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

by Castro, Ruy

  Nara defined herself at that time like this: “I’m the bravest woman I know. In private, you can call me Nara Coração de Leão (Nara the Lion-Hearted).”

  19

  Shuttle Service

  Singer-guitarist João Gilberto, pianist João Donato, drummer Milton Banana, and bassist Tião Neto at the Bussoloto, in Viareggio, Italy, 1963. This hilarious tour featured probably the greatest bossa nova small combo ever—and they never even recorded together

  Collection of Tião Neto

  While for some in 1964 the world was going up in smoke, for others the atmosphere continued to be one of peace and birdsong. The singer Wanda Sá, nineteen years old, Roberto Menescal and his musicians, and sound engineer Umberto Contardi arrived in the studio on time one day. They were going to record “Inútil Paisagem” (Useless Landscape), by Jobim and Aloysio de Oliveira, the last track on Wanda’s debut album, Vagamente (Vaguely), for RGE. The studio was closed and empty, although it was an ordinary Wednesday. But Contardi had a key, and they let themselves in. Now all they were waiting for were the string instrument musicians. Hours went by and nobody came. This struck them as very odd; violinists are a serious-minded breed, almost always middle-aged, and they live by the clock. Wanda and Menescal gave up waiting and recorded the song with those present. On leaving to go back to Copacabana, they noticed an unusual commotion in Campo de Santana square downtown, and an uncommon upheaval at the Central do Brasil train station. As they passed through the Flamengo neighborhood, they saw the Students’ National Union headquarters being set on fire. The musicians hadn’t turned up because the General Workers’ Confederation had decreed a general strike and there was no public transportation. It was April 1, 1964, and they didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on. (President João Goulart was merely being ousted by the military.)

  Menescal had been, up until then, one of the most influential figures in bossa nova, as a composer, musician, and producer. He had recorded three almost consecutive albums with Elenco, and his ensemble was practically omnipresent—and uncredited—accompanying singers on innumerable other albums produced by him. When bossa nova split into two opposing “left” and “right” factions, Roberto Menescal became an important ally to be won over. “We need to write engagée music,” Geraldo Vandré told him. “The militia are arresting and torturing people. The music has to alert the people to what’s going on.”

  “In the first place, I don’t believe any of that stuff,” replied Menescal, who was decidely detached from events. “And second, the purpose of music is not to alert people to anything. That’s the job of the regiment’s bugle.”

  Politics were the last thing on Menescal’s mind, trailing miles behind his real concerns with flippers, aqualungs, and wetsuits. But the creation of a left-wing faction in the group that still went around calling itself bossa nova—Nara Leão, Carlinhos Lyra, Sérgio Ricardo, Geraldo Vandré, Edu Lobo, Ruy Guerra, Gianfrancesco Guarnieri—alienated the others and automatically pushed them to the right, for the plain and simple fact that they continued to be exclusively interested in making music. (The worst were those who insisted on living in deliberate ignorance, like Bôscoli, Jobim, and Aloysio de Oliveira.) Only Vinícius had managed to establish a makeshift bridge between the two factions and was able to pass from one to the other with great agility. Nobody was interested in João Gilberto’s opinion and, in any case, by 1964 he had already been out of Brazil for quite some time.

  The new batch of composers arriving on the scene (actually, bossa nova’s second generation) were also more concerned with harmonies than discord. They were Marcos Valle, Francis Hime, Dori Caymmi (Dorival Caymmi’s son), Eumir Deodato, and Nelsinho Motta—almost all of them set free from Mário Mascarenhas’s accordion by the bossa nova shows at the School of Architecture or at the Catholic University, which they had enthusiastically attended as groupies. The exception was Edu Lobo, who appeared to be very serious and played a kind of social music (a label he didn’t care for), although it was of an exceptional standard. Affinities were established naturally: Marcos Valle, Francis Hime, Dori Caymmi, and Eumir Deodato felt closer to Jobim and Menescal; Nelsinho Motta felt closer to Ronaldo Bôscoli; and Edu Lobo to Vinícius and the leftish Teatro de Arena gang. Theater music had always been one of Edu Lobo’s interests, and since 1962 he had been trying to get experience in the musical genre and even, in partnership with Guarnieri and Boal, composed the songs for Arena canta Zumbi (Arena Sings Zumbi), a play about slavery that debuted in May 1965 in São Paulo.

