Exploring Brazilian Music and Culture

I live in a tropical country, blessed by God and beautiful by nature. This is the story of a country whose music has seduced the outside world and taken on an importance that goes far beyond entertainment. I have a girl called Teresa. You want to learn about Brazilian history without going through the books. You can just listen to the music and you understand everything. Brazilian music is having an enormous impact. Brazilian music. Ah. Então, acho que não é... It's not just for me, I think for every Brazilian, music is a very big mixture. Soccer and music, I think, is something that is inside the Brazilian. In Brazil, music is a national passion. Wildly varied styles, from bossa nova to distinctively Brazilian forms of reggae and hip-hop, have projected rival views of how the country should see itself and be regarded abroad. while politicians have used music to try to bring unity to the largest state in South America. This is a story in which leading musicians are censored and jailed, and a one-time rebel, Gilberto Gil, becomes Brazil's first black government minister. And it starts with the music that dominates and defines this vast, multiracial state, samba. Samba. Samba is the best known, most enduring style in Brazil. It's the samba rhythm that provides the backdrop for the spectacular Rio Carnival and for sophisticated dance songs that have helped to bring Brazil the exotic image it enjoys around the world. But samba also includes laments about life in the shanty towns, the favelas, and songs that address the recurring themes of race and poverty in a society that prides itself on being a racial democracy, but where the most black are often the most poor. Samba was born along the north-eastern coast, around the city of Salvador back in the days of slavery. Salvador in Bahia state was the first capital of Brazil when it was colonized by the Portuguese in the 16th century. The indigenous tribes who lived along the coast were mostly killed either by the Portuguese or by the diseases they brought from Europe. They were replaced by slaves who were transported from Africa to work in the plantations. Over the next 300 years, an estimated 4 million Africans were forcibly moved to Brazil. It was the largest slave population in the world, and Salvador was the main slave port. What's special about Bahia is that it's a musical cellar. Bahia has a lot of poetry. Here begins Brazil. And maybe because of so many mixtures, so many ethnicities, there was a natural fusionism. And that has become something stronger than the miscegenation of men. Salvador is still a predominantly black city. They came here as slaves, in the time of slavery, and here they left the African cultures, like candomblé, like samba... The music. The samba rhythm developed from percussion styles used in candomblé, an African-influenced religion which was banned in the slave era. In Candomblé ceremonies, drummers call down different gods, or orishas, who are said to act as guides and guardians for the believers. Exu is the orisha of sexuality, that's why he was associated with the demon. Oxum is the goddess of love, the vain, coquette, full of dengos woman, who can do things through feminine artifacts. This is Xangô, the orisha of justice, wisdom, rich orisha, lawyer protector. This is the orisha of justice. This is a religion that evolved from deception. Slaves worshipped African gods while pretending that they were praying to the Catholic saints of the Portuguese. African beliefs and Catholicism began to mix. But the African rhythms used in Candomblé didn't change. The rhythm that is most similar in candomblé with samba would be a rhythm used for yin and yang. It's that the gan is directed in this way. from the African Angolan style Semba, which in Bahia was transformed by the slaves into a circle dance that was known as Samba da Roda or Samba da Shula. This is a song by the band Samba. This beautiful word, Samba, was born in Bahia. And do you know why Samba was born in Bahia? Because Brazil was born in Bahia. And who brought this Samba was the black people. Singing Samba in Senzala. Samba de Roda. Samba for me is God. God is samba. God is music. Music is samba. If this samba wasn't real, I don't know what it would be. me i will sing for you i will speak at square november 15th and in ranchieta square that is in the same place where our terreno is formed brazilian samba In 1888, Brazil became the last major country in the world to officially abolish slavery, 66 years after breaking away from Portugal to become an independent state. Black workers were at last free to leave the plantations. Many headed south to Rio de Janeiro, now the Brazilian capital. In Rio, the African rhythms of the former slaves mixed with European musical styles to create the different forms of modern day Samba. Only one love can erase The mark of my mistakes is gone, gone Only one love can erase Many came to Rio de Janeiro and brought this manifestation, which is this form of samba, we could call it more primitive, something more root, which was a chula, where they danced, where a wheel was created and people danced, where they sang. and they would play and improvise. And this was the embryo, here in Rio de Janeiro, for the formation of groups that later became samba schools. Everybody came from everywhere else in the country to live here. So even if the original beats of samba may have come from Bahia, from Africa and such and such, Rio being a more cosmopolitan place would incorporate all influences and create different styles. you Rio de Janeiro was very different to Bahia. It was then a rapidly expanding city of some half a million, with a large white population boosted by new immigrants not just from Portugal, but from Germany, Italy and Spain. They looked to white Europe, and certainly not Africa, as the model for their lifestyle and culture. But then this South American port had once been declared a European capital. In 1808, the entire Portuguese court had moved to Rio from Lisbon, fearing for their lives after Napoleon invaded Portugal. For the next 13 years, while the court remained, Rio became the capital not just of Brazil, but of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire. The courtiers who moved to Rio brought with them Portuguese musical styles like the Mordinha. Mordinha is so near the heart of Brazilian music and it's a song, it's a kind of song. It was developed in the Portuguese court by a mad monk, an intensely erotic priest who wanted to use song. to seduce young girls, so he adapted folk forms and court poetry to a kind of fusion in which you could express very tender sentiments. It became so popular in the cities like Salvador and Rio that every night the young men out serenading, you could just hear the sounds everywhere in the street. In Rio, African rhythms began to mix with European styles. And it was at the house of a candomblé practitioner, a priestess named Tia Seata, Auntie Seata, that the first song widely recognized as karaoke samba, Samba from Rio, was performed in 1916. . It was credited to a musician named Donga and titled Pello Telefoni, On the Telephone. Donga sang on the phone The police chief on the phone told me that in the carioca there is a roulette to play a very well known thing and he said, that's what samba is and in the case of The great composers of Tia Seata met. Donga, who plays the first samba, João da Baiana, Pixinguinha... These people always stayed at Tia Ciata's house, which had a drum, a samba wheel, good food. Choro was a mixture of Afro-Brazilian rhythms and European dance styles and sounded like Brazil's answer to New Orleans jazz. The finest Choro exponent also famed for his samba playing was the composer and flute player Pichinguinha. There's a wonderful saying in Brazil that if you want to write about Brazilian folk music you're going to have to write many volumes but if you want to sum it all up in one word it's Pixinguinha For me, Pixinguinha was the greatest Brazilian musician What he represents for us is which means the cool guys, went to Paris with Pixinguinha with the flute. It really had an enormous effect. People who talk only about American jazz in Paris don't realize that the Brazilians got there first. In Europe, Pixinguinha heard American jazz, which he began to mix with Choro and Samba. He later switched from flute to saxophone and learned two important lessons. that would be repeated throughout the story of Brazilian music. The first, that Brazilian and Western styles are constantly blending together. And the second, that those who are thought to be too westernized are soon