Brazzil
Music
March 2003
"Tall and tan and young and lovely the girl from Ipanema goes walking and when she passes each one she passes goes ah…"In the fall of 1996 I was a senior at the University of New Mexico just looking for a class to fill up my graduation requirements, a predicament we've all been in at one time or another. I actually didn't want to take Portuguese since it was an intensive 6 hour course and met 4 days a week, but it was the biggest surprise of my life…
One day, Professor Saulo brought us a Brazilian musician, a mulatto with long, curly hair, playing a nylon-string guitar to the class. That day, he gave us the music to "Garota de Ipanema"—"The girl from Ipanema"—and sang for us. I remember thinking to myself when I heard it, "Wow! What was that?!" Most of us didn't understand the lyrics, but there was something it had that I had never heard before in other varieties of music—the syncopated rhythm, the smooth harmony, the sensuous melody.
I went straight from the classroom to the record store not knowing who wrote, sang, or recorded it. Interestingly enough, I found a Verve collection called Bossa Nova Brazil located in the Jazz section. Of course, later on I would discover other greats of Brazilian music like Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Elis Regina, Luiz Bonfá, but it was the songs of Antônio Carlos "Tom" Jobim that took me to Brazil, to the fantasia beaches of Rio.
"Blame it on the bossa nova," if you will. Amazingly, it seemed as a sound all Americans can identify with even without understanding the lyrics. My quest had begun to find the history behind this seductive sound. The first stop would be "O Mestre"—Antônio Carlos Jobim.
Tom Jobim is the Brazilian Mozart—a trained pianist who mixed elements of classically-arranged sonatas with the soulful sound of American jazz, and above all, the syncopated rhythm of the Brazilian guitar accompanying melodious Portuguese lyrics. His sound became an intoxicating musical cocktail that has defined Brazil, especially the Carioca personality of Rio de Janeiro.
Of course, bossa nova is more than Jobim. The poet Vinicius de Moraes added the picturesque, suave lyrics that reflect not only Rio, but timeless emotions of the heart and soul that are characteristic to all people. While some of his translations into English are amazing, including Gene Lees "The girl from Ipanema," some do fall short of his genius, as is the case with the 1958 classic, "Chega de saudade" (Translated as `No more blues'), which is known as "the 1 minute and fifty nine seconds that changed everything" in Ruy Castro's recent book, Bossa Nova: The story of the Brazilian Music that seduced the world.
Yankee Inspiration
The seeds of bossa nova began with the music and movies of the United States of the 1940's. Recording legends like Frank Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole, Mel Tormé, and Sarah Vaughn captivated the Carioca youth, alongside the success of two Rio artists: Farnésio Dutra, known as Dick Farney, and a Hollywood bombshell, none other than the legendary Carmen Miranda. Popular Brazilian music was another influential factor—legendary composers such as Dorival Caymmi and Ary Barroso, and the local samba of Rio.
But it was the American music that would inspire a new generation of middle class Cariocas in popular clubs like Sinatra-Farney Fan Club and on Rio's Rádio Globo that was hosted by Luís Serrano, a former New York D.J. who brought a stack of American jazz records back to Rio with him in the late 1940's. His program brought a mass exposure of all the popular American singers and musicians to the Rio airways.
In little time, the Rio club scene was filling up with inspired young singer-songwriters and pianists playing their new samba-canções—a precursor to bossa nova, which presented a more ballad-oriented style of the popular samba beat. Of these artists arose some of the founding fathers, including Antônio Maria, Johnny Alf, Lúcio Alves, Baden Powell, and two young pianists by the name of Tom Jobim and Newton Mendonça.
As close friends in the Rio club scene, the two would eventually pen the classic "Desafinado" (Off-key), where the term bossa nova appears for the first time in the classic line: "isto é bossa nova, isto é muito natural" (`this is bossa nova, this is very natural'). The word bossa had entered the Portuguese vocabulary in the 18th century from the French bosse which literally meant `vocation'. The expression bossa nova, meaning `new charm' was apparently an idiom that had floated around during the 1930's in popular Brazilian musical vernacular, but not actually coined until "Desafinado." With the musical elements falling into place, there was still some missing ingredients. The first was the poet.
Tom Meets Vinicius
Vinicius de Moraes met Tom Jobim in a downtown Rio bar called Casa Villarino sometime in 1953. A kind of intellectual-inspirational hang out for poets, musicians, artists, and journalists, Tom and Vinicius frequented here, although they never did write together until the summer 1956, when Vinicius proposed a musical project for a play he had written called Orfeu da Conceição (Black Orpheus).