  At the time, the album from Arena canta Zumbi could only be heard as partisan propaganda and, even then, with difficulty. But several of Edu’s songs, like “Zambi,” “Upa Neguinho,” and “Estatuinha” (Little Statue) would escape that bondage and gain freedom in the voice of new singer Elis Regina, accompanied by a bossa nova beat. The play itself was a masterpiece of simplemindedness and demagogy, but its playwrights Boal and Guarnieri stated that they were “discovering” Brazil and practicing an “impure art” that dealt with unpleasant issues like slavery, work, and liberty. Naturally, the only concern the gang had was using the issue of slavery to talk about the military dictatorship, using the “ideology of poverty” and making bossa nova feel, in comparison, like a sort of society smile.

  Marcos Valle, who was twenty-one years old in 1964 and one of the bossa nova youngsters who used to get together at Lula Freire’s apartment in Copacabana, was one of the first to object to the kind of Populism that the others wanted to authoritatively impose upon him. His first songs, written in 1963 with his brother Paulo Sérgio, like “Sonho de Maria” (Maria’s Dream), “Amor de nada” (Empty Love), “E vem o sol” (Here Comes the Sun), “Razão do amor” (Reason for Love), and “Ainda mais lindo” (Even More Beautiful) were along the lines of the love-sea-flower theme that his former beach companion, Nara, was now rejecting. When Nara gave her infamous interview, Marcos felt personally slighted. And he watched with alarm as that kind of acrimony spread among other bossa nova musicians who, like him, were only familiar with impoverished northeast Brazil through picture postcards—and who, up until recently, had shared his fascination for the love-sea-flower theme. What Nara and the others were proposing was a return to the most backward and reactionary folk music traditions imaginable—as well as being exclusive: they would not allow their friends to write any other type of music.

  Marcos and Paulo Sérgio Valle didn’t hesitate. They opened up the piano and pounded out a response (aptly entitled “The Response”) which they hoped would show how they felt about it: “If anyone tells you that your samba is worthless / Because it speaks only of peace and of love / Don’t listen to them, because they don’t know what they’re saying / They don’t understand happy sambas.// Samba can talk about the sky and the sea / The samba that people can sing is the best / Enough of hunger, people already have that in their lives / Why make them sing about it, too?// But the time has come to be different / And those people / No longer want to know / About love.// Talking about land on the sands of Arpoador / Isn’t helping those who are poor / Talking of the slums while living in a house that faces the sea / Won’t help to improve anyone’s life.”

  The implacable and unsuspicious José Ramos Tinhorão didn’t disagree with a single comma, but according to Marcos, they suffered reprisals: Edu Lobo and other old friends didn’t talk to them for a while. To prove they weren’t kidding, Marcos and Paulo Sérgio immediately followed suit with a series of songs that were even more closely aligned to the love-flower-sea theme: “Gente” (People), “Seu encanto” (The Face I Love), “Samba de verão” (Summer Samba), “Os grilos” (The Crickets Sing for Ana Maria), “Batucada surgiu” (Batucada Emerged), “O amor é chama” (Love Is a Flame), “Deus brasileiro” (Brazilian God), “Tudo de você” (All of You), “Vamos pranchar” (Let’s Surf), and “Preciso aprender a ser só” (If You Went Away). But even they were unable to hold out indefinitely and, three years later, in 1967, they also swapped their traditional steel-string guitars
for folk guitars and went to the boondocks, with “Viola enluarada” (Moonlit Guitar). Even for two genuine bossa nova musicians like them, it was difficult to flee from the wave that was transforming stages into soapboxes and any song into protest.

  Ironically, soon afterward, a singer told them that they had a song she wanted to record. The song was “A Resposta” and the singer was Nara Leão. “I change my mind every couple of hours,” Nara explained.

