Alchemy and Ancient Astronauts: On Jorge Ben’s 1974 classic ‘A Tábua de Esmeralda’

Written By: 
Marty Sartini Garner
Share:
  •  

Jorge Ben didn’t need a hit in 1974. The Brazilian singer-songwriter’s Ben, released two years earlier, had capped a run that definitively established him as one of the country’s most popular musicians, while Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil’s tireless boosterism had cemented the legacy of his early work as a harbinger of tropicália, the defining sound of Brazil in the late 1960s.

Nearly every song on Ben had been either a radio hit or a popular anthem. He wrote one about the humility of a local soccer player that became so beloved the player demanded royalties. His social capital had never been higher, and he was free to do whatever he wanted. So he wrote an album about an esoteric medieval philosophy and ancient astronauts. It’s a masterpiece.

Ben emerged in 1963 with the cocksure R&B samba of “Mas Que Nada,” a song that instantly made the 21-year-old singer a star. Its success also locked him into a grueling cycle that saw his label push him to recreate its success, forcing him to churn out samba after samba and stifling his growth. Though he quickly burned out on the process, the training served him well when it came time to follow up Ben.

Unlike most of the certifiable classics of the era — Gal Costa’s Índia, Gilberto Gil’s Expresso 2222, Caetano Veloso’s Araçá Azul, Tim Maia’s Racional series, Lô Borges and Milton Nascimento’s Clube da EsquinaA Tábua de Esmeralda is a small-scale album. Ben’s backing band, Trio Mocotó, had established themselves as one of Rio de Janeiro’s preeminent funk ensembles on 1969’s Jorge Ben and the next year’s Força Bruta. But on A Tábua they’re so deep in the pocket it’s easy to forget they’re even there.

Gone are the screaming brass charts that powered the heavy funk of Jorge Ben’s “Take It Easy My Brother Charles.” Everything, including the occasional bit of orchestration, follows the sound of Ben’s voice. Even the emotional stakes were pitched low, a far cry from the heightened consciousness that tropicália had introduced; Ben’s primary concern, he told a reporter around this time, was that his music would “bring peace of mind and tranquility to those who listen to it.” 

Remarkably, he succeeded. A Tábua de Esmeralda’s sweetness, its sense of self-assurance, transcends language. While its songs don’t shy away from the complexities of Brazilian society in the early 1970s, it wears them — and, by extension, trouble generally — lightly, buoyed by the conviction that one man’s pleasure is sufficient to keep the ills of the world at bay, even if only for a moment.

The light of Ben’s happiness and delight illuminates everything here, radiating from his guitar’s nylon strings and the grinning sound of his voice, all channeled through the guitar, bass, and drums of Trio Mocotó and reflected back in Paulinho Tapajos’ sunny production. Plenty of records aim to give pleasure; A Tábua, for all its simplicity, is bright enough to blot out pain.

Throughout the album, Ben’s pleasure is contagious. He uses “Eu Vou Torcer”’s twilight lope as an excuse to list a few things he thinks are worth saluting: Argentine tenor saxophonist Gato Barbieri, the Flamengo football club, St. Thomas Aquinas, an unnamed friend who has a heart condition, the general fact of blue skies. The album-opening “Os Alquimistas Estão Chegando Os Alquimistas” heralds the imminent arrival of the alchemists the way “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” trumpets the titular group; “Ah!” you think, “a great party is about to get even better.”

As with the Lonely Hearts, the alchemists are both the stars of the show and completely incidental to it. Ben claimed that his interest in alchemy was purely artistic, telling a reporter, “most songs are alchemical, but always as a musical philosophy.” Whether or not that’s the hedging of a devoted Catholic with a potentially heretical interest in the occult is impossible to say, but one glance at the album cover’s illustrations of baskets of sun and dueling snakes makes it clear that these ideas were, at the very least, something he was willing to align himself with.

In philosophical form, alchemy harnesses the extra-scientific idea of turning lead into gold as a way of understanding pain, suffering and change. We naturally move through the cycle of birth, death and rebirth; the spiritual practices prescribed by alchemy quicken this process and allow us to purify ourselves. The aim: To enter a kind of co-working relationship with the gods. You become the purest form of yourself, and you make the world a better place. 

On A Tábua, Ben refines the unhurried vocal style he’d developed on Força Bruta. He sits patiently behind the beat, occasionally going off-meter when it suits him, his delivery recreating the calm control of bossa nova without an ounce of saudade weighing him down. He rolls words around in his mouth like hard candy, ascending beyond his natural measure to pluck a high note and returning to his base to savor it. He plays guitar the same way, moving with a soft determination and chunkiness that suggests he’s using a bunch of feathers for a pick.

