Desafinado e Despojado
Getz / Gilberto
João Gilberto lays out his aesthetic priorities in the intimate first moments of Getz/Gilberto. He enters unaccompanied, consecrating the record with his ease and sincerity and voicing an alluring reservation. He is the embodiment of despojado--relaxed, unadorned, earnest. For the sun-kissed youth of Ipanema and Leblon, this unaffected state was the ideal--a fashion-forward self-consciousness reflexive of the emerging middle class’ search for identity. Bossa nova at once epitomized and composed this sentiment, projecting and enacting the cosmopolitan aspirations of Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s; its carefree sound resonated with an American public in dire need of reprieve. Fractured by the violent climax of the civil rights movement and a divisive conflict in Vietnam, Americans were beginning to feel the heat of a decade defined by mass civil unrest. The bossa craze that began with the release of Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd’s Jazz Samba in 1962 not only reclaimed an audience for jazz, but united listeners across the deep fissures in American society. With the release of Getz/Gilberto, bossa became a worldwide phenomenon, providing anxious listeners everywhere with an exotic, escapist music, evoking a tranquil paradise beyond the culture wars of the 1960s.
Of course, Bossa Nova Rio had long since expired by the mid-1960s; only two weeks following the release of Getz/Gilberto, a right-wing military coup divided Rio’s musical world and gave its youth a new set of concerns. Moreover, the exotic scenes imagined by American listeners were entirely contrary to the intentions of the genre's creators, who crafted a highly-technical approach to samba traditions to pronounce their sophistication. Like all instances of cultural exchange--particularly those foregrounded in US imperial history--the inception of bossa nova was hardly as simple as the willful cross-pollination of a flowering transnational music. The implications of the bossa nova craze troubled the quiet streams of Corcovado; its legacy is complex and troubled, undermining the subtle brilliance of its form. However, if there’s a lesson in bossa, it’s the power, depth, and beauty of simplicity. In Getz/Gilberto, we can hear the echoes of influence and innovation; of coincidence and calculation; of art and artifice that created a profoundly impactful musical revolution. By focusing on the sound of João Gilberto, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Stan Getz, and Astrud Gilberto, we can fold apparently dissonant notes into complex harmonies, creating a more musical, despojado history of bossa nova.
The term ‘bossa nova’ is typically translated as ‘new wave’ or ‘new style.’ This literal rendering obscures the popular etymology of the term. Before it became synonymous with the pop music of the late 1950s, ‘bossa’ was a well established slang word in Rio’s musical culture used to identify a distinctive or idiosyncratic style of playing. Before the creation of the genre we recognize today, the term ‘bossa nova’ was ascribed to a number of young artists and groups in the 1950s that experimented with different combinations of samba and jazz by a network of concert posters, newspaper articles, and other promotional materials. The variety of new forms that this title was applied to reflects the changing aesthetic values of Rio’s youth culture; as the samba-canção of the 1940s no longer fit the self-image of the conscious, cosmopolitan middle class, the hunt for suitable new mediums brought on a period of artistic effervescence. The youth of the 1950s sought a music that was true to their lifestyle, at once unmistakably Brazilian and non-exotic. In an interview for O Globo, Tom Jobim spoke to this desire to display his culture’s distinctive sophistication, stating “We are not going to sell our exotic side, of coffee and carnival… We are going to use our popular music with the conviction that it does not only have its own character, but also by a high technical level.”
