Search - Gato Barbieri :: Bahia

Too Short and Overly Smooth

Kurt Harding | Boerne TX | 12/14/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The liner notes for Bahia state that this album is one of the rarest Gato Barbieri recordings and they may be right. This was supposedly issued originally as "Gato" in 1982, but I never saw it in the stores even though I always looked for Barbieri recordings I did not yet own whenever I was on a record buying spree.

Further reading of the liner notes tells me that this is more "Latin-sounding" than some of the albums in the string of A&M Records issues that preceded it. Well, I 'm not so sure about that. There is very little of the staccato musical fury for which Barbieri originally became famous and an earful of the smoother sounds that characterized his A&M years. That doesn't mean that those years were a wasteland and it doesn't mean that there is nothing worthwhile on Bahia. But overall, I find Bahia both too short at just under forty minutes (they couldn't dredge up any bonus tracks?) and overly smooth.

My favorites here are the title cut, a very familiar tune, which segues into Sweet Emiliano and the rather tasty Mowgli. Other than those two, there is nothing at all to excite the listener though at the same time there is nothing unlistenable.

To sum it up, those who prefer Gato's pre-"Caliente" days are not going to like Bahia nearly as much as those who prefer his later works. This doesn't sink to the cloying commercialism of Tropico but neither does it rise to even the level of Caliente and Ruby, Ruby. The CD is accompanied by an attractive booklet which imparts basic information and gives those interested a shortened history of Barbieri and his music. Bahia is worth having, but is far from essential."