Fina Estampa
InFina Estampa, released in 1994, Brazilian singer and songwriter Caetano Veloso set out to recast classics of the Latin American songbook, most of them in Spanish. It is quite a challenge. Some of these songs have been dulled by rote repetition and over-singing. Perhaps it just takes an artist like Veloso, who understands the value of what not to do, to make them new. "Contigo a la distancia" gets an understated, perhaps melancholy, treatment that gives the song a long-lost feeling of yearning; "Pecado," originally a tango, becomes a sober bolero; "Recuerdos de Ypacaray," a Paraguayan classic, is performed to an austere solo bass accompaniment. Veloso might have set out just to revisit the classics, but by the album's end, he makes them his own.--Fernando Gonzalez