Jobim’s ‘bossa nova’ flaunts its technicality with thoughtful and thorough hybridity, drawing on influences from avant-garde European and Afro-Brazilian musical cultures to enhance its particular fusion of jazz and samba. Soft, stripped Brazilian Portuguese vocals sail over samba rhythms, cresting and falling with chromatic harmonies and moments of pause--at perceived dissonance or tension between melody and harmony. Its sound is sculpted as a total auditory evocation of idyllic life in Rio de Janeiro. The term ‘bossa nova’ became widely associated with the genre created by Jobim, Gilberto, and Vinicius de Moraes by 1960, and the popularity of their form would significantly influence most samba-jazz experimentation between 1958 and 1964. The attribution of the genre’s title was likely spurred by Newton Mendonça’s lyrics for “Desafinado”--often termed the genre's manifesto--composed by Jobim and first recorded by Gilberto in 1959. In the second verse, João affirms:
Se você insiste em classificar
meu comportamento de anti-musical,
eu mesmo mentindo devo argumentar
que isto é bossa nova, isto é muito natural
If you insist on classifying
My behavior as anti-musical,
I must argue, even if I am lying,
That this is bossa nova, and it is very natural
“Desafinado” (“Out of Tune”) is typically understood as a response to early critics of bossa nova who argued that the unique vocal style created by Gilberto, coupled with the precarious harmonies of Jobim’s compositions, but for an ugly, atonal style. Jobim and Mendonça’s retort is metalinguistically constructed, which entails a thematic relation between the lyrics and the passage of the surrounding music that allows the composition to conceptualize [within itself] the theory and practice of bossa nova. In the second verse, bossa nova’s deliberate elaboration on samba is made manifest; João declares that the style is at once distinct from and a natural development on local tradition.
Bossa nova’s dynamic relation to its Brazilian cultural inheritance may be best exemplified by the Getz/Gilberto rendition of “Para Machucar Meu Coração,” a melancholy samba-canção (samba-song) composed by Ari Barroso. Barroso was a titan of Brazilian popular music who pioneered the form of samba-canção, blending “down-tempo samba rhythm” with “the extended melodic lines and narrative lyrics of romantic song”--both Gilberto and Jobim have cited him as a major influence (McCann, 43). “Para Machucar Meu Coração” is one of only two songs on the album not composed by Jobim; by reinterpreting these well established works of the Brazilian pop canon, the performers simultaneously pay homage to their predecessors and endow the works with new meaning through the contemporaneity of their musical style. Gilberto’s rendering of Barroso’s lyrics retools the emotional sentiment of the torch-song for the aesthetic values of the new generation by rejecting the lineage of prior interpretations. Whereas the radio stars of the 40s laid themselves bare, sobbing their respective ways through the nostalgic lyrics, Gilberto takes a tone of candid reminiscence, instilling the restrained cool of bossa nova in his subtle modulations of tone. He emphasizes Barroso’s vivid melodic lines over the content of his lyrics; compassion and contemplation resound in every grapheme. Gilberto’s vocal style, inspired by the rhythm and reserve of cool jazz, rejected the heavy vibrato and resounding projection of the masculine singers of the early 1950s, drawing power instead from slight variations in rhythmic placement and timbre. His stirring, tactful rendition is exemplary of bossa nova’s trademark vocal quality and the artist’s well documented commitment to sound over substance.
The soft allure of João Gilberto’s iconic vocal style was refined in a period of reclusive hiatus between the first and second phases of his musical career. In 1950, Gilberto travelled from his home in Juazeiro to Rio de Janeiro--Brazil’s industry capital--in hopes of establishing himself as a singer-songwriter. Gilberto spent four years performing the kind of melodramatic samba-canção that defined the golden age of Brazil’s radio singers with a quintet known as the Garotas da Lua (the Moon Boys). When his career failed to take off, Gilberto fell into a deep depression, leaving Rio in 1955 for the mountains west of Bahia and settling at his sister’s home in Diamantina. Gilberto spent eight months in Diamantina studying new approaches to harmony and fundamentally transforming his approach to music and, in turn, the musical world of Rio de Janeiro.
The unique style of samba guitar that Gilberto developed in this period--his batida de violão--was instrumental to the creation of bossa nova, as it distilled the traditional pillars of Afro-Brazillian rhythm into an understated syncopated plucking pattern in his right hand. Gilberto emulated the surdo (bass drum) by playing a single bass note with his thumb on the strong beats, keeping regular, even time. Against this time, he plucked a syncopated counter-rhythm with his index, middle, and third fingers, playing three notes of a chord simultaneously; this pattern mirrors that of the tamborim in traditional samba. The rhythmic effect of this style is particularly noticeable in the interplay between Gilberto and Jobim during the pianist’s solo on “O Grande Amor”. Here, Gilberto slots his chords between the syncopations of the melody, making the most out of every beat to create a slight, yet full, musical environment. This alternation between rhythm and counter-rhythm gives Gilberto’s batida the pulsating momentum of Afro-Brazillian percussion, manifesting a deliberate and inventive link between bossa nova and its rich cultural inheritance.
