It’s a recurring image in the imagination of many first-time visitors when they arrive in Rio de Janeiro: the rolling landscape of a city between mountains and sea with the delicate bossa nova soundtrack as background music. Many will imagine her this way again after seeing the new film by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal “They Shot the Pianist”, dedicated to the story of Tenório Junior, the pianist of Vinicius de Moraes. But in the postcard from Rio there is a mix of saudade and invention. It is an extremely musical city, but the Cariocas live indifferently to the musical genre they exported around the world. To the surprise and disappointment of many tourists, on the one hand, one can count the places where one can hear bossa nova, although recently some attempts (not always successful) to restore some strength have been added to the last places that still resist.
Southern spring begins and a free music festival takes place on the city’s beaches on a rainy weekend. One of the stages is located in a small park overlooking the sea called Garota de Ipanema, like the famous song by Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. The legendary Roberto Menescal, an 85-year-old instrumentalist and one of the movement’s founders, will soon be on stage. The audience consists of a handful of fans, a few dozen, and most of them have gray hair. There is a feeling of nostalgia in the air, of celebrating a time that has already passed. One of the most lively is Wallis Issa, a 70-year-old woman: “Bossa Nova is eternal, those who appreciate it are those who understand music, it is not for everyone.” Nowadays, few appreciate this, the noise pollution is “It’s big, the majority listens to everything,” she says very confidently.
The bossa nova was like a flash, a beacon that illuminated a lot but didn’t last long. Basically between 1958 and 1964. During these years, the holy trinity of João Gilberto, Jobim and Moraes and a long list of artists revolutionized what would later be called Brazilian Popular Music (MPB). Brazilians are aware of its historical significance, but observe the phenomenon with a cold distance.
One of the historical places where the movement began is the Beco das Garrafas, a cul-de-sac in the Copacabana district with three bars where, in the golden years, artists, politicians, businessmen, journalists and bohemians of all stripes gathered in search of the last drink gathered good music. Today it is one of the last corners where you can hear the music, sung in a whisper, as its manager, Sérgio De Martino, boasts.
Interior of one of the bars in Beco das Garrafas, one of the cradles of the Bossa Nova movement in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Leonardo Carrato
While he’s airing out the hall a few hours before the next show (it smells quite strongly of humidity), he takes a seat, takes a deep breath and admits that a lot has changed. Before the pandemic, 80% of customers were foreign tourists. “As it is one of the few places where you can hear bossa nova, travel agents and hotel concierges already send tourists directly to me,” he says. The legendary venue has nothing to do with the club where Elis Regina or Sérgio Mendes began their careers. Now he’s languishing in search of support to keep the blinds from being drawn down permanently. “We are resistance and resilience. After the pandemic, it was very difficult to get started again. We are “intangible cultural assets of the city of Rio,” but that doesn’t mean anything concrete. We depend on political will, which does not exist. Bossa Nova’s potential is greatly wasted. “It’s a struggle to stay open. We are waiting to see if we can get help and leave this to the next generations,” he says.
For Professor Pedro Bustamante Teixeira, author of the book Do samba à bossa-nova: inventing a Country, the genre “very quickly lost its contemporaneity,” partly precisely because it left the country very quickly. There was an outcry in Europe and the United States. He saved jazz when it was not at its best, and to this day he is more widely recognized outside Brazil than within Brazil. In 1962, a concert was held at Carnegie Hall in New York that was considered a launching pad for Brazilian music in the world. On October 8, the same venue will commemorate this historic evening with performances by Seu Jorge and Daniel Jobim (the composer’s grandson) and other artists. It is difficult for a similar event to occur in Brazilian countries.
One of the backpacks that bossa nova carries with it is a recurring criticism: it is a music of the privileged (almost always white men and from a good family) that has made samba white, with popular and extremely black roots. In recent years, for example, Afro-Brazilians such as Johnny Alf and Alaíde Costa have begun to be rescued and pushed into the background despite their enormous talent.
Regarding the foreign preference for bossa nova and the detachment that prevails in Brazil, Teixeira recalls that this has been the case for a long time. In 1967, Jobim returned to Brazil after his brilliant time in the United States. He had just recorded with Frank Sinatra, but in Rio he was thoroughly booed at the Maracanazinho, a sports hall next to the Maracana Stadium. At the end of his career, João Gilberto couldn’t get the big gig he wanted. In 2019, his death caused outrage around the world, but few people from Carioca came to say goodbye to him in the burning chapel in the municipal theater. “Bossa Nova left Rio not knowing how to return, but it never ended. After João Gilberto, everything has a bit of bossa nova,” concludes Teixeira.
Memories and souvenirs from Bossa Nova decorate the walls of the Garota de Ipanema restaurant in the city of Rio de Janeiro.Leonardo Carrato
Hoteliers and business people in the industry occasionally complain that the residents of the “Wonderful City” have lost their emotional connection to the genre, but the authorities could at least take advantage of its tourist appeal. The idea of creating a bossa nova house, a kind of interpretation center, is an idea that the city council takes up from time to time, but which always lies dormant. The grandiose Museum of Image and Sound (MIS), a concrete mastodon that rises on the Copacabana coast and was intended to be the great museum of Brazilian music, has been under construction for more than ten years and is yet to be inaugurated dated. One of the houses where Jobim lived (107 Barão da Torre Street, in Ipanema) was recently demolished, despite the protests of some neighbors, making way for a luxury condominium called Bossa.
The Spotify ranking in Brazil is usually dominated by Sertanejo (a type of local country) or Funk Carioca, reggaeton’s Brazilian cousin. The most listened to song in the country in September was a surprise, Chico, by pop singer Luisa Sonza. “Is that bossa nova he’s singing?” asked his fans of the TikTok generation. Caetano Veloso, always attentive to new trends, said yes to the delight of lovers of the genre who saw an opportunity to bring it to the youngest.
In Copacabana, the neighborhood where it all began, the inauguration of a new headquarters of Blue Note, a franchise of the famous New York jazz club, whose main attraction is expected to be bossa nova, is now about to open. Maybe it will end up being another option for tourists who want to listen to Chega de Saudade Caipirinha in hand and face cans of ice-cold beer and samba.
Samba is the true soundtrack of the city, the tribe from which the ephemeral branch Bossa Nova emerged, and it is still very much alive: in the bars of Lapa, in the streets and squares of the city center or in the samba schools. , who shake up suburbs and favelas with their rehearsals for carnival. The melancholic image of a beach bar with the umpteenth version of the Garota de Ipanema in a can contrasts with the clapping, loud singing and sweat of the Samba Rodas, where every song represents a catharsis.
The statue of Tom Jobim, one of the greatest icons of Brazilian music.Leonardo Carrato
All the culture that goes with it awaits you here.
Subscribe to
Babelia
The literary news analyzed by the best critics in our weekly newsletter
GET IT