Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CONTEXTS
MUSIC
International success: bossa nova
With this wealth of raw material to work with it was only a matter of time before
Brazilian music burst its national boundaries, something that duly happened in the late
1950s with the phenomenon of
bossa nova
. Several factors led to its development. The
classically trained
Antônio Carlos (“Tom”) Jobim
, equally in love with Brazilian popular
music and American jazz, met up with fine Bahian guitarist
João Gilberto
and his wife
Astrud Gilberto
to create the first bossa nova sound. The growth in the Brazilian record
and communications industries allowed bossa nova to sweep Brazil and come to the
attention of people like
Stan Getz
in the United States; and, above all, there was a new
market for a sophisticated urban sound among the newly burgeoning middle class in
Rio, who found Jobim's and Gilberto's slowing down and breaking up of what was still
basically a samba rhythm an exciting departure. It rapidly became an international craze,
and Astrud Gilberto's quavering version of one of the earliest Jobim numbers,
A Garota
de Ipanema
, became the most famous of all Brazilian songs,
The Girl from Ipanema
-
although the English lyric is considerably less suggestive than the Brazilian original.
Over the next few years the craze eventually peaked and fell away, leaving most
people with the entirely wrong impression that bossa nova is a mediocre brand of
muzak well suited to lifts and airports. Tom Jobim would later talk of being haunted
by innumerable cover versions murdering
The Girl From Ipanema
. In North America,
bossa nova sank under the massed strings of studio producers but in Brazil it never lost
its much more delicate touch, usually with a single guitar and a crooner holding sway.
Early bossa nova still stands as one of the crowning glories of Brazilian music, and all
the classics - you may not know the names of tunes like
Corcovado
,
Isaura
,
Chega de
Saudade
and
Desafinado
but you'll recognize the melodies - are all easily available on
the various Jobim and Gilberto compilation recordings. But for the best bossa-nova
album of all time, look for
Elís e Tom
, the incomparable collaboration between Elís
Regina and Tom Jobim when both were at their peak in the early 1970s.
The great Brazilian guitarist
Luiz Bonfá
also made some fine bossa-nova records - the
ones where he accompanies Stan Getz are superb. he bossa-nova records of
Stan Getz
and
Charlie Byrd
are one of the happiest examples of inter-American cooperation, and
as they're easy to find in European and American shops they make a fine introduction
to Brazilian music. They had the sense to surround themselves with Brazilian
musicians, notably Jobim, the Gilbertos and Bonfá, and the interplay between their
jazz and the equally skilful Brazilian response is often brilliant.
Live bossa nova
is rare
these days, restricted to the odd bar or hotel lobby, unless you're lucky enough to catch
one of the great names in concert - although Tom Jobim, sadly, died far too young in
1995. But then bossa nova always lent itself more to recordings than live performance.
Tropicalismo
he
military coup
in 1964 was a crucial event in Brazil. Just as the shock waves of the
cultural upheavals of the 1960s were reaching Brazilian youth, the lid went on in a big
way: censorship was introduced for all song lyrics; radio and television were put under
military control; and some songwriters and musicians were tortured and imprisoned for
speaking and singing out - although fame was at least some insurance against being
killed. The result was the opposite of what the generals had intended. A movement
known as
tropicalismo
developed, calling itself cultural but in fact almost exclusively
a musical movement, led by a young and extravagantly talented group of musicians.
Prominent among them were
Caetano Veloso
and
Gilberto Gil
from Bahia and
Chico
Buarque
from Rio. They used traditional popular music as a base, picking and mixing
genres in a way no one had thought of doing before - stirring in a few outside influences
like the Beatles and occasional electric instruments, and topping it all off with lyrics that
often stood alone as poetry - and delighted in teasing the censors. Oblique images and
comments were ostensibly about one thing, but everyone knew what they really meant.
