Music and Stories of the Late-Brazilian Funk Master Tim Maia

A new collection of songs by Brazilian funk musician Tim Maia is out on the Luaka Bop label.

The guy who runs the label, Yale Evelev, heard we were interested in speaking with Tim Maia.

He called and left a voice mail, saying that Tim Maia had died in 1998 at the age of 55.

However, Evelev offered a few other people who knew Tim Maia. One of them was musician Roger Bruno.

In the early 60s they were both in a band called “The Ideals.”

Tim Maia was a young, upstart musician then and had come to the US from Brazil in the late 50s, but he got deported a few years later for drug possession.

Roger Bruno says Tim Maia was out there and “when Tim believed something, he believed it all the way.

He would get further out there than anyone else.

But when I knew him he hadn’t gotten anywhere near where he would turn on the entire office of a record company.”