Going Out: July 2025
Hello again! I’m back with another report of getting out of the apartment and my comfort zone. Last month I reported on my mixed feelings about improv comedy in the context of Internet fandom. This month my feelings on the show I just attended are much less mixed.
A couple weeks back I started thinking about what show I should go to in July. Finances have been a little (temporarily) constrained lately, so I pulled up the schedule of free summer concerts hosted by the City of Chicago at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, and I believe I gave an actual out-loud gasp when I saw the lineup for July 21st: Joe Bataan and Novos Baianos, supported by DJ Rudy de Anda.
I never know how much context to give, so at the risk of telling you what you already know:
Joe Bataan has been a legend of Latin soul since the 1960s. Born to Black American and Filipino parents in Spanish Harlem, he was a key player in the Nuyorican musical ferment that gave birth to boogaloo and (more lastingly) salsa, but his career-long bridging of the gap between English-language R&B and Spanish-language tropical music means that he has often been overlooked by two separate canons; and his willingness to chase trends within both Black and Latin music has occasionally meant that it’s been possible to dismiss him as corny or a bandwagon-jumper (most clearly demonstrated by “Rap-O Clap-O”, a particularly lightweight entry in the disco-rap craze of 1979–80, and inevitably a bigger hit in Europe than at home), but his smooth voice, ear for material, and collaboration with high-level musicians makes his eight Fania and four Salsoul LPs (all issued between 1967 and 1981) one of the most rewarding discographies in US Latin music. I’ve been a fan for decades now: in particular, his boogaloo cover of the Impressions’ “Gypsy Woman” was one of the key records in getting me to expand my understanding of Sixties music past oldies-radio and critical-consensus canons, all the way back in 2006.
Novos Baianos (New Bahians) are a Brazilian band that formed in 1969 in Salvador, Bahia; a glib summary might be to say that they were to the Seventies what Os Mutantes were to the Sixties — a kind of Led Zeppelin-sized scaling-up of tropicália’s Beatles — but that risks collapsing Brazil’s rich regional tapestry into mere production signifiers. Novos Baianos drew as much from a wide range of Brazilian regional and folkloric music as from the internationalism of rock, and making the agrarian, northern, majority-Black state of Bahia core to their identity was (as it still often is today) a challenge to the centrality of the southern coastal zone, dominated by Rio and São Paulo, to Brazilian cultural norms and media concentration. Their 1971 João Gilberto-produced album Acabou Chorare (I’m Done Crying, after Bebel Gilberto’s baby talk) was a landmark that would eventually be declared the all-time greatest Brazilian rock album by Rolling Stone Brasil in 2007, and remains central to their setlist. One way into the album for Anglophones is: what if the spacy, cosmic noodling of the Haight-Ashbury scene (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, etc.) had a foundation in samba instead of blues? Guitarist Pepeu Gomes’ explosive, exploratory solos verge on heavy metal, while the rhythm section remains wedded to Afro-Brazilian rhythms that rock as much as they sway or nimbly dance. Although I’ve been immersed in Brazilian music for the past decade-plus, I hadn’t really take Novos Baianos on board until last year; but seeing the clip for “A Menina Dança” (The Girl Dances) during a sweep through music of 1954–76 I’d overlooked inspired by a Bluesky challenge shot them to the top of my must-investigate list. Naturally, singer Baby Consuelo arrested my attention (as had Rita Lee and Gal Costa before her), and I deep-dived into her solo career when my focus shifted to the 1980s for another Bluesky challenge.
So much for my potted history lesson, to be read, skimmed or skipped as needed. Now to the show.
I got off work at 5:30, half an hour after the park opened access to the pavilion and Rudy de Anda began spinning 45s — largely sweet Northeastern soul in the leadup to Joe Bataan — and strolled the three blocks down and two blocks over that takes me from my workplace to Millennium Park. The weather was ideal for a summer concert, barely having passed 80 at the midday peak and cooling to a shady 60 as shadows lengthened, with relatively low humidity despite generous cloud cover. There were already enough people with picnic blankets on the grass that I had to tread a little carefully to get to the seating near the stage, which was not remotely full, although the center section filled in towards the end of the hour.
Joe Bataan’s band took the stage before he did: a pan-racial mix of middle-aged and younger folks clustering around a wide range of percussion and horns. When the man himself was announced, he shuffled onto stage in a flat cap and a custom White Sox jersey with BATAAN on the back, all smiles and graciousness. He started by recounting a promise he’d made after a series of near-death incidents: He would open every show with a prayer. A punchy, soulful rendition of the Our Father supported by the full band followed, and I found that I had tears streaming down my cheeks. (You can take the cultural critic out of the Catholic church, but etc.)
The rest of the set was delightful, alternating between uptempo mambos, boogaloos and Latin funk and slower soul crooning. Joe Bataan is 82, but his energy was undimmed as he encouraged the late-afternoon, largely white crowd to get on its feet, wave its hands in the air like it just don’t care, call-and-respond “Chicago,” and clap in a clave pattern rather than on the one and three. The band was tight and responsive, with fiery, tasty solos on sax, trumpet, guitar and keys; and Bataan’s wife Yvonne Cepeda, who sang backup next to him (as she has since 1969), also jumped in with some easy, practiced banter. It was a thoroughly pleasant and nostalgic eighty minutes — “here’s one of your favorites” was his typical introduction — leaning heavily on the comfort of the Sixties. “Rap-O Clap-O” only made a brief appearance as an interpolation in a lengthy mambo-funk rendition of Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody,” and the center of gravity for the show being the Fania years rather than the Salsoul ones is an indication of the specific nostalgias that the comfortable liberal audience who supports Bataan’s late career is interested in indulging.
