In a 50-year career, Milton Nascimento has both fought for human rights, and reinvented Brazilian music.
Early on, the Brazilian singer-songwriter fused international sounds like progressive rock and jazz with rhythms such as bossa nova, Brazilian classical music and folkloric music from his home state ofMinas Gerais. The new style became a movement called “Clube da Esquina,” or the corner club, and the name of an album he released in 1972.
Nascimento will share some of his most famous songs on Nov. 26 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. His world tour supports his most recent album, “Milton Nascimento — Uma Travessia,” meaning “a crossing,” which celebrates his career by revisiting iconic songs.
“I’m going to be honest. I have been very lucky to live such amazing times that I would love to have another 50 years of career,” he said in an email interview. “It’s a huge privilege to have the amount of friends that we see, the reception of the people in the towns and concerts. Living all this is a huge joy.”
Nascimento began performing with his friend, Brazilian composer Wagner Tiso, in restaurants and bars at night when he was only 14.
“We were so young that we had to hide in the kitchen of the places we used to perform at to run away from agents of the Juvenile Court,” he says.
Much of Nascimento’s work is political, touching on subjects like the oppression of indigenous tribes in Brazil, apartheid in South Africa and slavery, a result,he says, of living under the Brazilian military dictatorship, which was strong when he released his first album in 1967.
“None of it was thought through,” he says. “It was all a result of what we felt at the time. And coincidentally, other causes appeared throughout my life.”
Nascimento has a tendency to join the movements he composes songs about.
In 1981, he composed the music for a massive public mass turned into a musical play, “Missa dos Quilombos,” which told the story of a famous Brazilian slave, Zumbi dos Palmares, and discussed the exploitation of blacks through slavery during the colonization of Christian nations. It later became an album.
“In name of the Son, Jesus our brother, who was born brown of the Abraham’s race,” Nascimento wrote in one of the play’s lyrics.
“In name of the real God who loved us first, without division,” the lyrics continued.
The Vatican forbade the mass, and the military government censored some of the lyrics.
To compose his album “TXAI,” released in 1990, Nascimento crossed the Amazon forest from the northwest of Brazil to Peru on a boat. On the way, he met with several indigenous tribes and tappers who lived in the forest.
In the 2010s, Nascimento has showed his support to the indigenous Guarani Nation, who have been fighting for the right of land in Mato Grosso do Sul, a state in Brazil. He has done shows to benefit the Guarani Nation and participated in public protests in favor of the tribe.
Now 72, he can’t pick one favorite moment in these 50 years.
“I consider all moments of my life very special. They are years of many incredible moments, of which I cannot complain about,” he says. “Like everything in my life, things happen very naturally.”
He attributes much of his success to friendship and friends, two words he repeated several times in the interview. One of his most famous compositions, “Song of America,” talks about the value of a friend and how friendship can survive time and distance.
“Friendship, I consider that the biggest of all our goods,” he says. “I like to think of my life as a whole: the friends, the places we’ve passed by, and above all, the pleasure of living of music.”
Nascimento performs at 8 p.m. Nov. 26 at the John S. and James L. Knight Concert Hall at the Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd, Miami. $35-$125. Call 305-949-6722 or visit ArshtCenter.org.
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