  At the beginning of 1964, unaware of the uproar surrounding bossa nova on the domestic front, Creed Taylor released Getz/Astrud’s “The Girl from Ipanema” single and the complete Getz/Gilberto album in the United States. During the whole of the previous year, when the record had lain dormant in a drawer, a lot of things had happened. Tom Jobim had finally recorded his own album, The Composer of “Desafinado”—just piano and guitar, no vocals, which was an astute decision by Creed Taylor in order to safeguard Jobim’s reputation in the United States. In place of his voice, they added the string instruments of the German arranger Claus Ogerman, who, following instructions to save money and Jobim’s good taste, would establish a standard for this kind of arrangement in future bossa nova records. The album received the five stars that Down Beat magazine awarded first-rate albums, and the music critic Pete Welding lamented the fact that they did not have a higher star rating to confer upon it.

  Nothing happens very fast in the United States, not even when your name is Antonio Carlos Jobim and you’ve been showered with stars by Down Beat. During the many months that passed in 1963, Jobim had to play a little guitar—because, to Americans, this particular instrument lent itself better than the piano to their image of the Latin lover they wanted him to be. He also wrote arrangements for several singers, including Peggy Lee; he accompanied Andy Williams several times on his TV show, one of the first to be broadcast coast-to-coast via satellite; and he paid his bill at the California hotel where he was hiding out from the New York cold with a practically unheard-of record by pianist Jack Wilson on which he appeared as “Tony Brazil.” On the road the entire time, his song production in 1963 was almost zero. One of the few he wrote was called “Bonita” (Beautiful), and with good reason: its inspiration was a young woman, Candice Bergen, whom he had the pleasure of meeting at the home of the president of Atlantic Records, Nesuhi Ertegun. The pleasure, by the way, was mutual. Jobim was about to start his long pilgrimage in the name of bossa nova. Nobody traveled more than he to take his songs to so many people in so many places (not even João Gilberto, whose only committment, after all, was to sing them). It was fortunate that he had already written such a vast repertoire of songs before crossing the sea in 1963—or not even he would have been able to take playing “The Girl from Ipanema” zillions of times over.

  João Gilberto also took to the road at that time, but he did so wearing his bedroom slippers. In July 1963, he left New York for Europe with João Donato, who had come out from California especially to accompany him, together with double bassist Tião Neto and drummer Milton Banana. Astrud went with them, but only as João’s wife, although the marriage was already breaking up—her rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema” remained unpublished and she did not sing at any of the group’s performances. They started in Rome, where they spent a week at the Foro Italico, and then left for Viareggio, in the south of Italy, where they packed the Bussoloto, the private function room of an enormous show hall called La Bussola. (The four of them never rehearsed together, and João Gilberto and João Donato spent the entire show laughing under their breath at the others’ mistakes, but even so, according to Tião Neto, their performance was sensational.)

  The Bussoloto was a private room on the top floor, frequented by intellectuals. In the large ground-floor hall, Bruno Martino’s orchestra played hully-gullies and counteracted with a bolero written by the conductor, called “Estate”—which, many years later, João Gilberto would remember and record. Well-known, commercially-billed artists also performed at the Bussola, such as the chansonnier Jean Sablon, who sang “Vous qui passez sans me voir” (You Who Pass By Without Seeing Me), and Chubby Checker, King of the Twist. Both of them went up to the Bussoloto after their shows to hear João Gilberto play. It’s not hard to imagine what Sablon, who had many old Brazilian friends, thought of him. But it’s impossible to guess what went through the mind of Chubby Checker on hearing João Gilberto, except that it probably starting flashing “tilt.”

  A beach that was four kilometers (almost two and a half miles) in length opened up barely fifty meters in front of the hotel where the group was staying, in Marina Pietrasanta. In the three months they were there, João Gilberto didn’t leave his footprints in the sand once, not even wearing his shoes. He stayed shut up in the apartment, stroking a little cat he had brought from Rome, named Romaninha, and worrying about the first signs of a sprain that would affect his hand and part of his right arm. The hours he had spent playing the guitar every day over the last few years, contorting his fingers into that position that everyone considered impossible, were finally taking their toll.

