Miguel Atwood-Ferguson has a theory about why so many hip-hop artists have found their way to an obscure, decades-old album by Brazilian guitarist and composer Arthur Verocai.

Released in 1972 and promptly buried by the label, the self-named debut release “Arthur Verocai” became a cult favorite avidly sought after by vinyl fanatics after American rappers like MF Doom, Ludacris, Snoop Dogg and Little Brother began sampling the tunes.

“It’s extremely luscious, accessible music that transcends genre, and there’s something about the lusciousness that’s extremely appealing to people that sample,” Atwood-Ferguson said. He spoke with the Chronicle by phone from Los Angeles, where he’s spent the past two decades contributing to more than 600 albums as violinist, composer, arranger and orchestrator of choice for musicians such as Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Bilal, Seu Jorge and Ray Charles.

In a remarkable resurgence, Verocai is set to perform the entire 1972 album on星期六,8月19日,在伯克利的加州大学剧院with a 30-piece orchestra, the last of four stops on his first-ever U.S. tour. It’s the latest artistic coup by the Los Angeles label and production house Jazz Is Dead, which also presented legendary Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal’s recent run of North American concerts.

The star treatment Verocai is receiving today couldn’t be more different from the reception his album received half a century ago. A rising songwriter in the late 1960s, he started the ’70s as one of the hottest arrangers on Brazil’s rapidly evolving pop music scene, collaborating with stars like Ivan Lins, Carlos Lyra and Jorge Ben.

Given the opportunity to record his project, he spent a year writing songs with lyricist Vitor Martins set to lushly orchestrated arrangements. When critics largely ignored the album and his label decided not to promote it, Verocai’s career as a first-call Rio de Janeiro arranger suddenly evaporated. “People didn’t want to hire me anymore,” he told the Chronicle on a recent phone call from Los Angeles, alternating between Portuguese and English.

So instead of launching as a solo artist, Verocai abandoned popular music. He found a ready market for his skills, however, “working in advertising for years,” he said, “writing jingles and working on soundtracks for soap operas.”

The 1972 album is often described as part of tropicalia, the brief but brilliantly cosmopolitan art movement in which Brazilian musicians Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Os Mutantes and Tom Zé first made their mark. While the influence of tropicalia continues to reverberate today, the movement was essentially snuffed out by the then-military government’s 1968 crackdown on “subversive” arts, which forced many of the musicians into exile.

Much more than tropicalia’s experimental pastiche, “Arthur Verocai” sounds like a Rio response to Milton Nascimento’s and Lô Borges’ epochal 1972 double album “Clube da Esquina,” which married European Romanticism and dreamy Beatles psychedelia to various strains of bossa nova.

“Milton was my friend, and we started together at music festivals in Rio,” Varocai said, referring to the hugely popular televised song contests that introduced many future Brazilian stars in the late 1960s. “We were always exchanging information and music. ‘Clube da Esquina’ was released after my album, but I was inspired by Milton’s music and perhaps Milton was inspired by me as well.”

Verocai’s journey from obscurity to cult status, with his album sometimes fetching thousands of dollars from collectors, picked up momentum in 2003 when a reissue by an imprint of San Francisco-founded Ubiquity Records came out on CD and vinyl. In 2007, Far Out, a label that has championed great Brazilian artists like Joyce, the band Azymuth and Marcos Valle, released a new album entitled “Encore.”

But the crowning moment came in 2009, when Atwood-Ferguson produced a concert with Verocai and a 30-piece orchestra at California State University Los Angeles’ Luckman Theater. It was his first performance ever outside Brazil, an event that garnered coverage across Brazil and the U.S. “He told me last week that … it rekindled his career in a way that allowed him to travel around the world and record and arrange on people’s albums,” Atwood-Ferguson said.

So what makes Verocai’s 1972 tracks so attractive to DJs, producers and musicians? What drew MF Doom, Ludacris, and Curren$y to all weave his horn line from “Na Boca Do Sol” through their music?

“There’s an impressionistic element to Arthur’s aesthetic,” Atwood-Ferguson said. “It’s very lyrical, as if he’s humming or singing every single note. It’s very colorful and intelligent but not too busy.

“It gives listeners something great to grab onto, without forcing you into a box. With sampling you want something like that, catchy, but with space to breathe.”

Now, after a very long pause, Verocai has picked up where he left off, making sumptuously beautiful music that stands on its own while offering untold options for other sonic designers.

Andrew Gilbert is a freelance writer.