This album, released in April 2024, was a year-end surprise for me. Thanks to the American National Public Radio for listing it. Prece is a creation that perfectly synthesizes 21st-century Brazilian music. By drawing on tradition while making the most of what today’s technology can achieve in terms of sound.
The result is a whole series of oracaoes (orations) to Brazil and to life, which quickly become movements in the same piece. Prece means Prayer in Portuguese. Luiza Brina often sings in dialogue with guests, including Mexico’s Silvana Estrada.
However, it is first and foremost the extreme beauty of the musical arrangements that dazzles. Strings and winds combined with Brazilian percussion and a hint of electronics. We are swept away and transported into the diversity of Brazil, from wild jungle to urban wilderness to tranquil Sertao. This opus is worth listening to again and again. It reveals new musical layers.
Luiza Brina, who also plays guitar, points out that it took ten years of work to produce this album of “secular” prayers and orations, as the author said. It’s an album that Caetano Veloso and Milton Nascimento would certainly not disown. However, Luiza Brina is her own boss, don’t doubt it.
