ORIGINS AND CREATORS
The bossa nova is a musical genre of Brazilian origin that emerged in the late fifties, driven by a group of middle class students and musicians from Copacabana and Ipanema, two neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro located next to the beach. He became well known in Brazil thanks to the recording of “Chega de Saudade” composed by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, and performed by João Gilberto, they are the three main creators of this genre in Brazil.
TOM JOBIM, JOÃO GILBERTO AND VINICIUS DE MORAES
Within the historical political context, the bossa nova at its birth was a cultural movement supported by the government of Juscelino Kubitschek (between 1956 and 1961) popularly known as the “bossa nova president”, whose government characteristics were the launching of the modernity, the birth of a prosperous and industrial Brazil, the determination of Brazilian oil as belonging to his country and the initiative for the construction of the city of Brasilia.
In a new context of political and economic stability, the bossa nova history was born on the shores of the sea of Rio de Janeiro, a city which at that time was the Brazilian capital and the one that most extended its gaze at that time to the fashion trends in the world, mainly from Paris and New York. It was the city that in that presidential period engendered cultural expressions such as concrete poetry, cinema novo, free theater, new architecture and of course bossa nova.
Bossa Nova is a style that is recognized worldwide for its importance in the history of Brazilian music. He collected the distinctive features of festive and ardent carnival samba, to remove decibels, fervor and percussion instruments in large quantities, and take it to smaller spaces where harmonies could be heard in complete tranquility.
In these conditions, new and sophisticated harmonies emerged, mainly by Antônio Carlos Jobim, who was very much influenced by Claude Debussy’s Impressionist current, the work of Brazilian Heitor Villalobos and the spirit of jazz music from the United States.
The lyrics and music also maintained a close relationship with each other, although its main characteristic is the Brazilian root rhythm.
The bossa-nova became tremendously popular in Brazil and the world from the United States mainly to Japan, France and Italy, thanks to important antecedents such as the partnership between Frank Sinatra and Antônio Carlos Jobim, and after the release of “Girl from Ipanema” “(1963), one of the best selling records in the history of the world recorded by Stan Getz, Tom Jobim, Joao Gilberto and Astrud Gilberto, who won two Grammy’s beating “A hard days night by “The Beatles “, who were the greatest exponents of the record industry.
Another great predecessor of bossa nova from France to the world was a scene from Claude Lelouch’s film “Um homme et une femme” (1966), where the main actor Pierre Barouh interprets the French version of “Samba da Bênçao” by Vinicius de Moraes, you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsCBr_pyZ0.
Thanks to the discovery that American figures such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd made of bossa-nova, there was an important cultural exchange between these musicians and other Brazilians such as the precursor Laurindo Almeida, Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto, thus generating a new branch of the syncopation that was based on the schemes of Brazilian music.