Raul Seixas: Há 10 Mil Anos Atrás (1976)
Raul Seixas is sometimes called the ‘Father of Brazilian Rock,’ but he looks more like its grandfather on the cover of 1976’s Há 10 Mil Anos Atrás, whose title track recounts the unlikely stories of an ancient busker who claims he was born 10,000 years ago.
If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because original inspiration for the track came from one of Raul’s idols, Elvis Presley, and his 1972 recording of “I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago,” though the two songs have very different music and lyrics -- just the same idea.
When Seixas’ unveiled his version as a single 45 years ago (the full album, his fourth, would follow at the end of ‘76), he was unknowingly closing the first, most prosperous chapter of his erratic career and bringing a few things full circle.
Namely, this was to be his final release for the Philips label, the last for several years to be written in partnership with lyricist and future best-selling new age author Paulo Coelho and, as such, it boasts the most pseudo-mystical songs since Raul’s 1973 debut, Krig-Há, Bandolo!
There’s the morbid rumination of “Canto Para Minha Morte” (“Song to My Death”), in which he ponders the Grim Reaper’s due date, the numerology pagode of “Os Números,” and a guitar-driven reworking of Krig-Há’s “As Minas do Rei Salomão,” but all else here is as eccentric as ever.
Musically, the album indulges in the usual eclectic range of Brazilian and American music genres, often backed by female voices; there’s orchestral space pop/soul (“O Homem”), boogie meets Motown meets surf rock meets heavy metal (“O Dia da Saudade”), and romantic strings right out of a Disney princess movie (“Cantiga de Ninar”).
But you can’t fool me, Raul: the beautiful, piano-based “Ave Maria da Rua” (“Holy Mary of the Streets”) is clearly a reworking of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” though its references to both Christianity and Candomblé (including the Orisha mother Yemanjá) make the cop worthwhile.
Finally, like most Brazilian artists of the '70s, Seixas took sideways swipes at the censorship-happy military government in songs like “Meu Amigo Pedro” (a nostalgic conversation between friends), the whimsical “Quando Você Crescer” (“When You Grow Up”), and a song about protest songs called “Eu Também Vou Reclamar” (“I’m also going to Complain”).
In sum, Há 10 Mil Anos Atrás is vintage Raul Seixas, and while I’ll probably end up digging deeper into the doomed legend’s later-day catalog (he passed at 44 in 1989, destitute and wracked with physical ailments after years of drug and alcohol abuse), a numerically impossible four-album trilogy really suits the man known as “Maluco Beleza,” or “Groovy Nutcase.”
More Raul Seixas: Krig-Ha, Bandolo!, Gita, Novo Aeon.
