Meu Nome é Gal

Gal Costa opens "Meu Nome é Gal" with the confidence of someone who has decided once and for all who they are. The production is more assertive than intimate — a groove that locks in immediately, horns that punctuate rather than decorate, rhythm section with purpose and swagger. Costa's voice here operates in a different mode than her more ethereal work: direct, fronted, projecting into the room rather than drawing you toward her. There's something celebratory and slightly combative about the whole enterprise, an artist declaring a self in defiance of anyone who might have tried to define her otherwise. In the context of Brazilian popular music in the early 1970s, that declaration carried weight — women artists navigating industry expectations, political pressure, and the competing demands of tradition and experimentation. Costa sits in the groove with the ease of someone who has nothing left to prove, which paradoxically makes the proof irrefutable. This belongs at high volume, in a space where people are moving.