The Boy from Ipanema

João Gilberto, whose death was announced on July 6, was a guitar player and singer who came along at precisely the right moment, in exactly the right place. In 1959 he recorded an album called "Chega de Saudade," based on some songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. That same year, French filmmaker Marcel Camus made Orfeu Negro, (Black Orpheus) an Eastmancolor film adapted from a play by De Moraes, shot in and around Rio de Janeiro. It incorporated music composed by Jobim and Luiz Bonfa, including the songs "A felicidade" and "Morning of the Carnival." The film won awards, including the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1960, but the soundtrack album is what really attracted attention. The music was a combination of Brazilian samba rhythms, which, like every other Latin American rhythm (salsa, merengué, mambo) was African in origin, and American jazz chord progressions.

There was a moment - that lasted a few years - in the 1960s when it seemed that every major and minor American jazz musician, arranger and singer was recording a "Brazil" album. It started with guitarist Donald Byrd in February 1962. He had gone to Brazil to hear the music first hand and brought back some of the musicians he met there to record "Jazz Samba," which also featured saxophonist Stan Getz. Within a few years, songs and albums were recorded by Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Stanley Turrentine, Quincy Jones, Herbie Mann, Ella Fitzgerald, Cannonball Adderley, Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, Louis Armstrong, Vince Guaraldi, Count Basie, Lalo Schifrin, Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans, Nelson Riddle, Clare Fischer, and Paul Desmond (to name only the most well-known) who either dabbled with the Bossa Nova sound or plunged in up to their gills. Jobim laid down recordings of his beautiful melodies, and played either guitar or piano (or flute) on them. He played piano with Gilberto, since no one had mastered the rhythmic complexities of his guitar, which learned all it could from Brazil's Samba-canção singers, like Dorival Caymmi about how to incorporate the samba rhythm in strumming the strings - something street performers had to learn simply because they had to perform without a drummer or rhythm section.

That sound has travelled the world and has been ill-served by its popularity. To most listeners nowadays, there is no sound more banal than Bossa Nova. When the Blues Brothers (Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi) finally make it to the bank to pay the school mortgage, pursued by an army of cops, on their way up to the bank office, the muzak you hear on the elevator is the Eumir Deodato arrangement of "The Girl from Ipanema" - Bossa Nova consigned to the thankless duty of elevator music. This is by no means the fault of the music. No songs are more sensual and captivating than those Gilberto recorded. When Albert Camus attended a party in Rio in 1949, a singer performed whose name he spelled "Kaïmi" in his journal. Camus was moved to write, "Of all songs, these are the most beautiful, songs of love and the sea." The singer was Dorival Caymmi, one of the first and the greatest of the Samba-canção singers.

Like Caymmi (as well as the novelist Jorge Amado), Gilberto was from Bahia, a region of Brazil with its own distinctive culture, characterized by its celebration of a mixed-race society. Gilberto wasn't the father of Bossa Nova, as some have mistakenly claimed. That title belongs to Jobim. But Gilberto was the voice of Bossa Nova, the first voice you ever heard singing "The Girl from Ipanema" - "Garota de Ipanema" in Portuguese. Norman Gimbel had written the song's English lyrics, and when the song was recorded in 1964 on the Getz/Gilberto album, Stan Getz suggested that Gilberto's pretty wife, named Astrud, should sing the English lyrics. The recording became not only a huge hit, it launched a singing career for Astrud, who had never sung professionally before. Astrud and João divorced a short time later. He left Brazil to live in North America for a long period and returned to Brazil to discover that a whole new generation of performers like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil venerated him. My favorite of his albums is "Amoroso," recorded in 1976, a selection of songs by Jobim (and one by Gershwin) accompanied by orchestrations by Claus Ogerman. And my favorite song from the album is "Camiños Cruzados" ("Crossed Paths"). The lyrics, in Paul Sonnenberg's translation, close with:

I am such a fool to try in vain
And think this through
I know love will not be bound
By anybody’s rules
Here we are, willing now to try
To build a new love
And leave our sadness behind.

You can hear Gilberto's version here.