Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Fôrça Bruta/archive2

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 31 January 2019 [1].

Fôrça Bruta[edit]

Nominator(s): Dan56 (talk) 14:56, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a 1970 album by the Brazilian singer-songwriter Jorge Ben, accompanied by the Trio Mocotó band. It was a musical and thematic departure from Ben's previous work, a successful work in the contemporaneous Tropicália artistic movement, and pioneering of what later became known as samba-rock. It received retrospective critical acclaim and attention from North American publications after a re-release in 2007. The previous nomination was closed a week ago due to prolonged inactivity and belated activity, but I have been allowed to renominate. Dan56 (talk) 14:56, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Brandt Luke Zorn[edit]

  • Support per my exhaustively thorough review in the first nomination. Most of it can be found here, but it was concluded on the article talk page here after the nomination closed. At a glance, my review (including Dan56's responses) is ~72k characters in length, while the article itself is ~28k—a good indicator that no stone was left unturned. I'm now convinced that the quality of research, sourcing, prose, etc. is excellent and that the article meets all FA criteria. This is an exceptional article that helps to expand English Wikipedia's coverage of music from outside the Anglosphere; if it passes FAC this time, it appears (judging from Category:FA-Class arts in Brazil articles) Fôrça Bruta would be the encyclopedia's first featured article about Brazilian music or arts, which is a very valuable contribution. —BLZ · talk 17:38, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Moisejp[edit]

Resolved comments from Moisejp
In the first paragraph of the lead, if you include the pronunciation/translation section, it is mentioned twice that Fôrça Bruta means "Brute Force". Moisejp (talk) 15:11, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed the first instance. Dan56 (talk) 15:19, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"A reviewer for The Boston Globe said Ben's masterful performance of this music—"a fusion of bright samba and mellow soul"—still sounds original and essential nearly forty years after its recording". Would "sounded" be better as the review is from 2007? Moisejp (talk) 04:01, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    • Yes. I've changed it. Dan56 (talk) 15:00, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"But in his own appraisal in The Wire, Shapiro judged it to be". Does "own" add anything here? Moisejp (talk) 05:59, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    • No. It was offered in another's edit. I've removed it. Dan56 (talk) 15:00, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've read through the article and in general found it very good. My biggest concern is in the final two paragraphs, where every sentence has a direct quotation. I would feel a lot more comfortable about supporting if you could paraphrase some of the points. Off the top of my head I can suggest that the following could be candidates that shouldn't be hard to paraphrase but these are just ideas: "a wonderful album because it kept everyone's plentiful musical skills intact while simply sailing along on a wonderful acoustic groove that may have varied little but was all the better for its agreeable evenness"; "loveliest tunes"; "matchless"; "this graceful, lovely album"; "catchiest"; "overplay[ed]"; "something of a minor masterpiece of textural contrast"; "too dainty" or "too conservative"; "pleading quality"; "as if he can't contain that feeling of sadness and joy at the same time." Or there could possibly be other paraphrasable points from the same reviews to substitue in and bring down the overall frequency of direct quotes.

My original paraphrasing was reviewed extensively in the previous nomination by BLZ, who judged it would be best to just quote the authors. Several of the quotations you cited came in to question in the previous review. But I will reword a few. Dan56 (talk) 15:00, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Also, there seems to be no clear order to the reviews, and at first glance it seems quite random. (Is it possibly chronological? If so, the chronological grouping doesn’t necessarily add anything to the reader’s appreciation of common trends in the reviews.) I don’t consider myself an expert on WP:RECEPTION, but in my most recent articles I’ve taken to heart the idea that with a bit of effort, a narrative can be found to group reviews in order to, at least a little, highlight trends or similarities in them as opposed to just a list of miscellaneous reviews. Moisejp (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessarily chronological. The ideas summarized in each review loosely transition to the next; the criticism at the end of McKean --> Shapiro's possible criticisms for the album; Shapiro's mention of Tropicália --> Bird's "raw and soulful Tropicália"; Hickey citing specific songs --> McKean citing specific songs. I don't believe individual paragraphs of specific ideas would be more feasible; all the authors touch on several ideas that are worth summarizing together. Dan56 (talk) 15:00, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dan. I can accept your argument of the loose transitions throughout the section. And I'm sympathetic to a nominator who has different reviewers asking for conflicting things, and I have very big respect for BLZ's editing abilities and instincts. Nonetheless, I find myself disagreeing with him on this particular point about the appropriateness of having this many quotations in the section. I appreciate the few you paraphrased a day or two ago but I truly believe the section needs a handful more paraphrased to not be overburdened with quotations. From what I gathered from the section of the previous review that you linked to, BLZ argues that by paraphrasing reviews, we don't convey 100% of the nuance that the reviewer intended. That may be true, but I believe paraphrases of reviews don't always need to convey 100% of the nuance—it's enough to have a quite close generalization that is still true even if a bit of the nuance is lost; indeed, this is preferable to having quotations in every sentence.