It’s not difficult to imagine the appeal of Hermeticism for an artist like Ben, who hammered away at what he saw as his own leaden style as a young musician before he — and Brazil, at least artistically speaking — entered a golden age in the late 1960s. While the cycle it describes has been used as a frame for understanding change since antiquity, and the Christian narrative of life, death, and resurrection is baked into Western civilization’s storytelling and myth-making at an atomic level, Hermeticism tips the balance of power. It is the alchemist, and not the divine, who is responsible for their own redemption. Even if the end goal is union with the gods, it’s the achievement of the human that is to be celebrated. 

Thus, even when he’s not singing about it, Hermeticism is the ghost in A Tábua’s machine, its applied principles animating every strum and note. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of happiness in this music, which Ben delivers from a place of what seems like pure contentment. The ease in his voice, the simple assurance of his playing, the willingness of the band to stay so near to him, even the understatement of Osmar Milito, Darcy de Paulo, and Hugo Bellard’s string arrangements — they all suggest what it might feel like to discover that your hard work has paid off, that you’ve actually transformed into the person you wanted to become. 

Lyrically, though, Ben doesn’t explore these ideas in depth — at least, not explicitly; for him, the alchemists are mostly interesting characters who spent their life in pursuit of a noble goal, and who were convinced of a magic that lay beneath the surface of daily life. “O Homem da Gravata Florida” is a meditation on the meaning of a man’s floral necktie, which in Ben’s telling opens like a window onto the world’s natural harmony. While the man in question is the alchemist Paracelsus, the slink of the song gives it a sexiness that the father of toxicology wasn’t particularly known for.

The titular widow in “O Namorado Da Viúva” (“The Widow’s Boyfriend”) was, according to Ben, once married to Nicholas Flamel — he of the philosopher’s stone — and so carries the burden of mourning a man who was not supposed to die. 

More than merely a breath of fresh air, his contentment makes A Tábua feel free of ego, which grants him a remarkably clear emotional perspective. He gazes at the stars in “Errare Humanum Est,” in awe of the depths of the cosmos and wondering whether the gods were in fact visitors from another galaxy who have bequeathed us “a cosmic heritage.” Tapajós dials in echo and doubles Ben’s voice back on itself, setting him against strings that make the song feel like an answer to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” (complete with launch countdown!). But where Bowie stared out from the night sky and found nothing but alienation, Ben is struck by the smallness of human life and emerges both comforted and humbled. “Errare humanum est,” he sings with a shake of the head. “To err is human.”

Despite his many charms, Ben’s unworried acceptance of his own point of view does keep him from questioning some of his uglier motives. “Menina Mulher Da Pele Preta” finds him lustily eyeing a woman “with malice,” a jarring admission in what’s otherwise a gorgeous love song. And it would be easier to write off the pick-up artist maneuvering of “Minha Teimosia, Uma Arma Pra Te Conquistar” if the title didn’t translate to “My Stubbornness is a Weapon to Conquer You.”

Elsewhere, though, Ben’s robust sense of self allows him to fully embrace his terrestrial life as a Black man in Brazil, a country whose racial legacy is nearly as ugly as that of the U.S. On “Zumbi,” he looks on in sadness at a slave auction where an African princess is being sold alongside her subjects. Aside from the horrifying context, the song is one of A Tábua’s pluckiest, gently goosed along by what sounds like a triangle and a single thrilling fiddle line that rides out the chop of Ben’s guitar. But it’s impossible to miss the present-day implication as he wonders aloud about the return of Zumbi, the leader of a community of enslaved people who fought the Portuguese in the mid-1600s.

As Caetano Veloso notes in his book Tropical Truth, Ben was “not only the first great [B]lack composer since bossa nova…he was also and most importantly the first to make that Blackness [his] determining stylistic element.” Ben celebrated Blackness in his music, from his integration of American R&B and soul to the many, many odes to unambiguously Black women throughout his catalogue. His ability to build a truly Afro-Brazilian music nearly derailed Gilberto Gil’s career before it even got started; he simply believed there was no way he’d be able to do it as well as Ben.

Pleasure, then, is Ben’s ultimate achievement. For all its bright colors and undying charm, A Tábua de Esmeralda isn’t merely an exercise in escapism. Happiness, too, is part of life, as real and inescapable as the greatest calamity, and its persistence in the face of things suggests that the world is more charmed than we might sometimes want it to be. Ben sings from the belief that our time here is always on the verge of being transformed, and that even the darkest hours can be defeated by good humor.

