2019-07-07 07:00:00
A bottle of water, a guitar, a stool, nothing more was needed to bring Olympia to her knees. On this evening in July 2001, João Gilberto played the classics for almost two and a half hours. His own and those of others, which he inhabited like no other. Not a sound in the Parisian temple transformed into a cathedral of silence, and then all of a sudden, everyone stood up, in thunderous applause for the one who was forcing people to listen. Two years later, there would be a completely different din, the din of intermittent dissatisfied people, which spoiled a fleeting moment which should have definitively suspended time: one of the most beautiful voices of the century, alone in the ancient theater of Vienna. Saturday evening, we learned of the death of this absolute legend of Brazilian music at the age of 88 through a message posted on Facebook by his son Joao Marcelo.
Rumors and fantasies
The “rarity” – in every sense of the word – of his appearances was already legendary at the time, and admirers did not hesitate to travel thousands of kilometers to see him. How many have dreamed of meeting him, asking him a thousand questions, just thanking him for everything, and even the rest. A German journalist, Marc Fischer, even wrote a book regarding it: Ho ba là là, in search of João Gilberto, a quest like Sisyphus. Alas, João Gilberto is gone, and perhaps for a while now. Didn’t he warn us as early as 1960, when he delightedly recited the words of Doralice: “I prefer to live alone, to the sound of the lamentations of my guitar.” The fantastical Brazilian lived reclusively in his apartment in Rio’s southern zone, only opening his door when he was sure he wouldn’t find anyone on the other side.
In recent years, weighed down by debt, dispossessed of his rights, undermined by protracted lawsuits, notably the one which opposed him to the record company EMI, since the latter had the idea of publishing CDs in 1987. “indigent” versions of his historical recordings, cornered by family stories where he was even placed under guardianship by his first two children, the man had “disappeared”. In the spring of 2015, a video on YouTube showing him, weakened, humming with his young daughter Luiza only fueled the media noise. Where was he ? What was he doing ? How was he? It will therefore be the subject of many rumors and fantasies, but this was not really anything new. There remained the musician, whose relatives assured him that he continued to study this six-string, the subject of analysis. Hers. No need for a witness for this, said the man who it would be too easy to casually describe as a misanthrope.
João Gilberto was as stingy with his words in public as the singer knew how to distill his superlative knowledge of phrasing like few others. Digital memory, which tracks down the smallest corners, has few traces: in a brief interview dated 1967, the Brazilian received in his little house in New Jersey, many questions, few words in return, before conversing with Bebel, her baby daughter. Around twenty years later, when he found himself face to face with star presenter Amaury Jr, João Gilberto preferred to let his musicians who embraced him respond. Great moment of media vacuum, but with some clues on the aesthetic choices of the master, when he agrees to list a few names of singers who matter to his ears: in addition to his two disciples, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, he cites the “wonderful” Roberto Silva, Emilio Santiago, Beth Carvalho… That’s three pure sambists.
“Bossa nova I don’t know what it is. I play samba”, he assured in 1961 when he published his third album, which included a version of “Samba da Minha Terra”. the classic of one of its master singers, Dorival Caymmi. This land is the one where he was born on June 10, 1931 in Juazeiro, in the state of Bahia, that is to say far from the beaches of Rio where he would not disembark until 1950. At home , music has its place, the father dabbling as an amateur with the ukulele and the saxophone. As for little João, he hones his precocious talents in the choir. Legend has it that at the age of 7 he pointed out a chord mistake by the organist at church! Seven years later, he put his fingers on his first guitar, and formed a vocal group: Enamorados do Ritmo. Text: lovers of rhythm. Rhythm, a very particular notion for him, will be the basis of the divergence of his style. In the meantime, following a stint in Salvador de Bahia, where João Gilberto began his career in radio, he headed to what is still the capital of Brazil and above all the royal road to a career.