BLZ, how can we proceed with this? Would you still support if Dan were to paraphrase a few more quotations in this section? (Even more than a few would actually be ideal for me, but I'd be willing to settle for just a few.) Or do you have any other ideas to propose? Moisejp (talk) 17:23, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't oppose or withdraw support for paraphrasing things. To be clear, I'm not against paraphrasing of critical reviews in all instances, I just think it invites problems that often outweigh the putative benefits. In the first place, my expectations as a reader are that when I get to a reception section, I will be reading what critics said, not what a Wikipedia editor said critics said. Even if most of a critic's original language is taken out I usually expect to see a single word quoted; among other benefits, this allows me to click through to the review, hit command-F on my keyboard, plug in that word, and see exactly where the rest of the paraphrased idea is coming from. Otherwise, if no identical language is used, I may have to read the whole review to try and get a sense of where the cited idea came from—and worse, I may finish reading only to find that I'm confused, that I can't identify the source of the cited idea in the writing, or that I think the paraphrase misrepresents or misunderstood an idea in the source.
Things can be lost in translation, and paraphrasing is essentially translation of English into English. But a guiding principle of translation (from a foreign language) is fidelity, while the guiding principle of paraphrasing is finding a "close-enough" word. The paraphraser can't use the same word or else it wouldn't be paraphrasing, it'd be quoting. Problems come in when words that may be synonymous in certain contexts have different connotations. I think it's OK to convey less than "100% of the nuance" of the reviewer's text, but not OK to attribute (or risk attributing) an idea to the reviewer that we can't say for certain was in the review. This can be a form of WP:OR by interpretation. Naturally, there's often a very fine line between those, and many times it'll be a subjective judgment call. In general it's worth erring on the side of quotes, even if only a few words containing the key idea are quoted, to avoid playing a game of telephone.
So for example, from my review, I objected to paraphrasing "catchiest" as "most memorable". The reason is that catchiness and memorability are not necessarily the same ideas, even if they have overlap in usage. As I said in my earlier review, a song can be memorable but not catchy and vice versa. To give some examples: I think "With a Little Help from My Friends" is the catchiest song on Sgt. Pepper's because it has the album's most instantly accessible and appealing melody, but I think "A Day in the Life" is the most memorable because of its haunting depth and surprising structure; even though the latter is not the "catchiest" per se, I will nonetheless remember it for the rest of my life. These words can overlap (imo "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is the catchiest and most memorable song on Nevermind, and the reasons it's catchy are the same reasons it's memorable), but the fact that they can also diverge means we should be cautious, and the most cautious thing to do is to quote the critic's word and let it speak for itself. It's far simpler to just quote the one word and avoid risking any slippage.
In the article's current draft, "catchiest" has been paraphrased as "most catchy"; I'm not sure that formulation is even grammatically correct, but it's awkward at the least, and so close to "catchiest" anyway that it's a good example of the kind of arbitrary shapes that paraphrasing can force us into, bending over backwards in order to say-without-saying the things we can and should just say by quoting. Note that a major reason "catchy" is an extreme case of difficulty in translation/paraphrasing is that it is such a specific word, so it's surprisingly difficult to pin down. It's a simple word and an intuitive musical concept, even children get what a "catchy" song is. But it's really, really hard to convey all of what "catchy" means or can possibly mean into one word or a few words.
So what paraphrases are OK? I think "loveliest tunes"—an exact quote used in the article that predates my review (i.e. I did not request its placement)—could be paraphrased as "best songs". To the extent that "loveliest" may mean something more specific than "best", I don't know that whatever connotative nuance may exist is essential. I don't see "loveliness" and "goodness" as distinct enough concepts that there's a strong risk of misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the review's meaning. Besides, there's a title for the song being praised, so if the reader is really interested in knowing precisely what the reviewer said they can search the review for that song title. To be clear, I'm fine with the current draft as-is quoting "loveliest tunes". But if more paraphrases are desired, that strikes me as low-hanging fruit. It's a case-in-point for what Moisejp called a "quite close generalization that is still true even if a bit of the nuance is lost." And of course, any paraphrases that are mere summary style are appropriate (or even necessary); if a critic spends four paragraphs detailing why an album's second half is not as good as its first, you can say "the critic said the album's second half is not as good as its first." It's better, and usually easier, to compress hundreds of words into a few words than to compress one word into one word. —BLZ · talk 05:39, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

