Milton Nascimento, painted by a muralist from the town where he grew up

On Avenida Álvares Cabral, in the centre of Belo Horizonte, a building's empena now belongs to Milton Nascimento. An empena is the windowless side wall of a building, and in BH these blank faces have become canvases for giant murals. This one covers 1,600 square metres. The Milton Nascimento mural is the work of Kaká Chazz, a muralist born in Três Pontas, the Minas Gerais town where Milton grew up.

That detail changes how the wall reads. Tributes to famous musicians appear in plenty of cities. A tribute painted by someone from the same town where the singer grew up is rarer, and it sits closer to a family portrait than to a commission.

The newspaper O Tempo describes a new moment for graffiti in Belo Horizonte, one that has travelled from the street up to the great empenas. The shift is partly about size. It is also about what the city chooses to put up there, and who it trusts to paint it.

Milton on Álvares Cabral covers both. The subject is a voice that Minas Gerais claims as its own, and the hand belongs to someone born in the town where that voice grew up. The mural reminds the city where Milton came from, in paint big enough to stop traffic.

In Belo Horizonte, music history is now written on the walls, by hands from the same soil.