criticized in Brazil. Some people criticized it because they thought that this song had a lot of influence from a foreign music. At the time, a lot of people talked about jazz band. By the time of his death in 1972, Pishinguinha had become one of the legends of Brazilian music, a player who pioneered Brazil's links with jazz and guaranteed the popularity of Choro throughout the years when samba would be transformed by fashion and by politics. Samba and Choro both started out as the homegrown musical styles of the black workers and migrants who'd moved to Rio. The songs of the early samba singers dealt with the realities of everyday life in the city. I think that the genre that most portrays the social, political, struggle, and sacrifice of each one is perhaps samba, I believe it is samba, because the sambistas are people of a poorer social class. In the early days, musicians faced not only prejudice, but harassment. In 1928, the first so-called Samba School opened in Rio, a club where musicians and composers could meet, rehearse and plan their activities for the city's annual pre-Lent carnival, though the authorities banned black and mixed-race carnival groups from parading through downtown, predominantly white Rio. Many of the early samba songs romanticized malandros, the sharply dressed hustlers of the black communities, and the authorities outlawed musicians and their samba parties. The samba player was considered a rascal. And then the police banned samba at that time. So many people would disguise themselves and say that it was not samba that was happening. Samba was being used in that house, which was a tomb, a graveyard, you know? Because Tia Ciata was also a mother of a saint. So they camouflaged the samba, saying that what was happening there was a religious meeting. But all that would suddenly change. The samba was to be appropriated, transformed and used by the government. From now on, music would play a new role in Brazilian life. The man who transformed samba was President Getúlio Vargas, who seized power with military help in 1930. Vargas controlled Brazil for 18 years, first as a dictator and later as a democratically elected president. He was both an authoritarian and a populist who started out as an admirer of the European fashion. fascists Mussolini and Hitler. He banned strikes but promoted industry and social welfare and he was determined to bring a new national identity to his vast country, then a loose confederation of states. He did so by championing those intellectuals who argued that Brazil should not be modelled on white Europe but should positively celebrate racial mixing and Afro-Brazilian culture. The president spread the message... using the new medium of nationwide radio stations, and by promoting samba, now the government-approved symbol of Brazil's racial democracy. It was a really big cultural revolution going on in Brazil. New music, a new way of thinking about Brazilian culture, all these things together, and the whole creation of media. to broadcast the new ideas. So Vargas was very lucky to have all these tools. The Vargas administration wanted to use samba to unify Brazil, but in return it was demanded that samba should change. In 1936, it was announced that samba musicians could now take part in the carnival parade. They were even encouraged to do so, but there were new strict rules. Samba schools were now required to present a national theme with a patriotic lesson. It was a forbidden thing. And he, as a president, a dictator, he said, he authorized the Samba school, but he had to talk about the history of Brazil. If you want to know the history of Brazil, listen to Samba Enredo. Samba, of course, was mixed-race music, with its roots in both Africa and Europe. And promoting Samba suited the Vargas policy of encouraging Brazilian unity by celebrating... celebrating ethnic integration. And yet, throughout the 1930s, Vargas continued to develop strong links with European fascist states, including Nazi Germany, where such ideas would surely have horrified those who believed in Aryan supremacy. In January 1936, there was a special edition of the radio programme Hora do Brasil, broadcast directly from Brazil. to Nazi Germany. It included government-approved songs written by black musicians. A very important part of the show was the samba music from the samba schools. I always think about the Nazi German listening to that kind of very black, very African Brazilian music. President Vargas made samba respectable and it was now appropriated by middle-class Brazilians. Old-style sambas about malandros were still popular in the poor black parts of town, but were now officially censored. The middle class favored a more melodic, sophisticated style, samba canção, and songs that praised the glory and the beauty of Brazil. Samba's broad new appeal was helped by exceptional composers like Ari Barroso, the son of a lawyer, whose Aquarela do Brasil, Watercolor of Brazil, became almost a national anthem. Unlike carnival samba or samba enredo, samba canção could be sung by individuals as well as massed bands. Dorival Caimi, who was photographed with Vargas, became samba's first celebrated solo singer-songwriter. He played guitar in a very peculiar way and he was the first one to be singer-composer-guitarist. Like, you know, Bob Dylan. He was a very good singer. His voice was beautiful. His music was absolutely fresh and simple and good. And his lyrics were wonderful. He was the round artist. He could do everything very well. His lyrics were always about the sea, about Bahia, about the fishermen. The Vargas flirtation with Nazi Germany ended in 1939, when Brazil signed the Good Neighbour Agreement with its big neighbour to the north, the USA. Links between Brazil and America grew stronger, just at the right time for the war. for the emergence of samba's first international superstar and brazil's most successful hollywood actress the colorful highly controversial carmen miranda Carmen Miranda, she herself was Hollywood. She herself was kitsch. She was internationally known in a way that brought to our minds both pride and shame. I wonder why does everybody look at me And then begin to talk about the Christmas tree I hope that means that everyone is glad to see The lady in the... I think we should all celebrate Carmen Miranda. First of all, because she was one of the major singers in Brazilian music and she helped launch some of the greatest composers of the 30s. Some said she wasn't a true Brazilian because she was born in Portugal, but Carmen Miranda conquered Brazil during the 30s and then moved on to the States. Her songs came from the finest writers of the day, including Dorival Cayimi and Ari Barroso, but she had little in common with the early samba singers. Her samba singing, which was not the authentic, near to the slums, black kind of samba, was nonetheless very rich. Palma Miranda sang on Broadway, starred in Hollywood films and performed at the White House for Franklin Roosevelt. But when she returned to Brazil in July 1940, the reaction was not what she'd expected. The first time she came back from the United States and she sang in real, she was booed. In many ways, she became a caricature. And people were saying she was Americanized and she was not authentic. I was telling you, shows in hospitals and in the fields are very good, but for the intermediate cinema it's much better. You're close, you can live much better, it's much more interesting. What do you want? Oh, I forgot. Well, fellows, you know, what I'd like to talk to you about is this. Then she recorded a song about it, and it's a masterpiece saying, they say that I came back Americanized. It's so witty and graceful. People see her like a funny comedian with a funny hat, you know, and they don't realize how wonderful she was as a singer and how important she was to the development of a certain style of Brazilian music, which we call samba sincopado, the syncopated samba. She was great at that. She was the best. Samba sincopado Carmen Miranda came to symbolize Brazil for the outside world, though she'd been criticized at home for becoming too westernized. Her sophisticated, lighthearted songs had little to do with the everyday struggles of many ordinary Brazilians. They found a new hero in the northern countryside, in land from Recife. Luiz Gonzaga was the exponent of a new style, forró, that swept across Brazil in the 1940s from the remote northeast, where his songs are still played by musicians who knew him. I'm still the king of the bayan Because I didn't sing loose I had this garrava That's why today I'm still the king of the bayan I have no words