BLZ, you make some interesting points and your zero tolerance for any possibility of the Wikipedia editor interpreting a reviewer's words makes me question whether my own level of tolerance has been right. But that's something I'll think about and I don't believe it necessarily needs to be a part of this current discussion. Rather, in this current conversation, I think if we can find a handful of quotations that none of us objects to getting rid of, either through paraphrase or through other means (e.g., reducing detail), it sounds like both of us will be in a situation of support for the article. Here are some ideas from me that don't seem too controversial:

  • "a wonderful album because it kept everyone's plentiful musical skills intact while simply sailing along on a wonderful acoustic groove that may have varied little but was all the better for its agreeable evenness": This quotation seems long, and though it has some slightly flavourful bits, as a whole it doesn't seem essential. Could we paraphrase it without keeping all the points in it, for example say something about the album demonstrating the musicians' talents (then skip the "simply sailing along on a wonderful acoustic" part) then paraphrase the last bit... it's late here, and I don't have a good paraphrase immediately, but I'm pretty sure I could come up with one.
  • BLZ proposed "best songs" for "loveliest tunes".
  • "He also found Trio Mocotó were incomparable in their performance on 'this graceful, lovely album'." Can we just say "on the album"? It's slightly less detail, but I think that's OK.
  • "the string section on "Mulher Brasileira" sounded slightly 'overplay[ed]'". I think there must be something we can say here to paraphrase, for example something about an overabundance of strings? That's just an idea off the top of my head, I'm happy to work it more.
  • "as if he can't contain that feeling of sadness and joy at the same time": This seems paraphrasable, but again, it's late here and I don't have an exact wording thought out.
  • As I mentioned, if it turns out we can't agree on a handful of quotations to reduce, another possibility would be to look in the sources for other points the reviewers may have said that are also worthwhile and are paraphrasable, and substitute these in. If it comes to this, I'd be happy to help look in the English online sources for such instances. Moisejp (talk) 06:46, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Moisejp:, I think quoting "loveliest" is preferable, as its connotations (attractive, pleasant) would connect with similar sentiments by McKean in the next sentences. That said, I've reduced more quotations in my recent edits. Let me know what you think. Dan56 (talk) 19:51, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dan, how are you? Thank you for your edits. Hmm, but the last two paragraphs of Release and reception still feel really dense with quotations to me. Except for the first sentence, every sentence has at least one quotation, and most have two or more. Would it be possible to aim for having at least a couple more sentences with zero quotations, and—if possible—see if there are any other ones you can trim here and there in other sentences? I hope I don't seem like a difficult reviewer. I do think overall the article is very good, and if this one section could be made a little tighter, I think I would certainly be ready to support. Moisejp (talk) 06:35, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Moisejp:, I've made the last two sentences of the third paragraph without quotations, and paraphrased the opening sentence of the fourth further. Dan56 (talk) 22:32, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if pinging you is a nuisance, by the way. Given the fate of the previous nomination, I want to be more careful and timely about responding to reviewers here. Dan56 (talk) 05:57, 15 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No worries about having pinged me. OK, I'm ready to support now. There are still a few more quotations in the section than I would normally go for, but given BLZ's concerns, I can accept them. One remaining quotation that really jumps out at me as unnecessary is "feeling of sadness and joy"; it seems like it should be easy to paraphrase, and I urge you to see if you can do anything with it, but if you have reasons not to, it doesn't affect my support. Moisejp (talk) 01:31, 16 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support from TheAmazingPeanuts[edit]

I don't really have much to say about this article because I mostly do hip hop-related articles, but this article is well sourced and well edited, I think it deserves to be featured. TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 07:45, 17 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Aoba47[edit]