The matrix of bossa nova
In Rio, he learned the trade, recording 78s with Os Garotos da Lua, a vocal group from which he was fired, then recorded a first session in 1952 for the Copacabana label: samba melo and the good old bolero are then at their peak, and the young João tints his vibrato with this languorous varnish. It’s a flop. As a result, while frequenting the night owls, including João Donato with whom he will share the incomprehension of the proponents of good taste, he scrapes by on small jobs on the radio, in the theater, for advertisements… Nothing very glorious for this shady character, already subject to ups and downs and debates. It is even claimed that he spent his days in pajamas, fogged up with marijuana – at the time, they nicknamed him Zé Maconha!
The first turning point came in 1955, during a stay in Porto Alegre where he met the composer and pianist Armando Albuquerque who gave him the theoretical basis, notably the questions of harmony which he lacked. The other revelation he will have when he returns to live with his parents. “It’s the first land, an example”, insisted years later João Gilberto, returning from a world tour in front of the Bahian public when performing a song signed by a young man then full of future, Gilberto Gil: “Eu Vim Da Bahia” (I come from Bahia) magnifies in a few words this cradle. Far from Rio, he finally sets regarding finding his style. It will be “Bim Bom”, considered the foundation song of bossa nova, which he would have composed while listening to the washerwomen walking. “Bim bom bim bim bom bom…”, this song of three times nothing (three lines of text) is above all a story of rhythm, the one that will leave its mark on the rest of his career. At the beginning of 1957, João Gilberto returned to Rio de Janeiro, this time for good.
There is no longer any question of sticking to the imposed figures of style, the Bahian will therefore have the merit of concretizing the underlying desires of a movement in gestation, bossa nova, to which he brings two little extras, real flaws self-taught who will make the qualities of this “new wave”. First of all, the grain of the voice, the canto falado, the spoken song, a pastel-colored murmur that stands out among the charming singers, a hushed intimism far from any virtuoso vanity; then the batida, this delicate gap between strong and weak beats, this unprecedented pulsation which will soon capsize the whole world. These will be the trademark of João Gilberto, and following him of all bossa nova, which breathes an air of ambiguous melancholy.
©AFP
Falsely nonchalant melody
On July 10, 1958, João Gilberto recorded “Chega De Saudade”, words by Vinicius de Moraes, music by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Capital history will remember this date. For the record, the title had already been recorded by Elizete Cardoso a few months earlier. João was only playing guitar at the time, but Jobim, not deaf, insisted that we give him a chance. Its velvet tone will make all the difference: a shade of indescribable elegance. On November 10 of the same year, Jobim and Gilberto did it once more with “Desafinado” – “out of tune”! A declaration of intention, since it is a question of anti-music, as some sambists describe this bossa which uses the diminished fifth, like be bop fifteen years earlier in New York. To these, the gifted singer whispers a response: “The feelings and the voice that God gave me.”
This falsely nonchalant melody and this really not obvious rhythm will immediately seduce a new generation of a Brazil in full desire for change, like Juscelinho Kubitschek, president builder and himself a lover of this type of samba who is eyeing the side west coast jazz. Between 1959 and 1964, the whole planet discovered and then declined the little nostalgia for the uncertain happiness of life. Five years during which, aided by producer Aloysio De Oliveira, surrounded by Jobim and company, João Gilberto sets milestones in a handful of sessions that are as insurmountable as they are essential. Each syllable sticks to the ceiling, the slightest inflection sends shivers, it has everything to please sensitive souls with subtle strings. Jazzmen will not be the last, swooning over a singer who rises to the same heights – depths, too – as King Nat Cole.
In 1962, first lady Jackie Kennedy organized a bossa nova evening at the White House, as a precursor to the big gathering at Carnegie Hall scheduled for November 21. All the bossa elite are there. Miles, Dizzy and many others made the trip. Despite a relative lack of understanding on both sides, some Brazilians decide to stay in the United States. João Gilberto took the opportunity to join the Verve label, and continue with saxophonist Stan Getz and Jobim, who also remained in New York. The result: it’s an insane success (87 weeks in a row in the pop charts!) for the girl from Ipanema, Astrud Gilberto, an amateur singer with a limited range. For the radio single, the Brazilian esthete’s voice is cut and Jobim’s name appears in very small letters. However, this Getz/Gilberto made in mid-March 63 is not worth a real without them. “Love is a sad thing when it fades,” the song predicts. If João Gilberto wins a Grammy, he loses his wife in this story, who leaves with the saxophonist. Alas, he marries another singer, Miucha, the sister of Chico Buarque and future mother of Bebel.