to describe Luiz Gonzaga because he was a everything to us and he is still alive for us. The The The King's Colour, this third one, was your obligation Luis Gonzaga is like Elvis Presley from the North East, he is the king, he is the guy who He created the new song, Nordestina, I think it was from the decade... I'm not sure, but I think it was from the decade of 40, 50 maybe, I think 40 still. He created the Nordestino stereotype with all that leather clothes, with the colors... Louis Gonzaga, you can compare him with Bob Marley in reggae, because he really did the melting of the style, you know? and it became very well known because he recorded it. It played on the radio in the 40s, 50s. So he came up with a new rhythm, popular rhythm. It was kind of the same Bob Marr did with reggae in Jamaica. Luis Gonzaga was the son of a farm worker whose life was transformed after he'd appeared on a radio show in Rio. It was hosted by Ari Barroso. But Gonzaga proved that Barroso's nationalistic samba could be matched by dance music from the northern countryside. Forró music didn't become something rival to samba, but let's say something as big as samba inside Brazil, but not outside Brazil. Of course, samba had Carmen Miranda, for example, as something that promoted samba, even in Hollywood movies. But forró is... as much from the people of Brazil, from the real people of Brazil, as samba. This was a new era of migration, as workers from the poor farmlands of the Northeast moved south to the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to look for work. Luis Gonzaga wrote dance songs and sang about the lives of the migrants and those they left behind. Exposta a garola, a mil pau Faz pena um artista tão forte e tão bravo Viver como escravo nas terras do sul He represented the spirit of the Northeastern people very well. The immigrants who left here to go to São Paulo, to the big urban centers, the people who had to live with drought problems, with social injustice. because here in the Northeast it's much stronger than in the Southeast. So, in addition to being a musical icon, he's also a social icon. After Luis Gonzaga died in 1989, a statue was erected just outside Recife, the capital of his home state, Pernambuco. It marks the start of the Luis Gonzaga Highway. Gonzaga had reminded Brazil's city dwellers of the depth of the music that existed out in the countryside, and shown that music was as important for the outlying regions as it was for Rio, as a way of expressing their views and problems. And with Fajol... there'd been no attempt by the government to control the music. Gonzaga led the way for other Northeasterners, like Jackson do Pandero, an exponent of another Afro-Brazilian rhythm, Coco, and best known for Chiclete com Banana, Bubblegum and Bananas, that poked fun at the American lack of understanding of Brazilian music. I'm a good bop, bop, bop in my samba When Uncle Sam plays the tambourine When he gets a pandeiro and uses a pumba When he learns that samba is not a rumba Then I'll mix Miami with Copacabana Chiclete I mix with banana And I'll be a good bop I want to see my samba like this. I want to see my samba like this. I want to see my samba like this. I want to see my samba like this. I want to see my samba like this. Getúlio Vargas, the president who'd strengthened Brazil's links with America while championing samba as a way of promoting a new national identity, died while still in office in 1954. He shot himself in the heart after demands for his resignation, following a corruption scandal in his government. Less than a year later, another funeral for Carmen Miranda, who died in Hollywood, aged just 46. Her body was flown to Rio, where a million people followed her coffin. The unlikely duo of Carmen Miranda and President Vargas had not always found favour within Brazil for their musical ideas, but between them... They transformed the international image of Brazil and the Rio music scene by promoting samba and carnival. During the final years of Vargas' rule, the carnival celebrations became ever more flamboyant and attracted tourists as well as supporters of the rival samba schools to the parades, judged not just on the music and costumes, but on the themes and ideas they portray. I shall not die! The Rio Carnival has become increasingly commercialized, but remains a focus for major composers and singers. Like the flamboyant Elsa Suarez, who became associated with Mossy Daji, a samba school situated in the neighborhood where she grew up, and which she praises in one of her best-known songs. Samba schools have become an important part of Rio's musical life, not just as music clubs that compete at carnival time, but as recreation and social centres with strong links to the local community. Each school still inspires fervent support. I love this school, I love this house, I love this people, I love this community. I think it represents everything, from the bottom of my heart. Everybody loves the show. It's a wonderful parade. Great composers have passed through the great samba schools. Every Brazilian has a favorite samba school, like a football team. We all have our favorites. Rio de Janeiro's carnival has a great meaning because it has a plot, it has a story. Rio de Janeiro's carnival is not about jumping. Rio de Janeiro's carnival is about telling a story about Brazil. President Vargas gave Rio the carnival for which the city became world famous. But less than two years after his death, a new form of samba emerged that reflected a new political era in Brazil and would bring Rio even more international exposure. and proved to be Brazil's most successful musical export. This was Bossa Nova. If you insist on classifying... This was cool, futuristic new music for a confident new era. President Juscelino Kubitschek set out to transform Brazil with an ambitious programme of public works that included the construction of a new federal capital, Brasilia, and the promise of 50 years' development in five. Kubitschek would later be accused of causing rampant inflation, but for many Brazilians, this seemed like a golden age. He was a very open-minded man. Before that, we had a tremendous dictatorship by Vargas. was a complete idiot you know and uh and when joselino came to the the government of brazil everything expanded it was a time when brazil seemed to succeed at everything a country obsessed with football won the world cup for the first time in 1958 partly thanks to a young player called pelle Bossa Nova, the new way, reflected this new optimism and appealed to Brazil's growing urban middle class. It was influenced by western classical music, jazz and by samba cansal. I don't know how to do both on the guitar, so I do it with my mouth and the guitar, right? The bossa comes a little softer, a little more defined for us. And I made a song, I showed a song in Bossa Nova like this. I would say Bossa Nova is a kind of soft samba, maybe played a little bit softer. slower just with the guitars, simpler and very light singing, soft singing and soft guitars doing the rhythm. Not a lot of drums like the big samba schools, maybe just a few percussions or just brushes. I always call the bossa Bossa Nova has the discreet charm of bourgeoisie, the refinement of the melody, of the lyric, of the interpretation, of the orchestration. So Bossa Nova was something that came from the middle class for the middle class. Bossa Nova was dominated by three key figures, starting with a singer and guitarist from Bahia, João Gilberto. He just couldn't talk like that about my love and he When I first heard João Gilberto, it was like enlightenment for me. It was like an incredible revelation of everything, of aesthetic criteria and deep emotions. And most of all, hope in Brazil. I think my father changed Brazilian music, if I can say that. I think changed the Brazilian music also in the map. It's really about reinventing and I see sometimes my father seeking for different chords from classics that he's been playing for the last 40 years and I just... I just can't believe it, his obsession. It's a true story. You know, he used to play his... to study his guitar, and he would study the part of the thumb like this thing, thing. He would go like that. The thing is, there was a cat watching that. And the poor cat was just... And he would look at the cat. And play ting, ting, ting, ting for hours, you know, just to exercise his thumb. And the cat couldn't resist. The cat jumped out from the eighth floor down there. The cat killed himself. This is just a little samba, built upon a single note. Other notes are bound to follow, but the root is still that note. Now this