Resolved comments from Aoba47
*Apologies in advance if this is obvious, but I am a little confused by the following sentence (This "hectic" period for them led music critic John Bush to believe it may have resulted in a relaxed recording of samba soul for Fôrça Bruta.). To me, it reads that the musicians’ previous success and busy schedules had lead to a more “relaxed” atmosphere for the recording of this album. I am not seeing the connection between the two, as I would imagine that busy schedules with four individual musicians would lead to more conflict and stress than relaxation. Does John Bush elaborate on this more?
  • I have a question about this sentence (They held one nighttime session without rehearsing most of the songs beforehand.) and this part (largely unrehearsed) from the lead. These parts imply that they had rehearsed or prepared at least one of the album’s songs prior to the recording session. Do any sources elaborate on these preparations before the session, as it seems somewhat vague in the article right now?
  • Unfortunately, no sources of the ones I was able to locate mention preparation for this recording or any particular songs that might have been rehearsed beforehand. Dan56 (talk) 05:16, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You have done a wonderful job with this article. It is great to see a non-English-language album on the FAC level, and hopefully, this will encourage other editors to pursue similar projects. Most of my comments were addressed in the previoius review, and I only have two very nitpicky comments/questions. Once they are addressed, I will be more than happy to support this nomination. If you have time, I would greatly appreciate any feedback on my current peer review on an article that I would ideally like to put through the FAC process sometime in January. I understand if you are not interested or do not have time. Either way, have a great rest of your week! Aoba47 (talk) 01:20, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thank you for the response. It just seemed a little odd to me that the implication is at least one song had some sort of undefined preparation or rehearsal, but if this information cannot be found in a source, then I understand. Aoba47 (talk) 07:15, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. And sure, I can offer feedback to the peer review. Dan56 (talk) 05:16, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for addressing everything. I support this for promotion. Aoba47 (talk) 07:15, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Magiciandude (Erick)[edit]

Support per last nomination. Erick (talk) 16:02, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Image review[edit]

@Nikkimaria:, you offered a media review in the previous nomination, where BLZ also responded to your concern about this image. The media have remained unchanged since then. Does this article pass a media check? Dan56 (talk) 07:11, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, there isn't a problem with me knocking out an image/file review so I'll go ahead and do that. Here's a run-through of every image and audio file on the page, whether free-licensed or copyrighted:

  • File:Forca Bruta.jpg — The album cover found in the infobox. Appropriate fair use rationale and licensing tag. At 300 × 300 px, the image has a lower resolution than the 0.1 megapixel res recommended for copyrighted images at WP:IMAGERES. Includes appropriate alt text.
  • File:Br-força bruta.ogg — 0:02 PD audio file of the pronunciation of "Fôrça Bruta" ([fˈoxsɐ bɾˈutɐ]), as spoken and recorded by Dan56. Very minor recommendation: The file description indicates this is a pronunciation of the album title as "spoken in São Paulo dialect of Brazilian Portuguese". I don't know if there would be any difference in the pronunciation of this phrase between Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, but Template:IPA-pt#usage shows that there is a way to indicate a "Brazilian Portuguese" pronunciation. I'd recommend relabeling it to avoid any error in case there is a difference in pronunciation, but also because the artist is Brazilian. Other than that, there are no usage or copyright issues with this file.
  • File:Jorge Ben e o Trio Mocotó no Teatro da Lagoa, 1971.tif — A photo of Ben and the backing band Trio Mocotó, used in the "Recording and production" section. The image is free-licensed, as it entered the public domain in Brazil for the following reasons: the photo was "first published before 1 March 1989 without complying with U.S. copyright formalities, such as copyright notice" (the image is dated November 1971) and it is a "Photographic [work] not considered to be 'artistic creations' produced before 19 June 1998" (it is considered a "non-artistic," "documentary" photograph under the applicable standards of Brazilian law.) See Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Brazil#Threshold of originality for further info.
    Regarding some comments from the last review: in my view, using this image—rather than removing it or using another image—is appropriate. This is a reasonably contemporaneous image of the musicians, only one year after the album was released. The only other available PD image of Jorge Ben from the 1970s is File:Jorge Ben, 1972.tif, which is a year later and does not include the backing band. There is no indication that there is a superior PD image with the backing band closer in time to the recording. While there are some minor imperfections in the scan—a rectangle drawn around Ben's head, some slight damage near the top of the photo—none of these are significant enough that they detract from the image's educational value. This scan of the photo was taken from the Brazilian National Archives, so it's fair to presume this is the best-preserved scan available anywhere. In general, this is a PD image that adds a lot of informational value; its minor flaws and slight distance in time from the recording time period don't strike me as reasons to remove the image. Includes appropriate alt text.
  • File:Oba, Lá Vem Ela.ogg — Sample of the song "Oba, Lá Vem Ela" (4:13) in the "Musical style" section. At 0:25 in length, it is less than 10% of the original song length. Non-free use rationale and licensing both check out. Article includes commentary on the song; the song is also used to illustrate the overall sound of the album.
  • File:Almeida Júnior - O Negrinho.jpg — PD image of a 19th c. Brazilian painting, "The Black Boy", used in the "Themes" section. Appropriate licensing (the last image review noted that a US-PD tag was needed, and one has been added.) The article discusses the racial themes of Ben's lyrics and their relation to historical conditions of slavery in Brazil, so use of this image is appropriate as a PD representation of that subject matter. Includes appropriate alt text.

