ALMA D'JEM arrives in November! Check it out!

Reggae, yes, of course. But rock, funk and the best of Brazilian popular music also form part of the melting pot of influences in which the Brasília group Alma D'Jem shaped its music. And it worked: the sound of this album, which bears simply the band's name as its title, provokes nothing less than immediate empathy.

Simplicity is the soul of the matter for this group, formed by brothers Marcello (vocals and guitar) and Rafael Mira (percussion) with Dino Verdade (drums) and Alex Zambrana (guitar). Alma D'Jem means "soul at peace", and if the soul is at peace, nothing can break the determination of these young men to win over Brazil with their tranquil music when the message is calm, but firm when firmness is needed. "Life is not only love, but it is not only war either", sums up Marcello Mira, 29, who is also the main songwriter of Alma D'Jem.

Founded in 1997, the band started like so many others from Brasília, playing reggae — music that seems tailor-made for the placid landscapes seen on a weekend of sports and contact with nature in Chapada dos Veadeiros. Soon Alma recorded its first album, "Grito de Liberdade", which ended up selling 20,000 copies independently, largely thanks to the musicians' policy of playing wherever they could find a stage — thus they travelled from Rio Grande do Sul to Espírito Santo, winning over audiences alongside bands such as Natiruts, Maskavo, Tribo de Jah and Dread Lion — cariocas with whom, incidentally, Alma even shared a bus during an exhausting but fruitful tour through southern Brazil. "It was that thing of going three days without a shower...", Marcello jokes.

The potential of the songs on the first album led the band to think ahead — not to abandon reggae, but to use it as a starting point for a sound that would better reflect the band's wide range of influences. "My main background is Brazilian popular music — Djavan, João Bosco, Gil, Paralamas and Legião. But I also listen to Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, Police, Linkin Park and Jamiroquai.

Roots reggae was never our scene. Our philosophy is free", Marcello explains. Alma D'Jem's next step was to find a producer who could translate these new ideas into an album — and then Tadeu Patola appeared, responsible for some of the best albums by Charlie Brown Jr., who ended up guiding the band in the studio during the recordings of what would become Alma D'Jem. By then, professionalisation was already a goal for the young men, who moved to São Paulo.

However, bassist Daniel Fagali and drummer Luciano Carvalho (Marcello's partners on some of the songs on the new album) decided to stay in Brasília, which led Alma D'Jem to adopt the new line-up, completed on stage by bassist Duda Lima and keyboardist Pirajú. Together, the six musicians are a sound factory ready to electrify pop-rock fans across the country.

Anyone who wants to know what Alma D'Jem is capable of need only go straight to the first track on the album, Minha Voz, with its lively instrumental and its spot-on message: do not underestimate the intelligence of the people, because what the eyes do not see the heart feels. Old war reggae shows up in Teu Lugar, a song in which Marcello lavishes poetry to speak of love: "welcome to this house you enter, it is my heart/ if you come smiling, then make this your place here".

The Jamaican rhythm still serves as the base for one of the most romantic tracks on "Alma D'Jem", Cidadão de Rua, which tells of the bohemian who claims to be redeemed by love ("I like to hang out in the street / but I like you more"), but not entirely ("I am a citizen of the street and I will not stop being one / for it was on a moonlit night that I saw the stars that follow you"). The love/reggae pairing also accounts for the beautiful Tudo Que Aprendo com Você.

Rock, in turn, is present in Alma D'Jem's sound in different ways. One, more romantic, in songs such as Sei Lá, in which the subject waits for a miracle that will make his beloved reverse her decision to leave him. Another, more political, in the opening of O Que Virá ("How many innocents to feed / the thirst for blood of these sharks / do not ask me yet to rest") and in the indignant João, a fable about the poor boy, "illuminated, perhaps in the wrong country", who grows up with the gift of defiance but ends up silenced abruptly.

"Attention, all patrol cars: suspect strongly armed with high-calibre words that can seriously shake current social structures", one hears, in an alert tone, in the background. And there is also the funky edge, which sets the party in songs such as "Nada Maior Que o Amor" (with rap that warns: "Evil hits my chest and returns to whoever sent it transformed into positive energy and love"), Vem Ver ("Whoever has seen pain up close knows how good it is to smile") and Quem Viver Verá, which, despite its denunciatory stance, holds out hope for happier days for the country: "Come see that it is still possible to believe there is still a way out / that history is made by those who can no longer stay silent and play the fool". Eclectic and incurably optimistic — that is Alma D'Jem, a band for whom struggle and indignation are merely ways of reaching peace. The peace everyone wants to achieve — and deserves to achieve — to be happy.