The interview that the Rio journalist Tárik de Souza carried out with João Gilberto in 1971, for the magazine “Veja”, is one of the episodes that fills one of the most ambitious books of recent music criticism. And the ambition is successful. “João Gilberto ea Insurreição da Bossa Nova” is a vast work, which tells a large part of the history of Brazilian music, with bossa nova and its greatest exponent as the common thread.
The author devotes dozens of pages to a wealth of information on the artists and records who, since the beginning of the last century, have contributed to the construction of the country’s musical identity. It shows its influence on bossa nova and then all the stylistic consequences that the genre has inserted into world music to this day.
“The idea was to prove the importance of bossa nova with facts, so as not to remain opinionated,” explains the author. “Before bossa nova, there were people who were changing a lot in Brazilian music, people who were bringing dissonant chords, progressions that didn’t exist before. Take Dorival Caymmi, Custódio Mesquita, Vadico, a lot of musicians, Ary Barroso himself, these were people who were already making changes. Bossa nova unified that, and João Gilberto was the unification.”
This real family forest of popular music makes people understand that João Gilberto did not take bossa nova out of his pocket when he released the album “Chega de Saudade” in 1958. “João made the synthesis, and that’s the reason for his success. And he was very charismatic. But many helped. Johnny Alf managed to create the fusion point between samba and jazz. Everyone went to see Johnny Alf. Tom Jobim, João himself, João Donato too It was (Roberto) Menescal Everyone wanted to know how he managed to do that, from that moment on these people started to develop their own language.
Tárik de Souza says that when João Gilberto appeared, Roberto Menescal listened and began to develop his own language on the guitar. The same thing happens with Carlinhos Lyra. “Then along comes a guy called Baden Powell, the greatest guitarist in the world! He comes into the middle of bossa nova and does fantastic things. Then you think, ‘Well, Baden Powell showed up and now it’s over.’ bossa nova knew how to absorb. There were advances, transformations, changes.
The Afro connection is fundamental in bossa nova. “A lot of people have even said that bossa nova whitewashes samba. It’s stupid. How are you going to whitewash a song by mixing two black genres, samba and jazz?” He points to “Kaô Xangô”, recorded by Johnny Alf, which is a macumba point. “It’s black music within bossa nova. People didn’t know how to see it. There’s an interview with Tom Jobim in the book in which he says that with ‘Água de Beber’ he and Vinicius wanted to make black music.”
The black presence in bossa nova is not the only prejudice that the book wants to demystify. It shows that the genre was very popular from the beginning, rejecting the label of sophisticated music reserved for elites. “As soon as bossa nova appeared, chanchada arrived in cinemas, at the time the most popular thing in mass culture. And the movie was called ‘Gunman Bossa Nova,’ with Carlos Lyra singing! Bossa nova was all the rage.”
Many wanted to ride the bossa nova wave. “Wilson Simonal, a popular idol, was a guy accepted into bossa nova, because he sang like hell, he was spectacular. On the other hand, Erasmo Carlos wasn’t accepted and spent his whole life tarnishing bossa nova, saying it was an elitist thing. But that’s because he didn’t fit in. He ended up switching to samba-rock, with ‘A Pescaria’, ‘Coqueiro Verde’, his songs did not join, but not because of elitism.
Tárik de Souza closes the book with testimonies and interviews with artists about the movement. Some choices are inevitable, like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, but the author reserves one last surprise by choosing unexpected names, like Emicida, Arrigo Barnabé and Jards Macalé.
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