Fábio: the Brazilian master of funk and psychedelia
The 1960s was a particularly vibrant period for music and art in a worldwide sense. All of a sudden, it was as though the floodgates had opened, ushering in an era of incredible artistic expression. The hippie boom of the United States is often seen as ground zero for this cultural explosion, but if you were to look further south, the music rising out of places like Brazil, Peru and Paraguay far eclipsed the popular stylings of US acts. Especially in Brazil, there was such an influx of groundbreaking new artists that some were able to exist under the radar, few more so than João Zenon Rolón – better known as Fábio.
Fábio is one of those people who were always destined for musical greatness. Born in Paraguay in 1946, the young musician seemed to soak up inspiration wherever he went. It did not take long for Fábio to relocate to Brazil, which was experiencing an extraordinarily exciting period for music during the 1960s, as the unique sounds of bossa nova began to integrate with the modern sounds of psychedelic rock. As he began his performing career, Fábio leant heavily into this innovative new sound of bossa nova and rock unity.
Admittedly, a lot of musicians were mixing rock with bossa nova at the time, making Fábio’s efforts seem fairly unremarkable. However, the budding young musician took the sound one step further, by incorporating the distinctive styles of American soul and funk. Reportedly, Fábio was introduced to these euphoric sounds via the classic Sam Cooke track ‘Wonderful World’, shown to him by his fellow Brazilian musician Tim Maia.
Up until that point, Fábio had pretty much exclusively performed songs from his native Paraguay, occasionally dipping into fairly standard Brazilian rock and roll. With this newfound love for funk and soul, however, he was able to pioneer a sound that was unlike anything that the Brazilian music scene had ever heard previously. Bossa nova does lend itself quite easily to funk and soul, but the scene was largely limited to the industrial areas of Detroit and Chicago up in the USA. Fábio was among the first to introduce the music to South America.
It was around this time, too, that psychedelic rock began to permeate through the musical mainstream. What had begun as a fairly underground scene in San Francisco had now been adopted by global superstars like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, infiltrating music scenes around the world. Brazil was particularly taken by this psych revolution, with Fábio quickly adding it to his growing body of influences.
On his debut single, first released in 1968, Fábio established this genre-bending style of Latin psychedelic funk rock with the conspicuously titled track ‘Lindo Sonho Delirante’. The title was apparently inspired by the seminal Beatles song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, the initials of which spelt out ‘LSD’. In terms of sound, however, the piece has much more in common with the infectious soul of artists like James Brown, even down to the irreverent ad-libs Fábio adds in between lyrics.
Even today, there are very few tracks out there which are able to blend so many genres together in such a seamless fashion. ‘LSD’ should be hailed among the greatest debut singles of all time, but tragically, Fábio’s entire discography remains criminally underrated outside of Latin America. Thankfully, the single was recently reissued by Portuguese label Groovie Records, so perhaps we will witness a resurgence in the music of Fábio sometime soon.
