Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World

by Castro, Ruy

  12

  Colorful Harmonies

  At the famous apartment: Nara Leão, Roberto Menescal (guitar), Bebeto (flute), Dori Caymmi, and, in profile, Chico Feitosa

  Collection of Roberto Menescal

  João Gilberto had no time to take part in those student entertainments. He was on the road, looking after his career. Really. At the time when one of those shows was held, for example, he had gone to do two performances in Belo Horizonte, at the invitation of his friend Pacífico Mascarenhas. Both went off almost without a hitch. At the first, at the local Automóvel Clube (Automobile Club), he had already been introduced on stage by Pacífico and was receiving a big hand when he suddenly saw something wrong with his guitar and wouldn’t allow the curtains to be opened. Pacífico, unaware of what was going on, introduced him again. More clapping and still no singer. When Pacífico peeked behind the curtains to see what was going on, he discovered that João wanted him to tune his guitar. The show started somewhat late, but finished on time, and was only moderately successful. Belo Horizonte was still not all that enthusiastic for bossa nova, as they said in those parts.

  The following night, João Gilberto locked himself in the bathroom at the Hotel Normandie two hours before the show at the Yacht Club and wouldn’t come out. Pacífico thought about breaking down the door, but this was very much against his nature—not to mention his name. He preferred to talk João Gilberto into coming out, as you do with someone who threatens to throw himself out of a window. Right when the show was due to begin, João sheepishly opened the bathroom door, went to the club, and delighted the three hundred people who were in the audience.

  In those days in Belo Horizonte, he was capable of many other personal niceties. A local blind musician went to look for him at his hotel, and the two of them played the guitar together for several hours. On leaving, the young man praised João’s guitar. Without hesitation, the latter said, “It’s yours. Keep it.”

  The opaque eyes of the young man appeared to shine with a beautiful and unparalleled luminosity. He did not want to take the guitar, but João Gilberto said, “I insist. Take it as a souvenir.”

  The young man thanked him a thousand times, and left, very happy, with the guitar. In fact, the guitar did not belong to João Gilberto but to Pacífico Mascarenhas, who witnessed the entire exchange with disbelief—and who, of course, had no intention of intervening in João’s generous gesture.

  The trip to Belo Horizonte had another positive aspect. Pacífico took João to the home of the pianist Talita Fonseca, where he met another member of Samba-Cana, the student Roberto Guimarães. Roberto sang “Amor certinho” (Sure-Fire Love) for him, and for João, it was love at first sight upon hearing the song. But obviously not at first hearing, because he made Roberto sing the entire song at least fifty times that night, until he could be sure that he had learned it. The student had no idea, meanwhile, that he would hear the song recorded by João Gilberto on his next album, O amor, o sorriso e a flor (Love, a Smile, and a Flower).

  As it happens, João Gilberto wasn’t the first person to record this song. Jonas Silva, his predecessor in Os Garotos da Lua, did so before him. He was accompanied by a group that few other singers could boast: João Donato on trombone, Ed Lincoln on piano, Bebeto on double bass, Milton Banana on drums—and João Gilberto himself on the guitar.

  In fact, it was João Gilberto who taught him “Amor certinho,” and Jonas recorded it that same year of 1959 for the minuscule record label Rádio, on a double 45 r.p.m. that also contained Jobim’s “A felicidade” (Happiness), Johnny Alf’s “Rapaz de bem” (Nice Guy), and the obscure “Se você soubessse” (If You Knew). His precedence was merely symbolic, because the record that Jonas made passed unnoticed, and the official release of the song came when it was recorded by João. The year before, when the only known samples of real bossa nova were “Chega de saudade” and “Bim-bom,” Jonas recorded another double 45 r.p.m., this time for Philips, on which he sang current hits like “Cheiro de saudade” (The Scent of Longing), by Luiz Antônio and Djalma Ferreira; “Saudade querida” (Beloved Longing), by Tito Madi; and even one of the first compositions by Chico Feitosa and Ronaldo Bôscoli, “Vocêzinha” (Little You). Again, he was accompanied by star performers, like Copinha on flute, the legendary Vadico on piano, Baden Powell on guitar, and Raul de Barros on trombone—none of whom were associated with bossa nova at the time, not even young Baden. But Jonas’s vocal style, which remained the same as he had always sung, was completely bossa nova. “I never knew how to sing any other way,” he would explain, almost apologetically.

