In Fina Estampa, released in 1994, Brazilian singer and songwriter Caetano Veloso set out to recast classics of the Latin American songbook, most of them in Spanish. It is quite a challenge. Some of these songs have been dulled by rote repetition and over-singing. Perhaps it just takes an artist like Veloso, who understands the value of what not to do, to make them new. "Contigo a la distancia" gets an understated, perhaps melancholy, treatment that gives the song a long-lost feeling of yearning; "Pecado," originally a tango, becomes a sober bolero; "Recuerdos de Ypacaray," a Paraguayan classic, is performed to an austere solo bass accompaniment. Veloso might have set out just to revisit the classics, but by the album's end, he makes them his own. --Fernando Gonzalez