Bossa Nova: absolute love

Listening to Bossa Nova is good and healthy and you don’t have to be in love with someone to delight yourself with the curves of João Gilberto’s guitar, with Jobim’s dissonances and the poetry of Vinicius. I know there are many more ingredients in this moisture, but, for the unawared, this is the most common tripod (Jobim-Vinicius-Gilberto). The passion comes later, inevitable consequence.

As a great fan of the rhythm, I always see myself thinking of everything that time meant. Since the beginning of something that simply couldn’t succeed until the big presentations at Carnegie Hall. However, every image, sound and dialog of these preterit travels are only built in my mind, considering that I came into this world only a few decades later. To be more precise: thirty years later (not everything can be as we wish). But this is a proof that the gap between generations is not enough to separate them definitely. All those thirty years couldn’t prevent me from getting to know and enjoy all these wonders gathered in just one place. Bossa Nova is like Pelé, there was only one and there will never be one like him. Bossa Nova is like that kind of astronomic rare phenomenon that happens once in a million light-years.

It is just like thinking of God’s oniscience. Do you want to know why I used this analogy? Only in Rio de Janeiro, with Bossa Nova, there was a reunion of genii of music and poetry working together. And I mean it. Genii that medicine can explain, those that have a little bit (or much) of madness. Those genii that are simply genii.

João Gilberto and Dick Farney have absolute hearing. Tom Jobim didn’t have absolute hearing but his musical sensibility was so huge that the hair on his arm bristled every time he found a new chord. Baden Powell’s guitar was the extension of his arm. The lyrics of Carlos Lyra, Roberto Menescal, Tom Jobim, Newton Mendonça and Vinicius de Moraes are pure art.

Superb composers, interpreters and instrumentalists such as Lúcio Alves, Billy Blanco, Maysa, Ronaldo Bôscoli, Elis Regina, João Donato, Nara Leão, Eumir Deodato, Luís Carlos Vinhas, Luizinho Eça, Milton Banana and Edu Lobo increase the list of Bossa Nova’s great names.

Bossa Nova’s wave has got bigger and pursued new seas. Soon every sea wanted that wave and then the world embraced it. Poor those ones who could only criticize it, calling Bossa Nova a Jazz’s bad imitation or ‘everything but music’. Bossa Nova was so Bossa and so Nova that it bewitched each one that listened to it, including Sammy Davis, Lena Horne, Stan Getz, Charlie Bird, Tony Bennet and even Frank Sinatra (this one also with absoltute hearing), who called Tom Jobim and invited him to record an album.

At the end of the day, I can only admire, admire and admire. There’s nothing like listening to João Gilberto’s voice and guitar chatting as seen on “De conversa em conversa” or wondering in “Vivo Sonhando”. Some other day I saw Zuza Homem de Mello saying that João Gilberto is able to make of “Happy Birthday to you” a sensational music. Whoever that has already listened to João knows was Zuza was talking about.

Lately I have heard more about Bossa Nova. No more saudade! I couldn’t take any more trash music. There are  always those who know what’s the meaning of good music. To these ones, my sincere thanks. It’s worth to mention Fernanda Porto, Celso Fonseca, Ronaldo Bastos, Bebel Gilberto, Maria Rita. To the Bossa Nova protagonists that are still among us, my veneration. João Donato, Roberto Menescal, MPB4 and, of course, João Gilberto. Oh, João… Some time ago I went to his show and, one week before the presentation I was wondering on all those misteries people say about him. Since when it is possible for a singer to hipnotize someone with his voice? It’s okay that we’re talking about João but that was too much… The Doubting Thomas inside of me insisted in seeing before believing. When the D-day came, nothing so special happened. I was sit, observing, listening to João’s voice and guitar and seeing him protesting a little bit on the quality of the sound. Nothing unusual.

But only when I got home I realised that during thw show I could pay attention to anything that wasn’t about him. Applauses, whistles, lights… I couldn’t notice nothing but that voice that, even a little bit different because of the time, kept that smoothness, delicacy and the eternal magic. And all that with just “um banquinho e um violão”. It’s an experience to tell grandsons. Viva a Bossa Nova!

The good and old Bossa Nova has come one more time to start forever. Oops, I think Vinius has already said that one day. That’s true.

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I wrote this text in 2003, a year that a dedicated myself to my gradution at Digital Design. That year I made a quick – and unforgettable – trip to Rio de Janeiro to talk to Cesar Villela and Ruy Castro and live a tipical carioca’s night in Ipanema listening to Billy Blanco in front of Toca do Vinícius. There I also saw Carlos Lyra wearing a wifebeater and walking calmy in the street. That year I was hipnotized by João Gilberto during the inauguration of Tom Brasil, in São Paulo. That year I made frienships for life. Definitely it was a bossa nova year.