Os Tincoãs

The third album by the legendary Bahian trio, originally released in 1975 on Odeon and finally back on vinyl. One of the most spiritually charged records to emerge from Brazil during the military dictatorship years. Hold on to your hats. Os Tincoãs - Mateus Aleluia, Heraldo and Dadinho - came from Cachoeira, in the Recôncavo Baiano, a region steeped in Afro-Brazilian traditions where Candomblé terreiros and Catholic chapels existed side by side, where sacred rhythms passed from generation to generation through oral transmission. The group's name refers to a bird native to the Brazilian interior - the Tincoã, a subspecies of the Squirrel Cuckoo. Their sound was called "africanto" - a term coined to describe their unique fusion of African roots and Brazilian popular song.

O Africanto dos Tincoãs deepens the spiritual explorations of their landmark 1973 self-titled debut. Stripped-down instrumentation - guitar, atabaque, agogô, xequerê - creates space for the trio's extraordinary vocal interplay: falsetto leads floating over two-part harmonies derived directly from the call-and-response structures of Candomblé ritual. The songs evoke orixás, ancestors, the ocean, exile. Recorded during the darkest years of Brazil's military regime, when Afro-Brazilian religions faced persecution and surveillance, the album carries themes of suffering and resilience without ever losing its gentle, luminous quality. This is music of quiet resistance.

The group remained virtually unknown outside Bahia during their active years. In 1983, Aleluia and Dadinho traveled to Angola and stayed - Aleluia for twenty years, teaching and tracing the Africa-Brazil diaspora from the other side of the Atlantic. Dadinho opened a bakery in Luanda, where he passed away in 2000. Their records fell out of print. Then the internet age brought rediscovery. Today, Mateus Aleluia remains active, a living connection to a tradition that Os Tincoãs helped preserve and transform.

Essential listening. A holy grail of Brazilian music finally accessible again. The real deal.