new one is the... consequence of the one which has been through, as I'm bound to be the unavoidable consequence of you. If Joao Gilberto was the greatest bossa performer, then the greatest bossa composer was Antonio Carlos Jobim, better known simply as Tom Jobim, who wrote the melodies for many of Gilberto's hits and was himself an impressive singer and pianist. I think that for me he was the most important songwriter, Brazilian songwriter because I think that Jobim, he has everything. He has Brazil in itself. I mean, he has the mountains, he has the forest, he has the sun. It's a stick, it's a stone, it's the end of the road, it's a piece of stone, it's a little alone, it's a glass shard, it's life, it's the sun, it's night, it's death, it's the tie, it's the hook, it's the water. Tom Jobim wrote many of his songs here in the countryside outside Rio. Jobim lived and worked in the house that his son and grandson are now restoring. He studied a lot. Chopin, Debussy, Brahms also. He liked to wake up He would wake up very early and he in this house, the piano was in the back room there and always in the morning I would listen to him playing Brahms or Chopin or Debussy, always studying early and then he would write his songs later. He used to listen a lot to Sinatra and he used to sing in my mother's ear, dance, all this stuff. Wherever I was with Tom Jobim, he was always mentioning classical composers, even when we were playing some bossa nova songs, some songs of his. And then he stopped suddenly in one special choir. and he would say, ''Here come the Russians.'' And then he would mention Rachmaninov and Stravinsky. There was a third member of the team that dominated Bossa Nova, the poet Vinicius Gimoraes, who wrote lyrics for the melodies by Tom Jobim and other composers. He too was a singer and worked, among others, with the guitarist Baden Powell. Vinicius was a person who changed the behavior. Just like the Beatles changed the behavior of young people in England, here in Brazil it was the opposite. who changed the behavior of the young was an older person. Vinicius was the first to walk like this, to walk in sandals, when we all walked all neat. He was the best lyricist. He never made a mistake with a song of mine. And he would come later with the perfect lyric for the song. He was very successful with women. And he was not exactly a good-looking. Man, he was fat, short, bald, but women, I've seen myself. He was just a killer. Just off Rio's Copacabana beach, there's an alleyway that back in the early 60s was the musical hub of Brazil. It was in the bars here that the Bossa set got together to play and started to collaborate with local jazz enthusiasts like Sergio Mendes. Rio was wonderful. There was a bar named the Bottles Bar. And that's where I started, you know, playing. There was a trio. And everybody used to come there every night, you know, Baden-Powell, Jobim. And there was a club on the end of the street called the Little... little club, and there we would do jam sessions there. And every jazz musician that would come to Rio would stop by, and you know, just wonderful, wonderful times, you know, the early 60s in Copacabana. Cabana Rio de Janeiro. Jazz had been one of the influences on Bossa, and now jazz and Bossa began to mix, a fusion helped by the U.S. State Department when it sponsored jazz musicians like Charlie Bird and Herbie Mann to visit Brazil, where, inevitably, they would end up playing in Bottle's Alley. I think the reason jazz musicians like Bossa Nova is because every voice follows a... a path and it makes sense not only the melody but the harmonies also singing the song also it's because it came from classical music the way to spread the voices around you know the chromatics when Charlie Byrd returned home to the States he infused about bossa to his friend the saxophonist Stan Getz and in April 1962 the two of them released jazz samba, reworking Joao Gilberto and Jobim songs like Desafinado. Remarkably for a jazz album, it became a bestseller and stayed in the American charts for a quite astonishing 70 weeks. Bossa Nova suddenly became a new American craze. In the record shops, racks full of Bossa Nova. Authentic Brazilian style and also translated into American by American. American bands. Bossa Nova at the White House. On stage in the East Room, Paul Winter and his sextet. They came back from a State Department tour of South America playing the new beat, and that young arbiter of American taste, Jacqueline Kennedy, gave it her cool blessing. In November 1962, Brazil's bossa hierarchy, including Gilberto, Jobim, Sergio Mendes, and Carlos Lira, were invited to New York's Carnegie Hall for a legendary concert. in which they performed alongside jazz musicians like Getz and Bird. The result is remembered as something of a historic mess. It was terrible. The guy who did the concert, sometimes they don't like me to tell the story, but the story was just like this. The guy, he didn't care about playing a concert for New Yorker people. He just wanted... wanted to do a recording session in a stage. So he spread microphones all over the stage, and he called everybody from Brazil to do the concert. And everybody from New York, whoever wanted to play, would come up and play. So I went to Jobim and said, let's go away. Let's get you, me, Bonfá, João Gilberto, all the people that came here to do something serious, and let's go back home. And Jobim was very funny at the time, I'll never forget. Because he said, Carlos, did you sign that paper? I said, yes, I did sign. In here we cannot do this like in Brazil. In here they have electric chair. And I understood that nobody was going to go home. I said, okay, let's stay and do whatever we can. I don't know. In Brazil, they said it was a big mess. But I think it was important there. And the most important thing is that many of the musicians who went there to play in the concert, they stayed there. And then they began to work around Oscar Castro Neves, Sergio Mendes. my father, João Gilberto, they stayed. The boss of fraternity began to split, with musicians like Jobim now remaining in America. but complaining at the way music had changed. And we had there the same phenomena I think you have here now. We had there Bossa Nova icebox, Bossa Nova washing machines, Bossa Nova lawyers, you know, and many things. And now I heard here in the radio, Bossa Nova haircon, Bossa Nova shoes. You know, this is not very good for the music. Carlos Lira was also to leave Brazil for Mexico, with other complaints about the new bossa. Some people prefer the bossa nova with lots of jazz. I was the one who thought that it shouldn't be so much jazz. It was important, the jazz influence in bossa nova, but it shouldn't be too much. We should keep the jazz as a spice in the food, not too much, otherwise it's going to burn you. So I wrote a song, Jazz Influence, that talks about that. Poor Samba Poor Samba By early 1964, the bossa nova boom in Brazil was coming to an end. It had moved to America, where the best-known and most often recorded bossa song of all time was about to become a massive hit. Garota de Ipanema Girl from Ipanema had been written by Jobim and Vinicius in 1962 as they sat in this bar off Copacabana watching the girls walk by. They wrote that song just because they saw the same girl passing by the bar, going towards the beach every day. And they were like, oh my God, check it out, check the way she walks, check how charming she is when she crosses the road. And I don't know if today's people still can have that naive or romantic way of approaching words and songs. in a way that they used to do 40, 50 years back. Tall and thin and young and lovely The girl from Ipanema goes walking And when she passes, each one she passes goes Girl from Ipanema would become a massive hit in the States in July 1964 when it was sung, in English, by João Gilberto's then-wife, Astrid. But when she passes, each one she passes goes The best of ghosts Ah Oh But he watches so sadly How can the dark of his arms hurt? But by then, the idyllic image of an easy-going, romantic Brazil had been shattered by a military coup. The soldiers would remain in power for the next 21 years, and in a country that was where music had come to represent the national identity, samba and bossa would be transformed and a new generation of musicians would fight against the harassment and censorship that was to come. And Brazil Brazil is back next week at nine with Tropicalia Revolution. In the meantime, why not visit bbc.co.uk slash Brazil Brazil to watch full songs from the series and to find out more about stars of Brazilian music.