  It’s true. Since being kicked out of Os Garotos da Lua in 1950 to make way for João Gilberto, his career as a singer had declined until it was practically nonexistent. Someone who sang “softly” had few offers of work with vocal ensembles, and after that, Jonas joined Os Vocalistas Tropicais (The Tropical Vocalists), but only temporarily. He confesses that he never felt comfortable singing alone; he was “too scared.” As was common in those days, Jonas made a few private recordings on acetate, around 1954. On one of them, he recorded “Pra que discutir com madame?” (Why Fight with Madame?) by Janet de Almeida, accompanied only (which was a luxury) by Johnny Alf on piano. On another, he sang his own composition, “Rosinha,” again with Johnny Alf on piano and Jorginho on alto sax (both songs would be recorded by João Gilberto thirty years later). It is interesting to note that although Jonas was a semi-obscure singer, great musicians always made a point of playing with him. None of those acetates was ever released commercially.

  However, in keeping with his impressive modesty, he never complained about being left behind. During the rest of the decade, he concentrated on his work at the Murray, which continued to be, for a good long while, the largest importer of records in Rio, and he later opened his own record import business. In 1958, when João Gilberto released “Chega de saudade,” the generous Jonas made sure that no other record was played in the Murray for the entire day—or else, that it was merely flipped over to play “Bim-bom.” The proof that, from that moment on, it was possible to sing softly like João encouraged him to return to making records, and in 1958 and 1959 he recorded his two 45 r.p.m.s. But the similarity of vocal styles, Northeastern accent, and way of singing was so marked that for anyone who didn’t know the background story, Jonas Silva was just another of those João Gilberto imitators who had begun to surface.

  “I don’t understand this bossa nova stuff,” remarked Dr. Jairo Leão, Nara’s father. “Where’s the bossa? And what’s so different about these songs?”

  Jairo the lawyer was very competent in his own field, but not very discerning in musical matters or at recognizing his English socks on Ronaldo Bôscoli’s feet. Nara’s apartment in Copacabana had become the headquarters of bossa nova—not the bossa nova of Jobim and João Gilberto, who rarely went there (and Vinícius would only go for the first time in 1963), but of Ronaldo’s gang. For the latter, who was scared to walk down the street, the apartment was a kind of bunker. In his role as Nara’s boyfriend (and now fiancé), he settled in as if it were his mother-in-law’s house and made everyone come to him. After a while, he began to go out in a group and eventually risked going out alone, but the custom of gathering at Nara’s house continued.

  They were, in fact, primarily guitar parties, although Bill Horn helped out on French horn, and Bebeto on double bass. Hélcio Milito didn’t always bring his drums, but it was easy to improvise; all he needed was a dust brush and a telephone directory. But it had to be the right directory:

  “Pass me the address listing, Nara,” Hélcio would say. “The Yellow Pages are off-key.”

  Contrary to popular belief, there was no piano in the apartment. Or at least, not on a regular basis. Menescal remembers seeing one there for a while—”An electronic keyboard, that sounded like a Solovox”—but it disappeared without anyone noticing. It wasn’t missed: all the pianists in the group—Luizinho Eça, Luís Carlos Vinhas, Oscar Castro-Neves—also played the guitar. Th
is was the main instrument; it was played by Menescal, Nara, Carlinhos Lyra, Normando, Chico Feitosa (whom João Gilberto considered his best student), and two occasional participants, Sylvinha Telles and her ex-husband Candinho, who played the instrument like an expert. Only Ronaldo Bôscoli did not play anything, and that was because his hands were always permanently occupied: one caressed Nara’s much-coveted knee and the other helped himself to Dr. Jairo’s Scotch. Nara was Ronaldo’s fiancée and an inspiration for everyone else there—they called her the “muse of bossa nova.”