And as if this historical misinterpretation were not enough, the year 1964 saw a coup d’état putting an end to the illusions of novo Brazil. It was the beginning of an estrangement for the singer, who even settled for a time in Mexico, where he recorded a session at the turn of the 1970s: on the menu, an unreal version of his friend’s brilliant “O Sapo”. João Donato. “Bolobolo bolobolo bolo, badabada…” From then on, the inaccessible character gave very little spectacle, becoming more and more discreet in the studio. Few records certainly, but not a trace of mediocrity in this journey. Starting with the monumental album in his name that he recorded in New York in 1973, a total purity, like its immaculate cover. This other “white” album, just tinged with Sonny Carr’s percussion, extremely refines old sambas and new songs. How can we not forgive him for everything, listening to “É Preciso Perdoar”, where he assumes: “I wanted the illusion, now the pain is in me…” On the verge of silence, the singer gives the slightest onomatopoeia a feeling of fullness. Four years later, he finds himself surrounded by a large string orchestra that will make his fans scream with horror. And yet, carried by Claus Ogerman’s impressionist arrangements, it transports the old-fashioned ballad “Estate” into the realm of the irrational. The grace of a voice that makes everyone cry, everyone cries. “Oh, beautiful and colorful Brazil/You are my Brazilian Brazil/Land of samba and tambourine…”
“An emerald that reflects in the light”
In 1980, when the Bahian native decided to return to Brazil and began a decade where he would finally visit the capitals of Europe which had been waiting for him for ages (Rome, Lisbon, Paris, Brussels, etc.), he chose to record a version from “Aquarela do Brasil”, this time with the strings of Johnny Mandel. For this version – once more definitive – of the ancient composition of the pianist Ary Barroso, a true second national anthem, the master is assisted by two of his faithful: Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. Having been turbulent tropicalists, they never failed to greet those who were appropriate. Caetano, whose tone of voice makes him familiar with such summits, would perhaps not have had the same life without the discovery of João Gilberto in 1959. “João Gilberto was the redeemer of the Portuguese language, slayer of social immobility in Brazil – with its inhuman and crude stratification -, architect of the most refined forms and mocking critic of any stylization that would demean them”, he confides in his autobiography, Tropical Pop and Revolution.
Seeing them on stage in Buenos Aires in 2000, when the younger one had just produced the elder’s ultimate studio summit (Voz e Violão), remains one of those exceptional moments. As for the future ex-minister, he still saluted the sambas of the other Gilberto in 2014. The generation that followed the first steps of the bossa never hid its affinities for this extraordinary man. Thus, the hippies of Novos Baianos will have found their way thanks to him, when they record a second opus which is at the top of the pile of any Brazilian discotheque. Particularly for this version of an old samba, “Brasil Pandeiro”, that João Gilberto had pointed out to them.
“There is a before and an following João Gilberto. Everything he sings is an emerald which is reflected in the light”, summarized Tom Zé one evening, another visionary who shares with the Bahian the sense of excessive measure and of natural imbalance. “He can sound good even reading a newspaper,” the demanding Miles Davis once said. It is undoubtedly there, even more than everything else, that João Gilberto’s miracle lay. Never found lacking in good taste, always quick to enhance a nursery rhyme with a few verses, the singer will have restored the nobility of the word “performer”. How many titles will remain for eternity associated with the name of this creator who never stopped plowing the same furrows in search of ultimate perfection: “O Pato”, “Falsa Baiana”, “Wonderful”, “Desde Que O Samba É Samba”… As when he made his own forever in 1991, “What remains of our loves”, where he slightly shifts his singing radiating from the chiaroscuro arrangements of Clare Fisher. It was all that João Gilberto, the tenacious feeling of having one evening been invited to Olympus, a memory of a caress that will pursue us endlessly.
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