Smoking: Nei Lopes with Dudu Nobre and "Fumo de Rolo"

Today's song is Fumo de Rolo by Nei Lopes. Lopes is a 74 year old samba singer and composer who also happens to be a lawyer, writer and historian. Trained in the law by the University of Brazil, he abandoned his career in the 1970s to take up music. A partnership with prominent samba artist Wilson Moreira led to many compositions that are now recorded by almost all interpreters of traditional samba. In the 1980s, he was a leader of the pagode movement which brought traditional samba back to the radio airwaves after it had been briefly superseded by such new genres as bossa nova. Lopes has written extensively on Afro-Brazilian and samba themes and since 1995 has been working on his sweeping Brazilian Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora. Fumo de Rolo is from Lopes' 2001 CD De Letra & Musica and he is joined on the song by Brazilian singer and composer Dudu Nobre.