Ponta de Lança Africano (Umbabarauma)

África Brasil opens with this song about Umbabarauma, a striker, the ponta de lança. In a 2010 documentary Ben said he first saw the player in France, while touring Europe with his band Admiral Jorge V in the mid-1970s, and called him a ponta de lança because he wore the number ten; some critics have wondered whether the player existed at all. The vocal is a chant, half words and half rhythmic syllables that some writers hear as close to Yoruba, over a hard funk band with horns and massed percussion.

It was not a single in Brazil at the time. Its fame came in 1989, when David Byrne put it first on Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical for his Luaka Bop label; a video went into rotation on VH-1 and the song became, for many listeners outside Brazil, the introduction to Ben. In 2021 Rolling Stone placed it at 351 in its list of the 500 greatest songs.

Afterlife

Byrne's partner Arto Lindsay and his group Ambitious Lovers covered it on Lust, and their remix reached the top ten of the American dance club chart. The metal band Soulfly recorded it in 1998 and have played it dozens of times. In March 2010 Ben re-recorded it in São Paulo with the rapper Mano Brown of Racionais MC's for a Nike World Cup project, with eleven people in the studio as a nod to a football team.