If anyone has further concerns about file usage, there should be enough information here to assess any issues. —BLZ · talk 23:16, 22 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this review. And yes, I have now modified the IPA template to indicate Brazilian Portuguese. Dan56 (talk) 05:16, 23 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Laser brain[edit]

The article is very well-written and I enjoyed reading about a genre I've not explored. I'll be back to offer a few more small comments but overall I think it's strong.

  • "after a four-year leave from the label due to creative differences" Is there any more detail available on this? It might be nice to expand a bit to give more context.
  • "String and horn sections were recorded for the final mix but went uncredited in the album's packaging" This is slightly confusing.. are the strings and horns actually on the album? Maybe it could be rephrased like "String and horn sections are present on the final mix but went uncredited in the album's packaging" --Laser brain (talk) 15:28, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • I prefer to include "recorded", to sustain the section's narrative of a recording process; I added "and included [in the final mix]", to make it clearer. Dan56 (talk) 17:50, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support at this time, as anything else I have would be a subjective nit-pick. Well done. --Laser brain (talk) 19:51, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Coord note[edit]

I've seen a few mentions above re. sourcing but I don't think we've had a formal review for formatting and reliability (correct me if I'm wrong). Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:00, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Only with certain print sources, not everything. I'll make a request. Dan56 (talk) 04:21, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As this seems to be stalled waiting for a source review, I wonder if Nikkimaria or Laser_brain could do the honours? Sarastro (talk) 22:57, 24 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Source review (BLZ)[edit]

Starting one now. I've already looked through the sources fairly extensively in my review (often in minute detail, checking the source and also the precision of translation, etc.) so, with that familiarity I think I will be able to finish a source review fairly quickly. —BLZ · talk 02:44, 25 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, sources look good. I made some minor formatting edits. Most of the online sources are straightforward and standard. I've discussed the offline sources with Dan56 previously and had made some corrections in my first review (when double-checking the articles published in Time and The Wire). I spent some extra time with two articles, both published on the platform Medium:

  • I removed one of the posts published on Medium because I didn't think there was enough to substantiate its reliability (Medium both allows self-publication and publishes articles with editorial oversight). I searched for the writer's background/credentials and came up a bit blank. That said, the source was unnecessary because the only information the source was used to verify was that "Fôrça Bruta" translates to "Brute Force", a claim which is virtually evident on its face (the phrases are cognates) and can be checked against any Portuguese-to-English dictionary or translation software in the world. Dan56, if there is any reason you feel this source should be considered valid, please let me know, but again I don't think a source is necessary for this purpose. (As I'm writing this, I just noticed Dan56 moved the source into the "Further reading" section, which is appropriate).
  • There is another Medium post, a 2017 Portuguese-language article by Gabriel Proiete de Souza, who appears to be a legit Brazilian journalist. As can be seen on his Contently profile, he has been published in a number of well-established Brazilian/Portuguese-language journalistic outlets. I don't see any reason to doubt his credentials or reliability as a source in the context of how his work is cited in our article. —BLZ · talk 05:13, 25 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Great. Good work. Now is this nomination finished and worthy of being passed? Dan56 (talk) 08:47, 25 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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