It’s just after sunset on the first Saturday of the month in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and a throng of revelers roll into record store Vinil do Mustafa, dragging their feet in Havaianas. Everyone is here – young people, old people, locals, foreigners, hipsters, kids, dogs. At the turntable is Mustafa Baba-Aissa, a 53-year-old Brazilian DJ who wears round, thick-rimmed glasses and an infectious smile. He waves to guests as he spins a healthy mix of soul, funk and jazz.
“Music has been a passion my whole life,” says Baba-Aissa, who started DJing at just 16 years old.
One might not expect a celebration to succeed in such proximity, but in Rio nothing is so serious. The once-a-month event kicks off outside in the afternoon as friends from the store spread out on rickety beach chairs, nibbling on empandinas and engaging in some light hitting. It’s only a matter of time before everyone starts singing lyrics and walks out of the crowded entrance that reads, Only culture drives bad things out of people (“Only culture drives bad things out of people”).
Baba-Aissa’s record shop sits atop a hill overlooking the Santa Teresa neighborhood. The small, low shop, with its traces of colonial architecture, may not be marked with any official signs. But it’s bursting with color – hand-painted rainbow bull’s eyes and lifelike figures of samba legends Elsa Soares and Clara Nunes. It’s no surprise that the record store found a home in Santa Teresa, a bohemian neighborhood known for its artists. Some people say that to understand a city, you must first understand its nightlife. This makes Vinil do Mustafa a must visit.
Before Baba-Aisa inhabited his current digs, he ran a shop nearby in the same neighborhood, an underground space that turned into an exclusive club every Thursday night. After the pandemic, however, the owner “wanted to see the sky.” In its new location, Baba-Aissa boasts an impressive collection of everything you’d expect, but it doesn’t say no to the odd 90s hip-hop album or movie soundtrack. It’s more important for an owner to keep their collection tight than to be picky about genre. “I don’t want to sell records wholesale,” he says. “I don’t want to have thousands of records where you walk into the store and can’t find what you’re looking for.” Instead, he carefully curates his selection, some of which he sells cheaply, although particularly rare titles can fetch much more.
“I aim for all kinds of crowds,” he says.
Although originally from Algeria, the record store owner has spent 37 years spinning vinyl in Paris, London, Detroit and the Canary Islands. Rio, he says, was pure coincidence. “I was playing in a club in Paris and a Brazilian girl came up to me and said, ‘Man, if you go to Brazil, people will love what you’re doing,'” he says. “I took a flight two days later and I’ve been here for 21 years.”
This girl was right. Vinil do Mustafa has become a real landmark for locals and foreigners alike. And it’s the crossover of customers that gives the store its community spirit. Because when a tourist inevitably gets lost on the winding hills leading to the store, a carioca will probably ask, “Are you looking for Mustafa?” and walk them there, just because.
The DJ does not buy his records online, nor does he sell them online. Because for him, it’s all about the experience of entering the store and giving room for discovery. When a customer shops at Vinil do Mustafa, a one-on-one tasting session with the owner (and sole employee) is almost guaranteed.
“Some people come in with records in mind, but a lot of people don’t know what they’re going to buy and ask me to show them things they don’t know,” he explains. “They will stay for about two hours and we will listen to a lot of things together.” All Baba-Aisa will ask of you is to undress at the door to take advantage of his plush carpets and cushions in the shop.
Every once in a while, a famous musician or DJ will stop by, driven by the rumor of Baba-Aisa’s treasury. Canadian jazz ensemble BadBadNotGood, the owner recalls, was one of the most memorable. “I opened the shop for them three nights in a row because they were crazy about the records,” he says.
The appeal of Baba-Aissa’s store coincides with a renewed interest in Brazilian music, specifically Música Popular Brasileira or MBP. “There’s a big resurgence of ’70s music in Brazil,” says Baba-Aisa. “People are discovering it not only in Brazil, but outside the country.” An offshoot of bossa nova – the complex blend of jazz and samba we associate with The Girl from Ipanema (1964) – MBP aims to appeal to a wider audience with acoustic instrumentals and politically provocative lyrics.
This genre spanned the Tropicalía movement, which swept through art, film, theater, poetry—and most profoundly—music from the late 1960s in Brazil. In 1967, the country was under a complete military dictatorship. Artists seeking to regain a sense of cultural identity turned to the work of the modernist poet Oswald de Andrade, who in his Anthropophagic Manifesto, claim to feed on foreign influences to create something uniquely Brazilian.
In terms of music, Tropicalía embraced the already diverse, regional sounds of Brazil – such as the high-pitched monkey howl created by the cuíca drum – and combined them with edgier genres found abroad, such as rock ‘n’ roll and psychedelia. “People started listening to other music, especially English rock like the Beatles and French people like Serge Gainsbourg,” explains Baba-Aissa. “And they started introducing electric guitars and other instruments that didn’t exist in Brazilian music.” Musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were among the biggest supporters, producing the 1968 album. Tropicália: ou Panis et Circenciswidely regarded as the movement’s musical manifesto.
These days, one can walk into any hip natural wine bar in New York and hear the tunes of some jazz-electronic or nu-disco musician sampling an MBP track, like Esbe’s rendition of Jorge Ben’s “Oba Lá Vem Ela” Jor (1970) in Darling (2015); or Poolside’s 2017 remix of Evinha’s “Esperar Pra Ver” (1971). Even Baba-Aissa’s favorite BadBadNotGood welcomes Brazilian composer Artur Verocaj to his album Speak Memory (2021).
Meanwhile, Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal’s animated docudrama They shot the pianist premiered last month in the US. The film follows an American journalist (voiced by Jeff Goldblum) who travels to Rio to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Brazilian pianist Francisco Tenorio Jr. in 1976. The soundtrack features music by Veloso and Gil, as well as Joao Gilberto, Vinicius de Moraes and Paulo Moura.
The film, which is presented in the vivid colors characteristic of Tropicalismo art, reflects the ways in which music flows like a current through Rio. That’s something Baba-Aissa hopes to capture at his record shop parties, as it goes beyond just bartering vinyls. “The shop has to be alive,” he says of what inspired him to host. “You have to feel the music.”
On this first Saturday of the month, Baba-Aissa proves that a great set is one that doesn’t fall victim to one genre. In his entire range of classic Brazilian songs, for example, there are a few outliers – “Da Funk” by Daft Punk; “The Real Slim Shady” by Eminem; The Rolling Stones’ ‘Miss You’ – which are both surprising and familiar. “I’m sharing something with people. I feel it and they feel it. It’s about an exchange: you and the crowd,” he says.
The thing about Brazilians, Baba-Aisa notes, is that they love to sing along, a phenomenon he hasn’t experienced to the same extent as DJs in the other countries he once called home. “Even if it’s in a different language, they like the music, learn the lyrics and sing along,” he says. “It’s just the way people behave in Brazil.”
For those looking to get into 1970s Brazilian music, Baba-Aissa recommends “the undisputed king of soul and funk” Tim Maia, Gerson King Kumbo, Cassiano and Marcos Valle, as well as musicians Robson George and Lincoln Olivetti, who despite releasing only one album of the same name, he created very popular music.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this style of music – which Baba-Aisa would probably say is best experienced against the backdrop of Pão de Açúcar – is that it’s like an everlasting souvenir. Once you hear it in Rio, you’ll hear it everywhere else.
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