  They had to close the show in October, decline invitations to perform in Tunisia, and take down their tent. Donato, Tião Neto, and Milton Banana went back to New York, and Astrud returned to Rio. João Gilberto went to Paris to consult an acupuncturist, Dr. Zapalla, who “had treated [soccer superstar] Pelé.” The doctor did not manage to cure him (the problem was taken care of the following year, in New York), but in Paris he met a student named Miúcha Buarque de Holanda.

  “This gaúcha is a bit of a country bumpkin,” stated Tom Jobim in the CBS studio in Rio, in July 1964. “You can still smell the barbecue on her.”

  Elis Regina didn’t hear his comment, which was what eliminated her from the recording of “Pobre menina rica,” by Carlinhos Lyra and Vinícius. But she was told by Carlinhos that the arranger—Jobim, who was back in Rio—didn’t feel she was appropriate for the role of the poor little rich girl. With her calico dress and Farah Diba–style hairdo (a beehive with a steel wool stuffing), she may not have made the Year’s Ten Most Elegant Women list, but hell, this was a record. Nobody was going to see her and know that she was much better suited to playing a poor little poor girl than Vinícius’s sophisticated character.

  But on the other hand, it was hard to imagine that anyone who dressed like Elis Regina would be suitable for the role. Besides, Jobim already had someone in mind: Dulce Nunes, wife of the pianist Bené Nunes, an old friend of theirs. Dulce could no longer really be called a “girl” (she was almost thirty), but she was rich, chic, and her voice was very girlish. Jobim made the replacement of Elis with Dulce a condition for his own participation in the record. The switch was made, but Jobim ended up not handing over the arrangements—according to Carlinhos Lyra, for fear of getting involved, during those turbulent post-military coup d’état days, in an album with “social overtones” (which could complicate his return to the United States); according to Jobim, it was because he simply didn’t have time. The arrangements ended up in the magical hands of Radamés Gnatalli, so “Pobre menina rica” missed out on the opportunity to unite Tom Jobim and Elis Regina ten years before their collaboration actually happened, with the album Elis & Tom, released in 1974.

  In fact, in those days Elis Regina really was recently arrived from the Pampas. She arrived in Rio “to stay” on March 28, 1964, shortly after her nineteenth birthday. She had been “discovered” in Porto Alegre (if you were to gather together all of the people who claim to have “discovered” Elis Regina, they wouldn’t fit in a sports stadium) and while living there had recorded three albums for Rio recording companies: Viva a brotolândia (Long Live Teeny-Bopper Land) in 1961 and Poema (Poem) in 1962, both for Continental; and O bem do amor (The Good of Love) in 1963, for CBS, with whom she was contracted. On those records, particularly the first two, she did not deny the influence of the singer whom she had always most admired—the powerful-voiced, but corny ngela Maria—and the repertoire was pitiful: boleros, ballads, covers, and even the cha-c
ha “Las secretarias” (The Secretaries).

  CBS sponsored her trip to Rio in 1964, with the aim of establishing her as a candidate to replace Celly Campello on the throne as the “queen of the teenyboppers.” After bursting onto the scene with “Lacinhos cor-de-rosa” (Pink Shoelaces), “Banho de Lua” (Moon Bathing), and “Estúpido Cupido” (Stupid Cupid), Celly married, retired at twenty, and went to live in Taubaté, upstate São Paulo. Sônia Delfino, her natural replacement, decided to sing songs with more adult themes and left Cinderella’s throne empty. In the recording companies’ plans, the candidates were Selma Rayol, Elis Regina, Cleide Alves, Rosemary, and Wanderléa. The businessman Marcos Lázaro made the brunette Wanderléa dye her hair with henna and convinced CBS to hire her. We don’t know how the others reacted, but Elis didn’t care: she had come from Porto Alegre with a promise from Armando Pittigliani that she would be signed with Philips if things didn’t work out with CBS. The “Poor Little Rich Girl” episode merely gave her an excuse to switch recording companies.