Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges

The corner club

Milton Silva Campos do Nascimento, Bituca, was born on October 26, 1942 in Rio de Janeiro and raised in Três Pontas, Minas Gerais. He moved to Belo Horizonte in 1963, and his friendship with the teenage Salomão Borges Filho, Lô Borges, born January 10, 1952 in Belo Horizonte and raised in the Santa Tereza neighborhood, led to the Clube da Esquina movement, named for the street corner where friends gathered. As a teenager Lô formed the Beavers, a Beatles cover band, with Beto Guedes. Milton came second at the 1967 Festival Internacional da Canção with "Travessia" and made Courage in the US in 1969.

In 1970 Milton invited Lô to Rio to share an album. Clube da Esquina was recorded from November 1971, mostly at a beach house in Piratininga, Niterói, where the group stayed about six months, with final sessions at the Odeon studios in Rio. It was released in March 1972 on EMI-Odeon as a double LP, over the label's initial resistance, and was largely panned in Brazil at first; Márcio Borges recalled that the criticism was awful. Lô's own debut, Lô Borges, the disco do tênis, followed in 1972. Milton's later records include Clube da Esquina 2 (1978), Nascimento (1997, a Grammy winner) and Outros Cantos (2023), and he ended a farewell tour with a show at the Mineirão on November 13, 2022.

Lô Borges died on November 2, 2025, aged 73. Milton posted a tribute the next day, calling him one of the most important people in his life and work, and saying Brazil had lost one of its most brilliant, inventive and unique artists. The album is now among the most celebrated in Brazilian music: Rolling Stone Brasil ranked it 7th among 100 Brazilian albums in 2007, and Laut.de called it the Brazilian Pet Sounds. Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys cited Lô's "Aos Barões" as an inspiration for Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino.