Once again it is very difficult on a list such as this to thread the needle between everything that's worth looking into about one genre or artist, and everything else, without threatening to either swamp the whole project or grossly under-represent something. I'm electing the latter, with the caveat that there are a million places and more to explore Brazilian pop music above and beyond Menescal's sprightly compact instrumental workout. My taste for Brazilian pop started in earnest with the Beleza Tropical anthologies put together by David Byrne in the late '80s and into the '90s, which were my introduction to Jorge Ben, Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso, and others. I was previously familiar, of course, with Astrud and Joao Gilberto and all that good Tom Jobim stuff (although I didn't specifically know the name Jobim then), which probably made its greatest impact in the U.S. with "The Girl From Ipanema." I knew Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66/'77/'88 from their presence on U.S. radio, but not Os Mutantes or a lot of other landmarks until just a few years ago. A million places and more to explore, but you may as well start with the Menescal, because in many ways it represents a good deal of the commonalities you will find: joyful up-tempo expressions, production values so high that they verge on easy listening fare, complex rhythms in the driver's seat, and no hesitation to sweeten it up and then sweeten it up further with whatever is at hand: strings, quite often, but really anything that will do—here, for example, flutes and a vibraphone in addition to the strings. Once you start on this stuff, I guarantee, you won't be able to get enough. So my suggestion is to just go ahead and start by springing for the Jobim box. That should hold you for awhile.
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