"Is there any money in it?" Tom initially asked Vinicius of the project. Today, a plaque on the bar's wall reads: "In the summer of 1956, the Casa Villarino was the seat of the decisive meeting between the poet Vinicius de Moraes and the composer Tom Jobim, which presented to the public 7 months later the musical Black Orpheus, opening the scene to bossa nova."
Although the Jobim/Moraes team would prove the key starting point of one of the greatest songwriting duos in 20th century popular music, the most memorable sound came not from the Jobim/Moraes music, but from a traditional Portuguese Fado called "Manhã de Carnaval" (Morning of Carnaval) by Antônio Maria and Luíz Bonfá. Later though, Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes would become the dream team that got the bossa nova movement off the ground.
Of course, there is a lot more history and musicians involved, namely a shy Bahian guitarist named João Gilberto who was discovered by Jobim for his innovative playing style. Locking himself for hours in the bathroom, "Joãozinho" attempted to incorporate popular samba rhythms to contemporary American chord progressions, creating a jazzy, syncopated style that would mark not only one of the key elements of bossa nova, but later of the Brazilian guitar that is heard in practically every form of MPB (Música Popular Brasileira—Brazilian Popular Music), including the famed Tropicalismo movement of Bahia by such artists as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
Caetano Veloso writes in his book Tropical truth: a story of music and revolution in Brazil that João Gilberto's guitar playing, and bossa nova in general, mark a clear example of Brazilian "anthropophagy"—a reference to Oswald de Andrade's philosophical metaphor of cultural cannibalism he penned to define Brazil and Brazilian culture. João Gilberto's brilliant new "Brazilian" sound paved the way for an explosion of many talented new artists, including Veloso himself, he recollects.
When the recording of the Jobim/Moraes classic, "Chega de saudade" came out in 1958 with João on guitar and vocals, everyone wanted to know what was "that beat" that came of his guitar. From then on, that guitar rhythm would be the "nucleus" of the bossa nova, in the words of Veloso. Soon after, he would record the unforgettable "Desafinado" (On key, actually) which rose the status of bossa nova to new heights in Brazil and later to the world.
That Lovely Girl
American music icons such as Sammy Davis Jr., Nat "King" Cole, and Sarah Vaughn had been in Rio during the time bossa nova was starting to pick up in the early 1960's. But it was a little-known jazz guitarist named Charley Byrd who would take the "New Charm" back to the States and introduce it to a good friend—sax legend Stan Getz.
Seeking to establish a new sound on the contemporary jazz scene, they recorded two bossa nova records together, including an instrumental version of "Desafinado" in March 1962, which sold an incredible 1 million copies at the time. The big bombshell about a "tall, tan, young and lovely" girl would be born the same year in Brazil.
Legend has it that Jobim and Vinicius wrote that song on a napkin in the Veloso Bar as a young beauty swayed down to the nearby beach in the Ipanema neighborhood of Rio. While the two frequented the bar (now called Garota de Ipanema in honor of the song) quite often where they would often see a gorgeous 15-year-old named Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, or Helô for short, Jobim actually composed this Brazilian "national anthem" in his apartment in front of the piano.
Vinícius wrote three different poems that would eventually become the lyrics. Although rather simple in structure, the seductive melody and sexy lyrics wrote itself into the pages of history, rivaling even the sounds and sentiments of the most famous Beatles songs. Vinicius de Moraes writes, "a moça dourada, misto de flor e sereia, cheia de luz e de graça mas cuja visão é também triste, pois carrega consigo, a caminho do mar, o sentimento da mocidade que passa, da beleza que não é só nossa - é um dom da vida em seu lindo e melancólico fluir e refluir constante" (`the tan girl, a mixture of flower and siren, full of light and grace but whose vision is also sad, since she carries with herself, on the way to the sea, the feeling of the youth that passes, that beauty that is not only our own—it is a gift of life in its constant beautiful and melancholy flow and re-flow'.)
The Carnegie Hall Show
In September of 1962, Sidney Frey, president of Audio-Fidelity Records, flew to Rio in search of bossa nova artists to take to New York for a concert. Tom Jobim and João Gilberto were the obvious picks, but he brought all he could—Luiz Bonfá, Oscar Castro-Neves, Carlos Lyra, Milton Banana, and Sérgio Mendes. The Carnegie Hall concert on November 21, 1962 was a historic moment—bossa nova, sub-titled "new Brazilian jazz," was presented for the first time to an American audience.
After this historic show, several artists, including Jobim, Gilberto, Bonfá, and Mendes would stay in New York and record. Verve record producer Creed Taylor put together Jobim, Gilberto, and Getz after the Carnegie Hall concert and proposed an album project. The classic Getz/Gilberto (with Jobim on piano) was recorded in just two days on March 18 and 19, 1963 including the first bilingual version of "The girl from Ipanema" by Gilberto's wife Astrud singing the English lyrics.