This isn’t magical thinking. By imagining a better society, we begin the process of creating it, even if we never see it come to pass. It’s not immortality, but it’s close — the fire that lights the world springs from our sparking minds. “Jorge Ben became a symbol, a myth, a master for us,” Veloso writes. Bright as a summer day and dusted with practical magic, A Tábua de Esmeralda is the greatest spell he ever cast. Because it’s not a spell at all.

Related Articles

Sort By
12th Isle
2 Tone
2020
2022
2023
33rpm
45rpm
4AD
5 Selects
7"
99 Records
A&M
Abbey Lincoln
Aboriginal
Abstract
Ace Tone
Acid
Acid Archives
Acid Folk
Acid House
Acid Punk
Acid rock
Acoustic
Adrian Sherwood
Africa
African
Afro
Afro-Cuban
Afrobeat
Alan Ginsberg
Alan Greenberg
Alan Thicke
Albert Ayler
Album Cover
Alex Patterson
Alice Coltrane
All Genre
Altec
Amaro Freitas
Amazon Music
Ambient
Ambient Jazz
ambient techno
American Primitive
Amoeba Music
Amplifier
Analog
Anatolian Rock
Andrew Weatherall
Andy Warhol
Anenon
Animal
Animation
Anna Butterss
AOR
Aphex Twin
Aquarium Drunkard
Archie Shepp
Archival
Armenia
Art
Art & Design
Art Dudley
Art Film
Art Pop
Art Rock
Artform Radio
Arthur Russell
Article
Arvo Part
Ash Ra Temple
Asian Underground
Audiogon
Audiophile
Audiovisual
Austin Peralta
Australia
Autechre
avant
Avant-Garde
Avant-pop
Avant-Rock
Avent-Garde
Balearic
Bali
Ballad
Bargain Bin
Baroque
Baroque Pop
Basquiat
Bass
Bauhaus
Bayou Funk
BBC
BBC Radiophonic
Beat Scene
Beats
Beats in Space
Bebop
Belgium
Bennie Maupin
Berlin-school
Best of 2020
Beverly Glenn​-​Copeland
Bhutan Stamps
Big Band
Bill Laswell
Black Ark Studios
Black Jazz
Blaxsploitation
Blue Note
Blues
Blues Rock
Bob Marley
Bola Sete
Bollywood
Boogie
Book
books
Boredoms
Bossa
Bossa Nova
Brainfeeder
Brazil
Brazilian Folk
Breakbeat
Breezy
Brian Eno
Bruce Weber
Bruton Music
Buddhism
Budget Audiophiler
Cabaret
Calypso
Cambridge Audio
CAN
Candombe
Cannanes
Canterbury
Cape Jazz
Cape Verde
Caribbean
Carla Bley
Cartridges
Casio
Cassette
Cats
CD
Celluloid
Chamber Jazz
Chamber Music
Chan Marshall
Channel One Studios
Chanson
Charles Lloyd
Charles Mingus
Chee Shimizu
Chet Baker
Chicago
Chillout
Choral
Christmas
City Pop
Classic Album Sundays
Classical
Classics
Clothing
Club
Cocteau Twins
Coctueau Twins
Coffee
Coldwave
Colorfield
Comedy
Commercial
Community
Compass
Compass Point
Compilation
Concept Album
Condesa Electronics
Conlon Nancarrow
Conny Plank
Contemporary Jazz
Cool Jazz
Cornelius
Cosmic
Cosmic Disco
Cosmic Folk
cosmic jazz
Country
Country Pop
Country-Rock
Covers
Cult Classic
Cumbia
DAC
Dacne
Daft Punk
Dance
Dance Music
Dancehall
Daniel Aged
Dark
Dark Entries
David Behrman
David Bowie
David Byrne
Davida
Dedicated listening session
Deep Dive
Deep House
Deep Listen
Deep Listening
Delia Derbyshire
Demo
Dennis Bovell
Denon
Detroit
Devotional
DFA
Diasporic Disco
Dick Verdult
Diggin in the Mags
Disco
Discogs
DIY
DIY / Amateur
DJ
DJ Shadow
Documentary
Dogs
Don Buchla
Don Cherry
Donald Byrd
Doom Metal
Downtempo
Dowtempo
Dr. John
Dream House
Dream Pop
Dreamy
Drone
Drum Break
Drum Machine
Drum n Bass
Drums
Dual
Dub
Dub Poetry
Dub Techno
dublab
Dubwise
Durutti Column
Düsseldorf School
Dust and Grooves
Eames
Earl King
Early Electronic
East African
Easy Listening
EBM
ECM
ecoustic
ecoustics
Electric Lady
Electro
Electronic