You can just listen to the music and you understand everything. Brazilian music is having an enormous impact. Brazilian music. Ah. Então, acho que não é...

It's not just for me, I think for every Brazilian, music is a very big mixture. Soccer and music, I think, is something that is inside the Brazilian. In Brazil, music is a national passion. Wildly varied styles, from bossa nova to distinctively Brazilian forms of reggae and hip-hop, have projected rival views of how the country should see itself and be regarded abroad. while politicians have used music to try to bring unity to the largest state in South America.

This is a story in which leading musicians are censored and jailed, and a one-time rebel, Gilberto Gil, becomes Brazil's first black government minister. And it starts with the music that dominates and defines this vast, multiracial state, samba. Samba. Samba is the best known, most enduring style in Brazil.

It's the samba rhythm that provides the backdrop for the spectacular Rio Carnival and for sophisticated dance songs that have helped to bring Brazil the exotic image it enjoys around the world. But samba also includes laments about life in the shanty towns, the favelas, and songs that address the recurring themes of race and poverty in a society that prides itself on being a racial democracy, but where the most black are often the most poor. Samba was born along the north-eastern coast, around the city of Salvador back in the days of slavery. Salvador in Bahia state was the first capital of Brazil when it was colonized by the Portuguese in the 16th century.

The indigenous tribes who lived along the coast were mostly killed either by the Portuguese or by the diseases they brought from Europe. They were replaced by slaves who were transported from Africa to work in the plantations. Over the next 300 years, an estimated 4 million Africans were forcibly moved to Brazil. It was the largest slave population in the world, and Salvador was the main slave port.

What's special about Bahia is that it's a musical cellar. Bahia has a lot of poetry. Here begins Brazil. And maybe because of so many mixtures, so many ethnicities, there was a natural fusionism. And that has become something stronger than the miscegenation of men.

Salvador is still a predominantly black city. They came here as slaves, in the time of slavery, and here they left the African cultures, like candomblé, like samba... The music.

The samba rhythm developed from percussion styles used in candomblé, an African-influenced religion which was banned in the slave era. In Candomblé ceremonies, drummers call down different gods, or orishas, who are said to act as guides and guardians for the believers. Exu is the orisha of sexuality, that's why he was associated with the demon.

Oxum is the goddess of love, the vain, coquette, full of dengos woman, who can do things through feminine artifacts. This is Xangô, the orisha of justice, wisdom, rich orisha, lawyer protector. This is the orisha of justice.

This is a religion that evolved from deception. Slaves worshipped African gods while pretending that they were praying to the Catholic saints of the Portuguese. African beliefs and Catholicism began to mix. But the African rhythms used in Candomblé didn't change.

The rhythm that is most similar in candomblé with samba would be a rhythm used for yin and yang. It's that the gan is directed in this way. from the African Angolan style Semba, which in Bahia was transformed by the slaves into a circle dance that was known as Samba da Roda or Samba da Shula.

This is a song by the band Samba. This beautiful word, Samba, was born in Bahia. And do you know why Samba was born in Bahia? Because Brazil was born in Bahia. And who brought this Samba was the black people.

Singing Samba in Senzala. Samba de Roda. Samba for me is God. God is samba.

God is music. Music is samba. If this samba wasn't real, I don't know what it would be. me i will sing for you i will speak at square november 15th and in ranchieta square that is in the same place where our terreno is formed brazilian samba In 1888, Brazil became the last major country in the world to officially abolish slavery, 66 years after breaking away from Portugal to become an independent state. Black workers were at last free to leave the plantations.

Many headed south to Rio de Janeiro, now the Brazilian capital. In Rio, the African rhythms of the former slaves mixed with European musical styles to create the different forms of modern day Samba. Only one love can erase The mark of my mistakes is gone, gone Only one love can erase Many came to Rio de Janeiro and brought this manifestation, which is this form of samba, we could call it more primitive, something more root, which was a chula, where they danced, where a wheel was created and people danced, where they sang.

and they would play and improvise. And this was the embryo, here in Rio de Janeiro, for the formation of groups that later became samba schools. Everybody came from everywhere else in the country to live here.

So even if the original beats of samba may have come from Bahia, from Africa and such and such, Rio being a more cosmopolitan place would incorporate all influences and create different styles. you Rio de Janeiro was very different to Bahia. It was then a rapidly expanding city of some half a million, with a large white population boosted by new immigrants not just from Portugal, but from Germany, Italy and Spain.

They looked to white Europe, and certainly not Africa, as the model for their lifestyle and culture. But then this South American port had once been declared a European capital. In 1808, the entire Portuguese court had moved to Rio from Lisbon, fearing for their lives after Napoleon invaded Portugal.

For the next 13 years, while the court remained, Rio became the capital not just of Brazil, but of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire. The courtiers who moved to Rio brought with them Portuguese musical styles like the Mordinha. Mordinha is so near the heart of Brazilian music and it's a song, it's a kind of song.

It was developed in the Portuguese court by a mad monk, an intensely erotic priest who wanted to use song. to seduce young girls, so he adapted folk forms and court poetry to a kind of fusion in which you could express very tender sentiments. It became so popular in the cities like Salvador and Rio that every night the young men out serenading, you could just hear the sounds everywhere in the street. In Rio, African rhythms began to mix with European styles.

And it was at the house of a candomblé practitioner, a priestess named Tia Seata, Auntie Seata, that the first song widely recognized as karaoke samba, Samba from Rio, was performed in 1916. . It was credited to a musician named Donga and titled Pello Telefoni, On the Telephone. Donga sang on the phone The police chief on the phone told me that in the carioca there is a roulette to play a very well known thing and he said, that's what samba is and in the case of The great composers of Tia Seata met.

Donga, who plays the first samba, João da Baiana, Pixinguinha... These people always stayed at Tia Ciata's house, which had a drum, a samba wheel, good food. Choro was a mixture of Afro-Brazilian rhythms and European dance styles and sounded like Brazil's answer to New Orleans jazz. The finest Choro exponent also famed for his samba playing was the composer and flute player Pichinguinha. There's a wonderful saying in Brazil that if you want to write about Brazilian folk music you're going to have to write many volumes but if you want to sum it all up in one word it's Pixinguinha For me, Pixinguinha was the greatest Brazilian musician What he represents for us is which means the cool guys, went to Paris with Pixinguinha with the flute.

It really had an enormous effect. People who talk only about American jazz in Paris don't realize that the Brazilians got there first. In Europe, Pixinguinha heard American jazz, which he began to mix with Choro and Samba.

He later switched from flute to saxophone and learned two important lessons. that would be repeated throughout the story of Brazilian music. The first, that Brazilian and Western styles are constantly blending together. And the second, that those who are thought to be too westernized are soon criticized in Brazil.

Some people criticized it because they thought that this song had a lot of influence from a foreign music. At the time, a lot of people talked about jazz band. By the time of his death in 1972, Pishinguinha had become one of the legends of Brazilian music, a player who pioneered Brazil's links with jazz and guaranteed the popularity of Choro throughout the years when samba would be transformed by fashion and by politics.