Gilberto returned to Rio in early 1957. Upon arrival, he sought out Tom Jobim and demonstrated his new style for the young composer. Jobim had established himself in Rio’s back-stages through his arrangements for Continental, a major recording studio at the heart of the burgeoning samba-jazz scene. He came to prominence as a composer in 1956 through Orfeu da Conceição, a musical which set the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in the predominantly Afro-Brazillian neighborhood of Conceição, perched on a hillside above downtown Rio. The script was written by Vinicius de Moraes, who accented the juxtaposition of classical and Afro-Brazilian traditions in the setting, plot, and--critically--the language of the play, using slight dialectical and poetic differences to signal the underlying race and class tensions of the 1950s. Seeking a composer capable of accomplishing a similarly tense contrast in the score, he encountered Jobim, whose diverse background and influences made him an ideal candidate. Jobim’s training under German musicologist Hans Joachim Koellreuter introduced him to avant-garde European compositional techniques, notably atonalism and serialism, a style popularized by Hindesmith and Schönberg which ordered the twelve notes of the chromatic scale as the foundation for a composition. His later studies with Tomás Terán, a Spanish pianist and protege of Heitor Villa-Lobos, familiarized him with the world of Brazillian art music and a formula for creating distinctly Brazilian sounding music using European compositional procedures. Like Villa-Lobos, Jobim flaunted his apprehension of Impressionist techniques by rejecting whole tone scales and making frequent use of the tight tone clusters that are characteristic of Brazillian orchestral music. His works are marked just as distinctly by the natural beauty and despojado attitudes of Bossa Nova Rio as by his formal education; throughout his career, he was known to spend hours roaming Rio de Janeiro's Botanical Gardens and listening carefully to bird songs.
When asked to describe his music in 1962, Jobim observed, “Bossa nova is serene, it is love and romance, but it is restless” (Jobim qtd. in McGowan et al. 62). Jobim’s compositions are unabashedly syncretic, bridging disparate styles and sounds to evoke the anomalous sentiment of his context. Through “alchemical pop synthesis,” he endows the modest radio romances of the samba-canção tradition with unprecedented depth and intention, obscuring his thorough deliberation with deceptively simple subjects (McCann 26). “Desafinado,” one of Jobim’s most influential compositions, is emblematic of this veiled brilliance. On the surface, “Desafinado” is a sentimental yet sincere reflection on scorned love; upon closer analysis, its title and thematic involvement with the “out of tune” alludes to one of the defining characteristics of bossa nova--an unusually tense relationship between melody and harmony. Carefully analyzing a transcription of the Getz/Gilberto rendition of this standard, Bryan McCann explains how Jobim uses “borrowed” notes as jarring points of transition between verse lines, seducing the listener into committing full attention to his intricate harmonies. He writes:
On the opening line, “Se você disser que eu desafino amor,” the phrase initiates on the tonic chord [E-flat major], arriving at the dominant for the first syllable of desafinado and both syllables of amor. Yet the B-flat of the tonic and dominant quickly slides into B-natural… [this] creates a deliberate clash with both the tonic and dominant harmonies. The B-natural then becomes the lowered fifth of the following F7 chord, making it F7 b5. This creates a notable dissonance with the third of the chord. In the harmonic passage that begins with E-flat major 7 and ends with F7 b5, Jobim does not so much resolve dissonance as fold it into a complex harmonic progression.
These incongruous changes are surprising in a work of popular music, typically characterized by agreeable three-chord arrangements. To the listener accustomed to this style, Jobim’s composition is alluringly uneasy, subverting pop archetypes to intone the technical proficiency of bossa nova. Jobim’s approach to melody, harmony, and rhythm does not take compatibility as given. He relates these pillars of bossa in novel, compelling ways, creating tension and apparent dissonance to reveal depth and beauty.
