My fifth favorite song from the first seven years of Melting Pot is a heavy one for multiple reasons. Most obviously, musically…”Me Libertei” hits bonecrushingly hard. That minute long introduction is one of the longest and hardest hitting ones of all-time…not just from Brazil, but ever. From there it stays deep in the pocket as Tornado raps about how he’s freed himself through his music.
Todo o meu canto sai do meu coração / Everything I sing comes from my heart
“Me Libertei” is also a heavy choice because it’s a song that I never would have tracked down without Matthew Africa’s help. As I detailed in the original post, I only had the song with no artist info, but even still “…eventually, as is often the case since he has a copy of every record in creation, Matthew Africa was able to identify that it was indeed Toni Tornado and that it came from this record, released originally in 1971.” Matthew responded thusly:
I’d have no idea of it at the time, but exchanges like these were fated to be finite. Matthew’s passing in 2012 is still felt deeply by those who were touched by him. But I like to think it’s through music like this that Matthew’s legacy lives on forever.