself yet every song flows into another like pearls on a string. Lushly sensual and suavely intimate, the lady could melt a heart of stone. --Christina Roden