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”...