  They drank Scotch or guaraná, and sometimes Scotch with guaraná, which was a heresy. There were occasions on which Dona Tinoca, Nara’s mother, tried to impose a curfew on her seventeen-year-old daughter—”Go to sleep now, Nara, it’s late. There’ll be more bossa nova tomorrow”—but it was easy for her to give in. When João Gilberto, for example, made an appearance, he only showed up after midnight. On Thursdays, Dr. Jairo held his poker parties, attended by regulars like the theater critic Paulo Francis and humorists Millôr Fernandes and Leon Eliachar. On poker nights, bossa nova was forced out onto the street.

  Or to one of the many other apartments that were already fighting for the privilege of hosting it.

  Luiz Bonfá pulled his green Pontiac up to the corner of Rua Visconde de Pirajá and Rua Montenegro, in Ipanema, and honked at João Gilberto and Pacífico Mascarenhas, who were waiting for him on the sidewalk. The two of them got in. That evening, they were all—and I really mean all—going to the pianist Bené Nunes’s enormous apartment in Rua Osório Duque Estrada, in Gávea. It was the last week of 1959, and the magazine O Cruzeiro wanted to gather together everyone connected with bossa nova for a big story—the first about the musical movement. The magazine had the power to do this, given that it had a circulation of 700,000 copies per week. And if O Cruzeiro was choosing to do a story on bossa nova, this meant complete victory, a triumph for the young men and women who had pulled modern music into the limelight.

  That evening/night, Bené Nunes’s apartment played host to Tom Jobim, João Gilberto, Luiz Bonfá, Ronaldo Bôscoli, Carlinhos Lyra, Roberto Menescal, Sylvinha Telles, Nara Leão, Oscar Castro-Neves, Iko Castro-Neves, Luvercy Fiorini, Luizinho Eça, Luís Carlos Vinhas, Sérgio Ricardo, Chico Feitosa, Normando Santos, Alayde Costa, Walter Santos, Pacífico Mascarenhas, Nana Caymmi, Elizabeth Gasper, Bebeto, the double bass player Henrique, drummer João Mário, the girls who comprised their entourage—and veteran Ary Barroso, whose “Brazil” had been a worldwide hit during World War II and afterward.

  Ary was there to symbolize that bossa clássica (classic bossa) recognized the excellence of the young men and women of bossa nova. Already tanked up with Scotch, and with a voice (full of bossa) that the O Cruzeiro article called “astringent,” the man who wrote “Brazil” asked, “Hey, Lyyyra, sooo whaaat exactly iiis Booossa Nooova?”

  Lyra was left speechless and unable to reply, so he passed the buck to Bôscoli: “Go on, Ronaldo.” The latter deliberated that, well, “Philosophically, bossa nova is a state of mind” (this expression would later catch on) and that Chaplin, Picasso, Prokofiev, Debussy—”maybe even Beethoven,” Ronaldo ventured—all of them “had been bossa nova in their time.” Jobim gave Ary a demonstration and played “Fotografia” (Photograph)—only with a foxtrot rhythm. And Alayde Costa, whom the others called Ameixa (Plum), spoke from the heart: “I think that bossa nova is any music that contains flats and sharps.”

  Ary Barroso, with exceptionally good humor, given the circumstances, sighed deeply: “Ahhh … Now I understand …”

  They all played, sang, or gave their opinions to Ary and O Cruzeiro. The meeting swallowed up the hours and was only interrupted, as usual, around midnight, when Bené’s wife, Dulce Nunes, served her traditional stroganoff—a popular dish at the time that had been introduced to Brazil by Baron Von Stuckart at the Vogue nightclub. The stroganoff was a must on Thursdays at Bené and Dulce’s house, when the bossa nova crowd gathered in the couple’s well-equipped music room. While it was being digested, the music continued, with the additional participation of the lady of the house as a singer—she was much admired by everyone, including for her voice.

  Bené Nunes, an old-time pianist, was the godfather of bossa nova. (He was also President Juscelino Kubitschek’s private pianist: he livened up all of the soirées at the Palácio do Catete). That was one of many gatherings he hosted for the gang and perhaps, most importantly: it got bossa nova a sensational ten-page spread in O Cruzeiro.