Samba and Choro both started out as the homegrown musical styles of the black workers and migrants who'd moved to Rio. The songs of the early samba singers dealt with the realities of everyday life in the city. I think that the genre that most portrays the social, political, struggle, and sacrifice of each one is perhaps samba, I believe it is samba, because the sambistas are people of a poorer social class.

In the early days, musicians faced not only prejudice, but harassment. In 1928, the first so-called Samba School opened in Rio, a club where musicians and composers could meet, rehearse and plan their activities for the city's annual pre-Lent carnival, though the authorities banned black and mixed-race carnival groups from parading through downtown, predominantly white Rio. Many of the early samba songs romanticized malandros, the sharply dressed hustlers of the black communities, and the authorities outlawed musicians and their samba parties. The samba player was considered a rascal.

And then the police banned samba at that time. So many people would disguise themselves and say that it was not samba that was happening. Samba was being used in that house, which was a tomb, a graveyard, you know?

Because Tia Ciata was also a mother of a saint. So they camouflaged the samba, saying that what was happening there was a religious meeting. But all that would suddenly change. The samba was to be appropriated, transformed and used by the government.

From now on, music would play a new role in Brazilian life. The man who transformed samba was President Getúlio Vargas, who seized power with military help in 1930. Vargas controlled Brazil for 18 years, first as a dictator and later as a democratically elected president. He was both an authoritarian and a populist who started out as an admirer of the European fashion. fascists Mussolini and Hitler.

He banned strikes but promoted industry and social welfare and he was determined to bring a new national identity to his vast country, then a loose confederation of states. He did so by championing those intellectuals who argued that Brazil should not be modelled on white Europe but should positively celebrate racial mixing and Afro-Brazilian culture. The president spread the message...

using the new medium of nationwide radio stations, and by promoting samba, now the government-approved symbol of Brazil's racial democracy. It was a really big cultural revolution going on in Brazil. New music, a new way of thinking about Brazilian culture, all these things together, and the whole creation of media.

to broadcast the new ideas. So Vargas was very lucky to have all these tools. The Vargas administration wanted to use samba to unify Brazil, but in return it was demanded that samba should change.

In 1936, it was announced that samba musicians could now take part in the carnival parade. They were even encouraged to do so, but there were new strict rules. Samba schools were now required to present a national theme with a patriotic lesson.

It was a forbidden thing. And he, as a president, a dictator, he said, he authorized the Samba school, but he had to talk about the history of Brazil. If you want to know the history of Brazil, listen to Samba Enredo.

Samba, of course, was mixed-race music, with its roots in both Africa and Europe. And promoting Samba suited the Vargas policy of encouraging Brazilian unity by celebrating... celebrating ethnic integration. And yet, throughout the 1930s, Vargas continued to develop strong links with European fascist states, including Nazi Germany, where such ideas would surely have horrified those who believed in Aryan supremacy.

In January 1936, there was a special edition of the radio programme Hora do Brasil, broadcast directly from Brazil. to Nazi Germany. It included government-approved songs written by black musicians. A very important part of the show was the samba music from the samba schools.

I always think about the Nazi German listening to that kind of very black, very African Brazilian music. President Vargas made samba respectable and it was now appropriated by middle-class Brazilians. Old-style sambas about malandros were still popular in the poor black parts of town, but were now officially censored.

The middle class favored a more melodic, sophisticated style, samba canção, and songs that praised the glory and the beauty of Brazil. Samba's broad new appeal was helped by exceptional composers like Ari Barroso, the son of a lawyer, whose Aquarela do Brasil, Watercolor of Brazil, became almost a national anthem. Unlike carnival samba or samba enredo, samba canção could be sung by individuals as well as massed bands.

Dorival Caimi, who was photographed with Vargas, became samba's first celebrated solo singer-songwriter. He played guitar in a very peculiar way and he was the first one to be singer-composer-guitarist. Like, you know, Bob Dylan. He was a very good singer.

His voice was beautiful. His music was absolutely fresh and simple and good. And his lyrics were wonderful. He was the round artist.

He could do everything very well. His lyrics were always about the sea, about Bahia, about the fishermen. The Vargas flirtation with Nazi Germany ended in 1939, when Brazil signed the Good Neighbour Agreement with its big neighbour to the north, the USA. Links between Brazil and America grew stronger, just at the right time for the war. for the emergence of samba's first international superstar and brazil's most successful hollywood actress the colorful highly controversial carmen miranda Carmen Miranda, she herself was Hollywood.

She herself was kitsch. She was internationally known in a way that brought to our minds both pride and shame. I wonder why does everybody look at me And then begin to talk about the Christmas tree I hope that means that everyone is glad to see The lady in the... I think we should all celebrate Carmen Miranda. First of all, because she was one of the major singers in Brazilian music and she helped launch some of the greatest composers of the 30s.

Some said she wasn't a true Brazilian because she was born in Portugal, but Carmen Miranda conquered Brazil during the 30s and then moved on to the States. Her songs came from the finest writers of the day, including Dorival Cayimi and Ari Barroso, but she had little in common with the early samba singers. Her samba singing, which was not the authentic, near to the slums, black kind of samba, was nonetheless very rich.

Palma Miranda sang on Broadway, starred in Hollywood films and performed at the White House for Franklin Roosevelt. But when she returned to Brazil in July 1940, the reaction was not what she'd expected. The first time she came back from the United States and she sang in real, she was booed. In many ways, she became a caricature.

And people were saying she was Americanized and she was not authentic. I was telling you, shows in hospitals and in the fields are very good, but for the intermediate cinema it's much better. You're close, you can live much better, it's much more interesting. What do you want?

Oh, I forgot. Well, fellows, you know, what I'd like to talk to you about is this. Then she recorded a song about it, and it's a masterpiece saying, they say that I came back Americanized. It's so witty and graceful. People see her like a funny comedian with a funny hat, you know, and they don't realize how wonderful she was as a singer and how important she was to the development of a certain style of Brazilian music, which we call samba sincopado, the syncopated samba.

She was great at that. She was the best. Samba sincopado Carmen Miranda came to symbolize Brazil for the outside world, though she'd been criticized at home for becoming too westernized. Her sophisticated, lighthearted songs had little to do with the everyday struggles of many ordinary Brazilians.

They found a new hero in the northern countryside, in land from Recife. Luiz Gonzaga was the exponent of a new style, forró, that swept across Brazil in the 1940s from the remote northeast, where his songs are still played by musicians who knew him. I'm still the king of the bayan Because I didn't sing loose I had this garrava That's why today I'm still the king of the bayan I have no words to describe Luiz Gonzaga because he was a everything to us and he is still alive for us. The The The King's Colour, this third one, was your obligation Luis Gonzaga is like Elvis Presley from the North East, he is the king, he is the guy who He created the new song, Nordestina, I think it was from the decade...