Nostalgias plural, because Bataan’s adopted pan-Latinism is as important as his R&B crooning: he shouted out “la raza” at the top of the show (a Mexican concept), sang “Chicana Lady” (a Southern California identity), and “Para Puerto Rico Voy” (I’m Off to Puerto Rico), the one entirely Spanish-language song in the set, during which PR flags appeared in the crowd as if by magic. But although “Chicana Lady” only dates to 2005, it’s written in a Sixties mode: the doo-wop, cha-cha and r&b that suffused Bataan’s early years are a more basic ingredient in his latter-day music than the salsa, funk and hip-hop he attempted to embrace in the Seventies — which I still think is well worth listening to, if only because it’s less familiar. The penultimate song was “Gypsy Woman,” of course — which even despite the ethnic slur is still one of my favorite songs — and the finale was his epic two-part take on the French-American standard “I Wish You Love,” which managed to be ecstatic even despite its hoariness.
And then a blissful wait while Novos Baianos’ crew set up. Rudy de Anda returned to his turntables, this time spinning some Brazilian platters: late Sixties bossa, light tropicália, exactly the kind of breezy mood that US audiences associate with Brazil. There was a bit of delay once the backing band had taken the stage — the emcee from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events tried to keep the increasing crowd’s energy up with some half-hearted trivia as the sky darkened — but when the three surviving original members of Novos Baianos finally emerged, the reason for the delay became clear: guitarist Pepeu Gomes was in a wheelchair, flanked by singers Paulino Boca de Cantor and Baby Consuelo, who emerged to rapturous applause — there was a significant, and rowdy, Brazilian contingent in the crowd, and it was the first time they’ve played the U.S. in their fifty-year career — and gave brief expressions of gratitude in rapid Portguese and halting English.
My initial impression was a little skeptical: Paulino and Baby were dressed in the flashy, spangly costumes I associate with cheesy Brazilian light entertainment, and Pepeu’s evident fragility did not bode well. But a lively opener allayed my worry, and as they shifted into second gear it was clear that Pepeu’s guitar playing was not affected; a raging “Dê um Rolê” made it clear why he had been invited to play with Megadeth and Living Color in the Nineties, and some of the older members of the crowd fled as the amp stacks blared feedback. Then Baby Consuelo, who had hung back with the percussionists for the first few songs, took center stage, although she apparently had problems with her in-ear monitor over the course of the evening, which repeated visits from stage techs were unable to solve — finally she took it out and let it dangle as she danced and sang in an Elza Soares-inspired throaty scat, which seemed to break out more frequently over the course of the show.
By contrast with her boundless energy, Paulino Boca de Cantor was relatively staid: hunched with age and looking a bit like a Vegas lounge singer, he stuck to his microphone until towards the end of the show she coaxed him over to where Pepeu sat in order to delight together in another of his intricate solos. His aging voice was exactly as smooth and mellow as any stereotypical Brazilian crooner’s would be, and only the playful, eccentric lyrics to songs like “Mistério do Planeta” and “Acabou Chorare” distinguished his performances from a trad samba-canção or bossa nova. Which is, of course, part of the magic of Novos Baianos: eccentric and traditional at the same time, they contain multitudes.
I wish I was more familiar with the band’s discography outside of Acabou Chorare in order to give a proper breakdown — flitting through their recent live releases on streaming services, I recognize a bunch of the tunes they performed, although not the order a few days later (and the setlist.fm record is very incomplete). I do remember being ecstatic at “A Menina Dança” — Baby Conseulo is still just as lively and mesmerizing at 73, bright blue hair, unabashed facial reconstruction and all, as she was in 1972 — and thrilling when she stopped the band cold during a run through of “Tinindo Trincando” in order to make them play it even faster, taking the second half at a blistering punk-rock pace. Twice during the show, Pepeu Gomes staggered up from his seated position in order to deliver a righteously climactic guitar solo — Baby’s breathless explanation, that he had recently had some kind of laser surgery, was not quite audible from where I sat — to the delighted roar of the audience.
The crowd for Novos Baianos was much more lively and engaged than it had been for Joe Bataan; in particular I noticed a lot more young people, many of whom stood and danced — or headbanged, as necessary — throughout, and I slightly envied them for casually having the kind of internet-enabled catholicity of taste that I didn’t achieve until much later in life.
One of the few English-language phrases Baby Consuelo spoke with complete confidence over the course of the evning was “glory to God” — she’s been an evangelical minister since the Nineties, which as someone with a passing familiarity with Brazilian political culture made me wonder cynically whether she was a Bolsonarista. A quick search says probably (and, incidentally, that my current Brazilian pop faves are vocal Lula supporters), although like any ex-hippie she’s carrying plenty of contradictions around under her colorful headgear: during her introductions of the backing band, she called the Black percussionist a member of “a raça mais bonita do mundo” (the most beautiful race in the world), to which he laughed agreeably.
But even if the current views are retrograde (Baby’s most recent Brazilian media controversy was over a sermon where she urged victims of sexual abuse to forgive their abusers), the old music remains idealistically utopian, and I find myself in the somewhat awkward position I was in as a young believer, where I have to believe that the perfection of the Message cannot be dimmed by the imperfections of its messengers. It was a uniquely intense, delicious, and nourishing experience to get to see and hear Pepeu, Baby and Paulino and their backing band at the opening concert of their first-ever U.S. tour, even though I hadn’t known their music until last year and hadn’t even spent much time with the canonical album until last week.
I walked out of the park at 9:15 feeling like I was floating despite the aching joints of vulgar materiality, and I’ve been resonating in the two days since with the echo of that joy and pleasure. I don’t yet know what the next show I’m going to see is, but a part of me will always be hoping for something as special. See you then.