It Was a River: Paulinho da Viola, 1970

Abstract

This article analyzes Paulinho da Viola's second LP, released in 1970, as a milestone in the consolidation of his artistic signature. Unlike his first album, this LP presents a more personal and characteristic sound, marked by the fusion of Paulinho's voice and guitar with discreet arrangements and percussive elements. There are three crucial points in this process: the way Paulinho highlights the compositional procedures, commenting on the political situation in Brazil at the time; the dissolution of the authorial voice, seeking an integration between his individual voice and the collective voice of samba; and a dialectic between the melancholy of the samba tradition and the restlessness in the face of the new. Thus, the 1970 LP marks the beginning of a poetic project in which Paulinho da Viola seeks a complete interaction with the universe of samba, erasing the individual authorial voice in favor of the collective voice of tradition. At the same time, the album presents innovative elements that point to the future, revealing the restlessness and the search for new paths within the samba tradition.