I'm not sure, but I think it was from the decade of 40, 50 maybe, I think 40 still. He created the Nordestino stereotype with all that leather clothes, with the colors... Louis Gonzaga, you can compare him with Bob Marley in reggae, because he really did the melting of the style, you know?

and it became very well known because he recorded it. It played on the radio in the 40s, 50s. So he came up with a new rhythm, popular rhythm. It was kind of the same Bob Marr did with reggae in Jamaica.

Luis Gonzaga was the son of a farm worker whose life was transformed after he'd appeared on a radio show in Rio. It was hosted by Ari Barroso. But Gonzaga proved that Barroso's nationalistic samba could be matched by dance music from the northern countryside.

Forró music didn't become something rival to samba, but let's say something as big as samba inside Brazil, but not outside Brazil. Of course, samba had Carmen Miranda, for example, as something that promoted samba, even in Hollywood movies. But forró is...

as much from the people of Brazil, from the real people of Brazil, as samba. This was a new era of migration, as workers from the poor farmlands of the Northeast moved south to the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to look for work. Luis Gonzaga wrote dance songs and sang about the lives of the migrants and those they left behind. Exposta a garola, a mil pau Faz pena um artista tão forte e tão bravo Viver como escravo nas terras do sul He represented the spirit of the Northeastern people very well. The immigrants who left here to go to São Paulo, to the big urban centers, the people who had to live with drought problems, with social injustice.

because here in the Northeast it's much stronger than in the Southeast. So, in addition to being a musical icon, he's also a social icon. After Luis Gonzaga died in 1989, a statue was erected just outside Recife, the capital of his home state, Pernambuco. It marks the start of the Luis Gonzaga Highway.

Gonzaga had reminded Brazil's city dwellers of the depth of the music that existed out in the countryside, and shown that music was as important for the outlying regions as it was for Rio, as a way of expressing their views and problems. And with Fajol... there'd been no attempt by the government to control the music.

Gonzaga led the way for other Northeasterners, like Jackson do Pandero, an exponent of another Afro-Brazilian rhythm, Coco, and best known for Chiclete com Banana, Bubblegum and Bananas, that poked fun at the American lack of understanding of Brazilian music. I'm a good bop, bop, bop in my samba When Uncle Sam plays the tambourine When he gets a pandeiro and uses a pumba When he learns that samba is not a rumba Then I'll mix Miami with Copacabana Chiclete I mix with banana And I'll be a good bop I want to see my samba like this. I want to see my samba like this.

I want to see my samba like this. I want to see my samba like this. I want to see my samba like this. Getúlio Vargas, the president who'd strengthened Brazil's links with America while championing samba as a way of promoting a new national identity, died while still in office in 1954. He shot himself in the heart after demands for his resignation, following a corruption scandal in his government. Less than a year later, another funeral for Carmen Miranda, who died in Hollywood, aged just 46. Her body was flown to Rio, where a million people followed her coffin.

The unlikely duo of Carmen Miranda and President Vargas had not always found favour within Brazil for their musical ideas, but between them... They transformed the international image of Brazil and the Rio music scene by promoting samba and carnival. During the final years of Vargas' rule, the carnival celebrations became ever more flamboyant and attracted tourists as well as supporters of the rival samba schools to the parades, judged not just on the music and costumes, but on the themes and ideas they portray. I shall not die! The Rio Carnival has become increasingly commercialized, but remains a focus for major composers and singers.

Like the flamboyant Elsa Suarez, who became associated with Mossy Daji, a samba school situated in the neighborhood where she grew up, and which she praises in one of her best-known songs. Samba schools have become an important part of Rio's musical life, not just as music clubs that compete at carnival time, but as recreation and social centres with strong links to the local community. Each school still inspires fervent support.

I love this school, I love this house, I love this people, I love this community. I think it represents everything, from the bottom of my heart. Everybody loves the show. It's a wonderful parade. Great composers have passed through the great samba schools.

Every Brazilian has a favorite samba school, like a football team. We all have our favorites. Rio de Janeiro's carnival has a great meaning because it has a plot, it has a story. Rio de Janeiro's carnival is not about jumping. Rio de Janeiro's carnival is about telling a story about Brazil.

President Vargas gave Rio the carnival for which the city became world famous. But less than two years after his death, a new form of samba emerged that reflected a new political era in Brazil and would bring Rio even more international exposure. and proved to be Brazil's most successful musical export.

This was Bossa Nova. If you insist on classifying... This was cool, futuristic new music for a confident new era.

President Juscelino Kubitschek set out to transform Brazil with an ambitious programme of public works that included the construction of a new federal capital, Brasilia, and the promise of 50 years' development in five. Kubitschek would later be accused of causing rampant inflation, but for many Brazilians, this seemed like a golden age. He was a very open-minded man.

Before that, we had a tremendous dictatorship by Vargas. was a complete idiot you know and uh and when joselino came to the the government of brazil everything expanded it was a time when brazil seemed to succeed at everything a country obsessed with football won the world cup for the first time in 1958 partly thanks to a young player called pelle Bossa Nova, the new way, reflected this new optimism and appealed to Brazil's growing urban middle class. It was influenced by western classical music, jazz and by samba cansal.

I don't know how to do both on the guitar, so I do it with my mouth and the guitar, right? The bossa comes a little softer, a little more defined for us. And I made a song, I showed a song in Bossa Nova like this.

I would say Bossa Nova is a kind of soft samba, maybe played a little bit softer. slower just with the guitars, simpler and very light singing, soft singing and soft guitars doing the rhythm. Not a lot of drums like the big samba schools, maybe just a few percussions or just brushes.

I always call the bossa Bossa Nova has the discreet charm of bourgeoisie, the refinement of the melody, of the lyric, of the interpretation, of the orchestration. So Bossa Nova was something that came from the middle class for the middle class. Bossa Nova was dominated by three key figures, starting with a singer and guitarist from Bahia, João Gilberto. He just couldn't talk like that about my love and he When I first heard João Gilberto, it was like enlightenment for me.

It was like an incredible revelation of everything, of aesthetic criteria and deep emotions. And most of all, hope in Brazil. I think my father changed Brazilian music, if I can say that.

I think changed the Brazilian music also in the map. It's really about reinventing and I see sometimes my father seeking for different chords from classics that he's been playing for the last 40 years and I just... I just can't believe it, his obsession. It's a true story.

You know, he used to play his... to study his guitar, and he would study the part of the thumb like this thing, thing. He would go like that. The thing is, there was a cat watching that. And the poor cat was just...

And he would look at the cat. And play ting, ting, ting, ting for hours, you know, just to exercise his thumb. And the cat couldn't resist.

The cat jumped out from the eighth floor down there. The cat killed himself. This is just a little samba, built upon a single note. Other notes are bound to follow, but the root is still that note. Now this new one is the...

consequence of the one which has been through, as I'm bound to be the unavoidable consequence of you. If Joao Gilberto was the greatest bossa performer, then the greatest bossa composer was Antonio Carlos Jobim, better known simply as Tom Jobim, who wrote the melodies for many of Gilberto's hits and was himself an impressive singer and pianist. I think that for me he was the most important songwriter, Brazilian songwriter because I think that Jobim, he has everything.