Ironically, João and Getz objected to the English verse, but Jobim pushed for and eventually overruled. The only problem was the five and half minute length of the song, which would not have been radio-friendly. Thus, the "Brazilian beauty" sat in Taylor's desk drawer for several months. However knowing that the track was a potential hit, Taylor decided to take the knife to João's opening vocal in Portuguese, beginning the track with Astrud's verse in English, cutting the song down to three minutes and fifty-five seconds. Taylor then sent the song straight to radio, which launched instant success for bossa nova in the U.S., including a nice collection of Grammys, money, and international acclaim.
Besides Jobim, "The girl from Ipanema" opened the door for bossa nova to international shows in Europe and Japan and gave a chance for other artists, such as Luiz Bonfá, and Sérgio Mendes and Brazil '66—an album which sold 4 million copies, outselling even The Beatles that year. During that very same year of 1966, Jobim got a call for an album project by the most popular singer in the world at the time, and one of his musical influences: Frank Sinatra.
Together with Claus Ogermann for orchestral arrangements, Francis Albert Sinatra & Antônio Carlos Jobim is perhaps the most classic bossa nova recording in English, which includes another timeless version of "The girl from Ipanema." From then on, Jobim and his bossa nova would influence many American jazz and pop artists, including Quincy Jones, Wes Montgomery, and Billy Joel who won a Record of the year Grammy with his bossa nova-influenced "Just the way you are." Even "The King," Elvis Presley, recorded a song called "Bossa Nova baby" in the 1960's. Recently, Hip-Hop icons The Beastie Boys have even experimented with its melodic sounds and syncopated rhythms in songs such as "Twenty questions."
In Brazil, although most of bossa nova has faded out with Jobim's death in 1994, in the streets and bars of all the major Brazilian cities some bossa nova is almost always included in the singer's set list. And in 2000, Brazilian director Bruno Barreto released Bossa Nova: a Brazil-U.S romantic comedy set in Rio, starring Amy Irving and Antônio Fagundes. Barreto dedicated the film to Jobim, stating that "he wrote the soundtrack of our lives."
Caetano Veloso writes that, "Ela (a bossa nova) é a mais eficiente arma da afirmação da língua portuguesa no mundo, tantos insuspeitados amantes esta tem conquistado por meio da magia sonora da palavra cantada à moda brasileira" (`It (bossa nova) is the most efficient weapon of the affirmation of the Portuguese language in the world, so many unexpected lovers it has conquered by means of its magic sounds of the sang word in a Brazilian way').
Bossa Nova No More
Although this music has certainly made its trademark on Brazil and U.S. culture, it is certainly not something that is craved in Brazil as in the past. João Gilberto, although despised for his tardiness, acoustic perfectionism, and silence from the audience, still gives an occasional concert and occasional album. His daughter, Bebel Gilberto, still continues to carry the torch for bossa nova fans with her latest release Tanto tempo, although her audience is ironically larger in the United States than in Brazil, it seems, despite recording almost entirely in Portuguese.
While most Brazilians have moved on from bossa nova, some Americans still have not, and oftentimes identify their music with that sound. "Brazilians recognize, but don't know bossa nova anymore," says Sérgio Ramalho, a 28 year-old singer-songwriter from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state. Perhaps this is true, but every Brazilian I have met can sing "The girl from Ipanema" without remembering where or when they heard it for the first time. Its legacy has stood the test of time. Right or wrong, "The girl from Ipanema" is the best introduction to Brazil for anyone.
The "girl" herself, Helô, now a grandma of 55 years, will pose for the March 2003 issue of Playboy Brasil with her youngest daughter of 24, Ticiane Pinheiro. Nowadays she is now more of a controversial figure than a legend in Brazil due to the fact that she has marketed herself with the classic song, even claiming for the rights to it and opening a store in São Paulo modestly called "Garota de Ipanema." "Blame it on the Bossa Nova" if you will, in the words of Eydie Gormé. As "her" song prophetically states, "she just doesn't see…she just doesn't see…"
Byrd, 29, is a native of Farmington, New Mexico. He is a PhD student in Hispanic linguistics at the University of Texas-Austin, where he teaches undergraduate Portuguese and Spanish. He lived in Belo Horizonte for one year and studied Portuguese linguistics for one semester at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. He is a huge bossa nova fan and enjoys playing it on the guitar. He also loves playing soccer and learning about legendary soccer players like Pelé, Garrincha, Didi, Sócrates and Zico. You can write the author here: ml200021@yahoo.com