The meeting of João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim in 1957 seemed fated--written in the quiet stars that dangled before Bossa Nova Rio. Their independent innovations on samba shared one despojado spirit; their union would profoundly affect the future of Brazilian popular music. After Gilberto had finished demonstrating his batida, Jobim shared a recent composition entitled “Chega de Saudade,” with lyrics by de Moraes. The title evades translation; its English-language variant is called “No More Blues”, but “Enough Longing/Nostalgia” is a more literal interpretation. ‘Chega’ was popular slang of the time, meaning “enough already”; saudade is an Afro-Brazilian term that refers to a kind of bittersweet longing. Though the composition fuses Brazilian choro instrumentalism with samba rhythms and rich, impressionistic harmonies, the conceptual and stylistic amalgam of the work is clear in the title alone.
As the story goes, Gilberto practiced Jobim’s composition through the night, figuring out how to communicate the altered, compact chords through his sparse, syncopated batida. The result is slower and more melodic than a traditional samba, channeling the ‘cool’ of America’s west-coast jazz to evoke “the laid-back intimacy of the coffeehouse rather than the street heat of Carnaval.” (Schudel 2). Gilberto’s recording of “Chega de Saudade”, released on a 78 rpm single in August 1958, is widely considered to be the first fully realized bossa nova recording. It was the first project to unite the three heavyweights of bossa’s first wave--Jobim, Gilberto, and de Moraes--showcasing the independent innovations of these three artists and epitomizing the bossa form. The interplay and interdependence of the melody, harmony, lyrics, and interpretation created a style of little contrast, prompting the rapid solidification of a distinct new genre. This shared musical vocabulary reflected a unified way of thinking about the work--a collective invention of a new cultural identity for Rio’s despojado youth preserved in the music produced by Brazilian artists in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Bossa nova was born.
This was the music that Charlie Byrd encountered in 1961. As they trekked through the cultural centers of Latin America on a State Department-sponsored goodwill tour, Byrd and his D.C. based trio paid close attention to the local musical styles they encountered in search of inspiration to revitalize a struggling jazz scene. In Rio, they found exactly what they were looking for: a musical style with common elements that was more than a mere "Brazilianisation" of jazz. In a 1981 interview with The Washington Post, Byrd recounted his first impressions of the style, stating, “Bossa nova was invented by the Brazilians, but it was already an amalgamation because they liked jazz so much… They had brought in many elements of American music, and it made it much easier for us to grasp it and identify with it.” Of course, this imagining minimizes the interpretive work done by artists like Jobim and Gilberto, simplifying the recontextualization of jazz’s ‘cool’ to a kind of impersonation. Though jazz was very popular in Brazil in the 1940s and 50s, its influence on bossa nova was more aesthetic than stylistic. Despite many shared musical characteristics, such as the extensive use of altered chords, Jobim was adamant that his music was only tied to jazz by their common ancestry in “African slaves and the French Impressionists” (qtd. in Reily 9). Regardless, bossa’s innovations made Brazillian popular song comprehensible in the language of jazz. Its lyrical style and chromatic harmonies made it particularly congruous with the west-coast cool scene.
Stan Getz spent the decade before Getz/Gilberto between high highs and low lows, reaping the fruits of tremendous critical acclaim and commercial recognition from the brink. He won the Downbeat reader’s poll for best tenor saxophonist every year from 1950 to 1959, beating out icons like Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, Lester Young, and Ben Webster in an unsurpassable hot-streak. At the same time, it was no secret that Getz lived an appalling life off-stage, as he spent the bulk of this first career peak strung out on heroin and barbiturates. In 1954, Getz starred in one of the most startling episodes of the jazz world’s heroin epidemic when he attempted to support his habit by holding up a drug store, resulting in a six-month sentence at Los Angeles City jail.
By 1960, Getz’s sound had fallen out of favor. His tender lyricism thrived in the 1950s, but when cultural contexts changed, the style that had enchanted college campuses across the country began to feel representative of a repressive, normative white-controlled jazz scene. Coupled with his hard living, this sudden shift in popular opinion seemed to spell certain doom for Getz. Through 1962’s Jazz Samba, Charlie Byrd and Creed Taylor extended a lifeline to Getz, offering a chance at not simply a comeback, but a stylistic evolution. Jazz Samba was an unexpected commercial and critical triumph; in March 1963, it became the first--and only--instrumental jazz album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart. With the success of the album, listeners latched Getz to the bossa nova craze, providing him with a platform following the collapse of cool jazz. McCann writes, “he went into recording sessions for Getz/Gilberto knowing that bossa nova was both his meal ticket and an opportunity to experiment with an entirely different songbook, one with its own grace and beauty.” (55). Creatively revitalized by his first contact with bossa, Getz contributes to Getz/Gilberto with a newfound intensity, appreciation, and commitment to perfecting his craft of bossa nova.