He has Brazil in itself. I mean, he has the mountains, he has the forest, he has the sun. It's a stick, it's a stone, it's the end of the road, it's a piece of stone, it's a little alone, it's a glass shard, it's life, it's the sun, it's night, it's death, it's the tie, it's the hook, it's the water.

Tom Jobim wrote many of his songs here in the countryside outside Rio. Jobim lived and worked in the house that his son and grandson are now restoring. He studied a lot. Chopin, Debussy, Brahms also. He liked to wake up He would wake up very early and he in this house, the piano was in the back room there and always in the morning I would listen to him playing Brahms or Chopin or Debussy, always studying early and then he would write his songs later.

He used to listen a lot to Sinatra and he used to sing in my mother's ear, dance, all this stuff. Wherever I was with Tom Jobim, he was always mentioning classical composers, even when we were playing some bossa nova songs, some songs of his. And then he stopped suddenly in one special choir. and he would say, ''Here come the Russians.'' And then he would mention Rachmaninov and Stravinsky.

There was a third member of the team that dominated Bossa Nova, the poet Vinicius Gimoraes, who wrote lyrics for the melodies by Tom Jobim and other composers. He too was a singer and worked, among others, with the guitarist Baden Powell. Vinicius was a person who changed the behavior.

Just like the Beatles changed the behavior of young people in England, here in Brazil it was the opposite. who changed the behavior of the young was an older person. Vinicius was the first to walk like this, to walk in sandals, when we all walked all neat. He was the best lyricist. He never made a mistake with a song of mine.

And he would come later with the perfect lyric for the song. He was very successful with women. And he was not exactly a good-looking. Man, he was fat, short, bald, but women, I've seen myself. He was just a killer.

Just off Rio's Copacabana beach, there's an alleyway that back in the early 60s was the musical hub of Brazil. It was in the bars here that the Bossa set got together to play and started to collaborate with local jazz enthusiasts like Sergio Mendes. Rio was wonderful. There was a bar named the Bottles Bar. And that's where I started, you know, playing.

There was a trio. And everybody used to come there every night, you know, Baden-Powell, Jobim. And there was a club on the end of the street called the Little...

little club, and there we would do jam sessions there. And every jazz musician that would come to Rio would stop by, and you know, just wonderful, wonderful times, you know, the early 60s in Copacabana. Cabana Rio de Janeiro. Jazz had been one of the influences on Bossa, and now jazz and Bossa began to mix, a fusion helped by the U.S.

State Department when it sponsored jazz musicians like Charlie Bird and Herbie Mann to visit Brazil, where, inevitably, they would end up playing in Bottle's Alley. I think the reason jazz musicians like Bossa Nova is because every voice follows a... a path and it makes sense not only the melody but the harmonies also singing the song also it's because it came from classical music the way to spread the voices around you know the chromatics when Charlie Byrd returned home to the States he infused about bossa to his friend the saxophonist Stan Getz and in April 1962 the two of them released jazz samba, reworking Joao Gilberto and Jobim songs like Desafinado. Remarkably for a jazz album, it became a bestseller and stayed in the American charts for a quite astonishing 70 weeks. Bossa Nova suddenly became a new American craze.

In the record shops, racks full of Bossa Nova. Authentic Brazilian style and also translated into American by American. American bands.

Bossa Nova at the White House. On stage in the East Room, Paul Winter and his sextet. They came back from a State Department tour of South America playing the new beat, and that young arbiter of American taste, Jacqueline Kennedy, gave it her cool blessing. In November 1962, Brazil's bossa hierarchy, including Gilberto, Jobim, Sergio Mendes, and Carlos Lira, were invited to New York's Carnegie Hall for a legendary concert. in which they performed alongside jazz musicians like Getz and Bird.

The result is remembered as something of a historic mess. It was terrible. The guy who did the concert, sometimes they don't like me to tell the story, but the story was just like this. The guy, he didn't care about playing a concert for New Yorker people. He just wanted...

wanted to do a recording session in a stage. So he spread microphones all over the stage, and he called everybody from Brazil to do the concert. And everybody from New York, whoever wanted to play, would come up and play. So I went to Jobim and said, let's go away.

Let's get you, me, Bonfá, João Gilberto, all the people that came here to do something serious, and let's go back home. And Jobim was very funny at the time, I'll never forget. Because he said, Carlos, did you sign that paper? I said, yes, I did sign.

In here we cannot do this like in Brazil. In here they have electric chair. And I understood that nobody was going to go home.

I said, okay, let's stay and do whatever we can. I don't know. In Brazil, they said it was a big mess.

But I think it was important there. And the most important thing is that many of the musicians who went there to play in the concert, they stayed there. And then they began to work around Oscar Castro Neves, Sergio Mendes.

my father, João Gilberto, they stayed. The boss of fraternity began to split, with musicians like Jobim now remaining in America. but complaining at the way music had changed.

And we had there the same phenomena I think you have here now. We had there Bossa Nova icebox, Bossa Nova washing machines, Bossa Nova lawyers, you know, and many things. And now I heard here in the radio, Bossa Nova haircon, Bossa Nova shoes. You know, this is not very good for the music.

Carlos Lira was also to leave Brazil for Mexico, with other complaints about the new bossa. Some people prefer the bossa nova with lots of jazz. I was the one who thought that it shouldn't be so much jazz. It was important, the jazz influence in bossa nova, but it shouldn't be too much.

We should keep the jazz as a spice in the food, not too much, otherwise it's going to burn you. So I wrote a song, Jazz Influence, that talks about that. Poor Samba Poor Samba By early 1964, the bossa nova boom in Brazil was coming to an end. It had moved to America, where the best-known and most often recorded bossa song of all time was about to become a massive hit. Garota de Ipanema Girl from Ipanema had been written by Jobim and Vinicius in 1962 as they sat in this bar off Copacabana watching the girls walk by.

They wrote that song just because they saw the same girl passing by the bar, going towards the beach every day. And they were like, oh my God, check it out, check the way she walks, check how charming she is when she crosses the road. And I don't know if today's people still can have that naive or romantic way of approaching words and songs. in a way that they used to do 40, 50 years back. Tall and thin and young and lovely The girl from Ipanema goes walking And when she passes, each one she passes goes Girl from Ipanema would become a massive hit in the States in July 1964 when it was sung, in English, by João Gilberto's then-wife, Astrid.

But when she passes, each one she passes goes The best of ghosts Ah Oh But he watches so sadly How can the dark of his arms hurt? But by then, the idyllic image of an easy-going, romantic Brazil had been shattered by a military coup. The soldiers would remain in power for the next 21 years, and in a country that was where music had come to represent the national identity, samba and bossa would be transformed and a new generation of musicians would fight against the harassment and censorship that was to come. And Brazil Brazil is back next week at nine with Tropicalia Revolution.

In the meantime, why not visit bbc.co.uk slash Brazil Brazil to watch full songs from the series and to find out more about stars of Brazilian music.

Transcript for:Exploring Brazilian Music and Culture

Transcript for:
Exploring Brazilian Music and Culture