Electronic Jazz
Electronica
Elegant Pop
Elvin Jones
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam
Enossified
Environmental Music
EOY
Eric Dolphy
ESG
Esoteric
ESP Institute
Essential Listen
Essential Listening
Essential Listenning
Ethereal
Ethiopian Jazz
Ethnic
Event
Events
Exotica
Experimental
Factory Records
Faye Wong
Feel Good All Over
Fela Kuti
Festival
Field recording
Films
Fingertracks
Fingetracks
Fishing with John
Fleetwood Sound Company
Floating
Floating Points
Folk
Folk Funk
Folk-Rock
Fonts
Footwork
Fourth World
France
Free Improvisation
Free Jazz
Friends of ISC
Frippertronics
Fundraiser
Funk
Fusion
G-Funk
G.S. Schray
Gal Costa
Gamelan
Garage Rock
Garrard
Gems from the Dollar Bin
George Martin
George Oban
German techno
Gifts
Gilberto Gil
Glam Rock
Glitch
Gogo
Gospel
Grado
Graphic Novel
Grateful Dead
Group Sounds
Growing Bin
Guide
Guitar
Gwo Ka
Gypsy
Habitat Ensemble
Haçienda Club
halloween
Hard Bop
Hard Rock
Harold Budd
Harp
Harry Nilsson
Haruomi Hosono
headphones
Heavy Metal
Henry Lewy
Herbie Hancock
hi-fi
hi-NRG
Hidden Gem
Highlife
Hip Hop
Hip-Hop
Hiroshi Yoshimura
history
Holger Czukay
Holiday
Hollywood
Holy Grail
Home Listening
House
Hypnotic
Iasos
Ibiza
IDM
Illbient
Illustration
Improvisation
Impulse!
In Conversation
In Stock
India
Indian
Indian Classical
Indie
Indie Rock
Industrial
Ingmar Bergman
Installation
Instrumental
International
Interview
ISC Classic
ISC Collection
isc guide
ISC NYC
ISC Record Store
ISC Selects
Island Records
Isolation
Italo Disco
Italo House
Italy
Jackie McLean
Jah Shaka
Jamaica
James Baldwin
Jangle Pop
Japan
Japananese
Japanese
Jazz
jazz funk
jazz kissa
Jazz-funk
Jazz-rock
JBL
John Coltrane
John Fahey
John Martyn
Jon Hassell
Joni Mitchell
Judee Sill
Jungle
K-pop
K. Leimer
Kankyo Ongaku
Keiji Haino
Keith Haring
Keith Jarrett
Kid-Friendly
Kim Yaffa
Kitty Records
Klaus Schulze
Klipsch
Kompakt
Kosmiche
Kosmische
KPM
Kraftwerk
Kranky
Krautrock
Kruatrock
kwaito
L.Shankar
La Monte Young
Labels We Love
Lafawndah
Lagniappe Sessions
Laraaji
Larry Levan
Last Resort
Laswell
Latin
Latin Jazz
Laurel Canyon
Laurie Spiegel
Leaving Records
Lebanese
Lee Scratch Perry
Left-field
Leftfield
Lena Horne
Les Baxter
Lester Bowie
Library
Library Music
Liquid Liquid
Listening
Listening bar
Listening Party
Listening Session
Live Performance
Live Recording
Loose Ends
Loren Mazzacane Connors
Los Angeles
Lost & Sound
lost and sound
Louisiana Blues
Lounge
Lounge Lizards
Love Songs
Lovefingers
Lovely Music Ltd.
Lovers Rock
Luaka Bop
Mad Professor
Magazine
Mandopop
Marantz
Marcel Duchamp
Marcella Cytrynowicz
Marcos Valle
Mark E. Smith
mbaqanga
McCoy Tyner
McIntosh
Meditation
Meditational
Meditative
Melancholic
Mellow
Melody As Truth
Meredith Monk
Metal
Mexico
Miami
Michael Franks
Microhouse
Mid-Century
Miles Davis
Milford Graves
Mills College
Minako Yoshida
Minimal
Minimal Techno
Minimal Wave
Minneapolis Sound
Mixes
Mixtape
Mizell Brothers
mo wax
Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs
Modal
Modern Classical
Modern Soul
Modular Synthesis
Moki Cherry
Mono
Mort Garson
Motown
MPB
MTV
Munich
Music Blog
Music from Memory
Music Interior
Music Therapy
Music Video
Musique Concrète
Mwandishi
Narrative
Neneh Cherry
Neo Soul
Neptunes
New Age
New Islands
New Jack Swing
New Music
New Orleans
New Wave
New York
News
Nico