  Dulce and Bené were the first and best-loved hosts of the new musical movement. But it didn’t take long for others to appear, eager to receive in their own drawing rooms what they considered to be the Brazilian music that best complemented their carpets and wood paneling. In no time at all, bossa nova could be seen and heard in the apartments and homes of socialites like those of Irene Singery, in Avenida Atlântica; Bianca Janner, in Rua Marquês de São Vicente; Baby Bocayuva Cunha, in Avenida Rui Barbosa; Senator Vitorino Freire, father of the future lyricist Lula Freire, in Jardim Botânico; the lawyer Nelson Motta, father of the young Nelsinho (also a future lyricist), in Rua Paissandu; and even the poet Augusto Frederico Schmidt, who would make complex comparisons between bossa nova and a live white rooster that he had in his living room. “Bossa nova is modern man’s encounter with eternal mankind,” Schmidt pontificated. “He’s like this rooster: calm and peaceful, except when he looks at himself in the mirror.”

  None of the young men and women really understood what the poet was trying to say, but even if there had been the slightest possibility of comprehension, it was soon obliterated by the silver trays, laden with colorful dishes and sparkling beverages, that the waiter balanced above the heads of the guests. Within a short time, bossa nova became so fought over that its protagonists began to enjoy certain luxuries, before really learning how to handle them. One of the problems was the miscellaneous class of people who comprised bossa nova: there was a diplomat (Vinícius), serious musicians like Jobim, a painfully shy young girl (Nara), and musicians who had a wide scope of experience in the nightly inferninhos (little hells).

  Of course, these musicians tried to do the best they could. At a reception at the Argentine embassy in Botafogo at the beginning of 1960, drummer Milton Banana found himself sitting between two ladies from the diplomatic corps at dinner. As he had nothing to say to either one of them, he kept his eyes on his plate. The lady on his right began to talk with the guest seated on her other side and casually turned her back to him. When the food began to be served, Banana, realizing that the lady hadn’t seen the waiter, tried to attract her attention. But he did so by well-intentionally, but painfully, elbowing her in the ribs, while asking politely, “Would you like some chicken, ma’am?”

  There were also rumors that at the smart bossa nova gatherings, belongings such as silverware, ashtrays, and other assorted objects would habitually vanish from the apartments. The journalists who were part of the bossa nova “in” crowd denied that the musicians were responsible for those disappearances, which did in fact happen. And it’s likely they really were innocent, because many of them were already dazzled enough by the fact that they could now walk into a party using the front door, like normal guests. The liberal attitude of the bossa nova hosts even permitted guests at the most intimate gatherings to sit on the floor, where the young men and women were most accustomed to playing. This inspired the envious baião composer, Humberto Teixeira, to disdainfully define bossa nova as “carpet music.”

  Teixeira was not the first to oppose the movement. Antônio Maria loosed his dogs on the new music, but he had his reasons for doing so. In all the interviews that were requested of them—and at first, this seemed to happen just about every fifteen minutes—Bôscoli, Menescal, Lyra, and even Jobim would brand the music “of the past” as somber, glum, and melancholic, as well as downright defeatist. For them, bossa nova had come to free them from “Não, eu não posso lembrar que te amei” (No, I can’t remember that I loved you) (
from “Caminhemos” [Let’s Walk] by Herivelto Martins) with the manly and emphatic affirmation by Vinícius in “Eu SEI que vou te amar / Por toda minha vida eu VOU te amar” (I KNOW I will love you / For the rest of my life I WILL love you). The example not to be followed, which they loved to quote, was the inevitable “Ninguém me ama / Ninguém me quer” (Nobody loves me / Nobody cares), by Antônio Maria.

  Maria was annoyed not just by this; he also did not appreciate being suddenly relegated to an obscure corner of the past. Hell, in 1960 he was just thirty-nine, which didn’t exactly make him a contemporary of Methuselah. And besides, he wasn’t able to discern the kind of musical talent in those kids that gave them the right to belittle the work of their elders, like João Pernambuco, Fernando Lobo, Haroldo Barbosa, Wilson Batista, Sílvio Caldas, Herivelto Martins, and well, why not he himself, Antônio Maria. And when had his very old friend Vinícius stopped wearing short pants? It must have been back at the end of World War I, since he had been born in 1912! Maria was hooked by the controversy and challenged the entire bossa nova crowd to a debate on his program Preto no branco (Black on White) on TV Rio.