The slightly throaty, liquid voice of Brazilian balladeer Monica Salmaso is sure to have its way with you.  The warmth and ease of her singing won her the 1999 Visa-Mastercard-Eldorado Prize for best singer in Brazil, and her first album, which featuring many of the musicians on this release, earned her the “best singer” title from the Associacao Paulista dos Criticos de Arte, the art critics’ association of the Brazilian press.

Iaiais sure to win legions of instant converts.  The songs, which range from infectious sambas to two which invoke the Goddess of the River and Goddess of the Sea of Brazil’s African-rooted spiritualism, are communicated with a hard-to-resist, relaxed warmth and openness of spirit.  Musical accompaniment plays a key role, with arrangements of understated brilliance.  Listen to the clarinets bubble away with laughter in “Cidade Lagoa,” a samba popularized in the `60’s by Moreira da Silva that jokes about the floods in Rio de Janeiro, Andre Mehmari’s imaginative piano obbligato in “Sinhazinha (Despertar),” and the gentle moans of the sax in “E Doce Morrer No Mar.”  This is a feel-good disc to play over and over.

-Jason Serinus