On March 18 and 19, 1963, these disparate forces of bossa innovation were united in A&R Studios on W 48th St. Accompanying Gilberto, Jobim, and Getz were drummer Milton Banana and bassist Sebastião Neto, two session musicians little known outside of the nightclubs of Rio de Janeiro who would respectively work to define the sound of bossa nova percussion and rhythm. The contributions of Creed Taylor, Phil Ramone, and Val Valentin were integral to the realization of the project; Taylor was individually responsible for connecting these artists and can largely be accredited with the cultivation of the US ‘craze’ through the five bossa albums that he produced for Verve, while Ramone and Valentin’s flawless engineering gave the album its definite, crystalline sound. And yet, despite the experience and expertise that this transnational dream-team brought to the album, it was twenty-two year old Astrud Gilberto who caught the public’s attention. Though an aspiring vocalist at the time of the recording, Astrud had performed in public only a few times and had never made a record. It is widely known that Astrud was not in Taylor’s initial plans for the album and was compensated for her work at the daily rate of a session musician; what is unclear, however, is just how she came to be involved, as a number of contradictory legends make it impossible to determine the facts. All the same, it was her rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema” that made the album an international phenomenon. Astrud brings a charming Brazilian lilt to Norman Gimbel’s stilted English translation, defying the metered, square lyrics to mirror the syncopation of João’s opening verse. Though many critiqued her fresh, unpolished delivery as apparent lack of talent, her simplicity is what makes her performance so special. The sweet immediacy of Astrud’s inflection assumes the despojado aesthetic preference that unified the artistic world of Bossa Nova Rio; McCann writes that by knowing what not to do, “she presented a blank canvas for the projection of the listener’s fantasies about Rio and its sensual delights” (3). The song was pop perfection; following its promotional single release, the Getz/Gilberto extended version crossed from the jazz charts to No. 5 on the US Billboard Top 100, challenging the Beatles’ chart hegemony for the first time in weeks. Astrud’s dreamy delivery held the promise of Rio for the listeners worldwide, projecting the cosmopolitan ideal of bossa nova out from the shores of Ipanema.
Since its 1964 release, over 300 other recordings of “The Girl from Ipanema” have appeared on the market. It is believed to be the second most recorded pop song of all time. This wealth of alternate interpretations largely lack the intimacy and integrity of the Getz/Gilberto version--most veer instead towards muzak and the easiest of easy listening. A number of copyright disputes have centered on the song in the 21st century. In 2001, the heirs of Jobim and de Moraes sued Helô Pinheiro (the girl from Ipanema herself) and her Ipanema boutique “A Garota de Ipanema” for infringement, catapulting Pinheiro and her business to international recognition and prosperity. That same year, Oliveira v. Frito-Lay Inc. determined that Astrud, despite her prominent feature on the Getz/Gilberto recording, was not entitled to trademark rights or royalties from the song. Getz/Gilberto was not as celebrated amongst a Brazilian audience as it was internationally; it was rightfully identified as typical of the first wave of bossa nova, which lasted roughly from 1958 to 1962, and was accused of being egregiously apolitical. The crisis that erupted in Brazil in the mid 1960s exposed the fatal inequalities that existed beneath the gleaming veneer of Bossa Nova Rio, and perhaps allowed it to exist in the first place. The music of that period bears a checkered legacy, evoking for many the irksome bips of elevator music and the ghosts of political apathy. However, the fantasy of bossa nova was not the product of pure deception. The music was, and continues to be, a reflection of the real lives of its creators and the aspirations of those few golden years. The despojado sentiment and cosmopolitan optimism of the bossa generation is preserved in the lush melodies and pulsing rhythm that constituted their cultural identities. Getz/Gilberto is an artefact of historical intervention, tremendously influential in both its harmony and its dissonance.