Tim Maia's Tim Maia Racional Vols. 1 & 2 (1st edition.)

At the height of Tim Maia's soaring fame, he joined a radical, extraterrestrial-obsessed cult and created two plus albums of some of Brazil's - and the globe's - best funk and soul music.

This book explores the career of the man often hailed as the James Brown or Barry White of Brazil, and the time of his radical transformation from a musician notorious for hedonistic living to a devoted follower of Manoel Jacinto Coelho's Rational Culture.

After suddenly joining Coelho's cult in 1974 (which started first as an offshoot of the mystical Afro-Brazilian religion Umbanda), Maia gave up drugs and alcohol, threw away his material possessions, and released Racional Vols. 1 & 2 in the attempt to convert the entirety of Brazil and the world to the revelation of Rational Culture.

Thayer explores this strange, brief, yet incredibly prolific period of Maia's life.