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by Chris McGowan &
Ricardo Pessanha Bossa would explode in popularity in 1959—in Brazil with the success of João Gilberto’s album Chega de Saudade, and internationally with the release of Marcel Camus’s award-winning film Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus), the soundtrack of which featured songs by Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim, Vinícius de Moraes, and Luiz Bonfá. Bossa nova was a new type of samba in which the genre’s rhythmic complexity had been pared down to its bare essentials, transformed into a different kind of beat. It was full of unusual harmonies and syncopations, all expressed with a sophisticated simplicity. Sometimes small combos performed bossa; but it was ideally suited to a lone singer and a guitar. This “new fashion” or “new way” (the approximate translation of “bossa nova”) of singing, playing, and arranging songs was born in Rio de Janeiro in the mid-1950s. Developed by Jobim, Gilberto, and their peers, bossa nova was “off key” only in relation to the Brazilian and international pop music of the time. It had a harmonic richness previously heard only in classical music and modern jazz. This radical and romantic new sound was a huge success with the public in Brazil, and for a few years after 1959 its beat took over the country. Bossa artists Lyra, Nara Leão, Roberto Menescal, Ronaldo Bôscoli, Marcos Valle, Baden Powell, and many others came into the spotlight. After Chega de Saudade, Gilberto recorded two more very successful albums: O Amor, o Sorriso e a Flor (Love, a Smile and a Flower) in 1960 and João Gilberto in 1961. These albums included both new bossa tunes and bossa interpretations of old standards by composers like Dorival Caymmi and the sambistas Bide and Marçal. The new sound was also popularized by many talented groups that played at the Beco das Garrafas clubs and at other Brazilian hotspots (including venues in São Paulo like the Paramount) in the late 1950s and 1960s. Among them were the Tamba Trio (Luis Eça, Bebeto, and Hélcio Milito), Zimbo Trio (which included Luis Chaves and Amilton Godoy), Sambalanço Trio (with César Camargo Mariano and Airto Moreira), Bossa Jazz Trio (with Amilson Godoy—younger brother of Almilton), Bossa Três (with Edson Machado), 3-D (with Antonio Adolfo), Jongo Trio, and the Sexteto Bossa Rio (led by young keyboardist Sérgio Mendes). Other vocalists who performed bossa nova songs during this era included Leny Andrade (who often sang with the Sexteto Bossa Rio), Pery Ribeiro, Maysa, Sylvia Telles, and Alayde Costa. The international success of bossa nova was the first large-scale global exposure of Brazilian music and musicians. Bossa gained a foothold in North America in 1962 following the release of Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd’s Jazz Samba album. They chose songs by Jobim (including “Desafinado” and “Samba de Uma Nota Só”), Bonfá, Baden Powell, Billy Blanco, and Ary Barroso. “Desafinado” made the Billboard Top 20 for pop singles and won a “best solo jazz performance” Grammy for Getz. The album did even better: it received a five-star review in Downbeat magazine and shot to the number 1 position on the Billboard pop chart. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies, remarkable for a jazz record (especially an instrumental one) and stayed on the charts for seventy weeks. It was really jazz-bossa rather than bossa nova, but the new sound had struck a nerve. Other bossa-themed LPs were recorded by Herbie Mann, Paul Winter, Quincy Jones, and Coleman Hawkins, among others. Pop and jazz listeners alike were entranced by the cool Brazilian swing and warm lyrical beauty of the “new way.” In the decades to follow, bossa nova had a huge impact on jazz and international music, as well as on the next generation of Brazilian composers. The genre provided many enduring tunes of remarkable lyricism, musical economy, and harmonic sophistication. One of its most famous hits was “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema), which has endured as one of the best-known songs in the world. A few other bossa standards (written or co-written by Jobim) include "Desafinado," “Samba de Uma Nota Só” (One-Note Samba), “Meditação” (Meditation), “Ela É Carioca” (She’s a Carioca), “Samba do Avião” (Samba of the Plane), “Corcovado” (English title: “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars”), “Vivo Sonhando” (I Live Dreaming; Eng. title: “Dreamer”), “Wave,” “Só Danço Samba” (I Only Dance Samba; Eng. title: “Jazz Samba”), and “Insensatez” (Foolishness; Eng. title: “How Insensitive”). As Jobim argued, bossa nova had a huge impact on American music. In fact, it became a permanent subset of jazz, and countless jazz and pop composers would incorporate bossa melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and textures into their songs in succeeding decades. And, the guitar would be reinvigorated as a jazz instrument in part because of the inspired playing of João Gilberto, Baden Powell, Luiz Bonfá, Bola Sete, Laurindo Almeida, Oscar Castro-Neves, and the bossa-influenced Charlie Byrd. The importance of bossa nova in the evolution of Brazilian music itself was also immense. After its golden days, 1958 to 1964, the bossa nova movement lost momentum, but every musician that came after it fed on its sophisticated harmonies. Young musicians who before bossa nova would look for novelties abroad started looking for them inside Brazil, inside themselves. In the years to follow, many artists, when asked about the beginning of their serious interest in music, would answer, “Well, it all started with bossa nova.” Bossa went from hip to kitsch in many countries after rock and roll took over the global market. There were a thousand too many crooners and lounge singers doing awful, overblown bossa-nova renditions. Yet, that very association with corny cocktail music helped spark a bossa revival when “lounge music” came to the forefront in the 1990s, and artists like Sérgio Mendes, Wanda Sá, Marcos Valle, and Walter Wanderley found a new popularity. At the same time, hip DJs and producers were mixing bossa and samba with drum loops and electronic music in a musical movement some called “nova bossa nova”... Continued in the bossa nova chapter of The Brazilian Sound. Excerpted from The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova
and the Popular Music Of Brazil (Temple University Press, 2008).
© Chris McGowan & Ricardo Pessanha, 1991 / 1998
/ 2008
The
Brazilian Sound (U.S.) |
