Brazzil
September 2001
Music
Vinicius de Moraes, born in Rio de Janeiro, was a figure of the kind the United States seems never to produce: poet and musician, movie critic and playwright, pro-Fascist then almost-Communist, law student then journalist, an international diplomat and a bon vivant who conducted meetings and worked from his legendary bathtub.
Antonio Carlos Jobim, one of Brazil's greatest 20th-century composers and an immortal in the history of popular music, spent time in Los Angeles, died in New York, loved American composers, and incorporated a healthy dose of American music—jazz—in the bossa nova sound he helped create.
Together, the two friends and creative partners gave birth to words and images of Brazil so strong that many outside the country cannot think of Brazil without hearing "The Girl From Ipanema" or recalling the images, colors, feelings and sounds of the movie Black Orpheus, which was based on a play by de Moraes and which introduced Jobim's music to the world.
The two began collaborating in 1956, when de Moraes, then in his 40s and freshly returned from a diplomatic post in Paris, was looking for someone to put music to his play Orfeu da Conceição (Orpheus of the Conception). De Moraes' brother-in-law suggested Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim, a young musician and songwriter who had had his first hit two years before. The two met at the Casa Villarino bar in Rio de Janeiro, where de Moraes converted Jobim from beer to whiskey and where, according to one account, Jobim asked "tem dinheirinho?"—would there be a little money?—in the project de Moraes was proposing.
There was more than money in the project, and there was something more than just music in the pairing. In 1959, the French director Marcel Camus filmed a version of Orfeu da Conceição as Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus). The movie won the Golden Palm at Cannes and an Oscar as best foreign film. It was a retelling of the Orpheus-Eurydice story, set in Rio at Carnaval time, and its color, chaos and music—along with the city's natural beauty and a prettied-up version of its poor hillside neighborhoods, or favelas—created images of Brazil that many people still hold today.
De Moraes and Jobim stayed busy in the years between the play's composition and the movie's release. In 1957, Jobim played piano on a Jobim-de Moraes composition called "Eu Não Existo sem Você," included on a movie soundtrack Jobim had written. The singer was the great Elizeth Cardoso. The guitarist was João Gilberto.
The history of bossa nova is too long to tell here, so imagine some of its sounds: João Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz on "The Girl From Ipanema." Jobim matching Frank Sinatra cool for cool on another version of the song. Ella Fitzgerald on "Jazz 'n' Samba" ("Só Danço Samba" in the original Portuguese). Shirley Horn on the wistful "Once I Loved" ("Amor em Paz"). All are Jobim-de Moraes compositions, and all are among the sexiest, coolest, most suave and most enduring examples of that generation-defining sound called bossa nova.
As familiar as these sounds and images are, most English speakers know de Moraes’ work at second hand, through the English-language renderings of his lyrics by such songwriters as Norman Gimbel and Gene Lees. Some of these renderings are wonderful in their own right. Here, for example, is Gimbel’s "The Girl From Ipanema":
Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, each one she passes goes "a-a-ah!
When she walks she's like a samba that
Swings so cool and sways so gentle,
That when she passes, each one she passes goes "a-a-ah!Gimbel has made of the song a marvelous evocation of cool sound in a hot climate and a wistful sigh of erotic longing. But if Gimbel’s "Girl" is about languid self-pity, de Moraes’ "Garota de Ipanema" is about something much richer: the power of beauty to save the world. Here is how Gimbel ended his version of the song: "And when she passes I smile, but she doesn't see, no she doesn't see." And here is what de Moraes wrote:
Ah, se ela soubesse que quando ela passa
O mundo sorrindo se enche de graça
E fica mais lindo por causa do amor(Ah, if she knew that when she passes,
The world smiles, fills with grace,
And becomes more beautiful because of love.)Jobim, though best known as a musician, wrote lyrics that rise to the level of poetry, and de Moraes, the poet, was also a musician. In the best of their collaborations—as in the best poetry—words are not combined with music; they become music. The word "A" in the title of their "A Felicidade," keynote song of Black Orpheus, means simply "the." Yet the rhythm of the melody draws the definite article out into a sigh for the fragility of happiness—the fragility of felicidade—and the simplest word imaginable becomes, by its sound and its rhythm, a vehicle of deep meaning.
Vinicius de Moraes died in 1980, in his famous bathtub, it is said. Antonio Carlos Jobim died in New York's Mount Sinai Hospital in 1994. And how has fate treated them since? Tribute records have abounded, by jazz musicians, by rock musicians, by Brazilian musicians, by American musicians, by Canadian musicians, even by musicians from Finland. Black Orpheus was remade in 1999. Bruno Barreto dedicated his 1999 movie Bossa Nova to Jobim, and he filled its soundtrack with Jobim and Jobim-de Moraes classics. On the printed page, a Brazilian publisher brought out a 1,500-page edition of de Moraes' poetry and prose in 1998. But perhaps the most fitting tribute of all was to Jobim, who wrote beautiful music inspired by the view of Rio de Janeiro from high above, from an airplane about to land. Today, anyone enjoying the same view will land shortly thereafter at the airport newly renamed in his honor: Rio de Janeiro International Airport Galeão—Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Peter Rozovsky is a copy editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer who believes that "Só Tinha de Ser com Você" is the greatest pop song ever written. You may write to him at pieronr@aol.com