São Paulo is like a continent unto itself, a city of such mass that it naturally pulls everything into its center. Cesar Paes's well-tempoed Saudade do Futuro is a city symphony, or perhaps more accurately a city cacophony, a pulsing paean to the streets that bear the weight of millions. Delving into the crowds, the places of work, the monstrous traffic jams, Paes offers a shapeless megalopolis. But what really makes the city gel is the music, beating out on street corners, in the cafes and huge open-air dance clubs-always Nordestino music, driven by tambourines, accordions, and the guitar. There are the vulgar troubadors, repentistas, improvising rhymes that alternately amuse and insult-a northern brand of rap. There are the dank clubs, clotted with forró music, the dancers grinding hips in a super-samba. It seems everyone Paes meets is drawn to the city as though the future resides here and the past is somewhere beyond the city's unimaginable limits. As the title expresses, there is a great yearning, a saudade, for what has been abandoned, but you can be assured whatever comes next will have a strong beat and a raunchy rhyme. -Steve Seid