Nightmares on Wax
Nina Simone
No Wave
Noise
Non-Profit
Northern Soul
Now Sound
NTS
Nubian Pop
Nubian Soul
Numero Group
NYC
OBI
Obscure
Obscure Sound
Occult
On Screen
On-U Sound
online radio
Opera
Organ
Organic
Organic Music
Ornette Coleman
Ortofon
Oswalds Mill Audio
Outsider Pop
Overtone Singing
Painting
Painting with John
Pandit Pran Nath
Paradise Garage
Pastoral
Patrick Cowley
Paul Horn
Paul McCartney
Pauline Oliveros
PBS
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Pensive
Percussion
Pharoah Sanders
Phillip Glass
Philly Soul
Piano
Pioneer
Plantasia
Plants
Player Piano
playlist
Playlists
Plinth
Podcast
Poetry
Political
Polygonia
Pop
Pop Art
Pop not Slop
Pop Rock
Popp
Popul Vuh
Post Bop
Post Rock
Post-Punk
Post-Rock
Power Pop
Premiere
Prince
Private Press
Pro-Ject
Producer
Productions
Professor Longhair
Prog Rock
Progressive
Progressive Rock
Prophet-5
Proto-techno
Psych-folk
Psychedelic
Psychedelic Rock
Psychic Hotline
Psyhedelic
Punk
Qobuz
Quadraphonic
QUARK
Quiet Storm
R&B
Radio
Raga
Rare Groove
rca victor
Receivers
Record Fair
Record Label
Record Store
Record Stores
Record Stories
Reggae
Reggaeton
Reissue
Reissues
Releases
Religious
Remix
Retrospective
Rock
Rocksteady
Roland
Roland Kirk
Roller Skate
Room Recordings
Room Treatment
Roots Reggae
Rotary Mixers
Rough Trade
Rudy Van Gelder
Russia
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Ryuichi Sakmoto
Sacred
Sade
Sam Gendel
Samba
Sample
Samples
San Francisco
Saxophone
Sci-fi
Séance Centre
Seefeel
Sensual
Shamisen
share
Shibuya-kei
Shoegaze
Silver Apples
Simeon Coxe
Singer-Songwriter
Sisters with Transistors
Ska
Sly & Robbie
Smooth Jazz
Soft Rock
Solid State
Songwriting
Sonia Pottinger
Sonny Sharrock
Soul
Soul-jazz
Sound Art
Sound Collage
Sound Installation
Soundsystems
Soundtrack
South Africa
South African
South America
Southern Soul
Space Rock
Spain
Speaker
speakers
Spiritual
Spiritual Jazz
Spoken Word
Squama Records
Staff Picks
Steely Dan
Stereolab
Stereophile
Steven Halpern
Stevie Wonder
Stoner Rock
stores we love
Stories
Streaming
Street Soul
Studio One
Substack
Sun Ra
Sunn O)))
Supergroup
Surround Sound
Susumu Yokota
Suzanne Cianni
Suzanne Kraft
Suzanne Langille
Swamp Rock
SYNG
Synth
Synth Pop
Synth-pop
Synthesizer
Synthwave
Taarab
Tadanori Yokoo
Takoma Records
Tangerine Dream
Tape
Tapes
TD-160
Technics
Techno
Techno Pop
Tel Aviv
Television
Terry Callier
Terry Riley
The Beatles
The Broad
The Fall
The Loft
The Meters
The Mizell Brothers
The Music Center
The Orb
The World Stage
Theater
Thelonious Monk
Third Side Music
Third Stream
This Mortal Coil
Thomas Fehlman
Thorens
Tim Sweeney
Time Capsule
Too Pure Records
Total Luxury Spa
Traditional
Tribal
Trip-hop
Tropical
Tropicalia
Tuareg
Tube
Turntable
Turntable Lab
TV
UK
UK Jazz
Ultramarine
Underground Resistance
Underrated
Val Wilmer
Vandersteen
Vanity Fair
Velvet Underground
Vice
Video
Video Art
Vince Guaraldi
Vintage
Vintage Audio
Vintage Gear
vinyl
Virginia Astley
Visible Cloaks
Visual Art
Vocal
Vocal Jazz
Vocoder
Wackies
Wah Wah Watson
Walearic
Wally Badarou
Warp
Water
Website
Werner Herzog
West Africa
West African
Western Acoustics
Windham Hill
wiring
World
Wrecking Crew
Yacht Rock
Yamaha
Yann Tomita
Yasuaki Shimizu
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Yma Sumac
YouTube
Yukihiro Takahashi
Zamrock
Zither