In the age of world music and global travel, the image of a Brazilian tapping the resonator of a berimbau will not be particularly alien to many, but back in the early 1970s it may have left some record buyers confused, thinking perhaps it was a variation on the bow and arrow. Yet Dom Um Romao, known first and foremost as the drummer with Sergio Mendes' hugely successful Brasil ’66 as well as early Weather Report, struck that pose. More to the point, he did well to bring the instrument into jazz at the time, as its twang and twirl heighten the folk quotient of this pair of seminal Latin-fusion albums. With the likes of Sivuca, Joao Donato, Stanley Clarke and Eric Gravatt appearing across the sets, the personnel is akin to an Americano-Brazilian super group and Romao's material has a richness to match. The readings of Milton Nascimento's samba classics ‘Cravo E Canela’ and ‘Ponteio’ are superb, but originals such as ‘Braun-Blek-Blu’, with its batucada percussion explosion, are just scintillating. Hot on the heels of the excellent Carlos Garnett 2 On 1 reissue, Soul Brother deliver another essential reminder of how much of a golden era the 1970s really was.