Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World Read Free Page A

the bumpy contradictions of modern life made plain and, if we’re lucky, beautiful.
    Julian Dibbell
    March 2000

Prologue
    Juazeiro, 1948
    The loudspeaker that hung from one of the posts on Rua do Apolo in Juazeiro, Bahia, played “Naná,” sung by Orlando Silva, at least three times a day. The record sleeve said 1948, and “Naná,” a slow foxtrot by Custódio Mesquita and Geysa Bôscoli, was an old hit from 1940. But Mr. Emicles, the owner of the sound system, wasn’t particularly concerned about playing the latest music sensations. He played the records he liked to listen to through his speakers, and only now and again would he make concessions to the enduring patience of his audience—the entire population of Juazeiro—and go to Salvador to buy new records. Fortunately, Mr. Emicles’s taste in music was as wide and varied as a rainbow. Among the featured attractions in his repertoire were “Song of India” by Tommy Dorsey; “Caravan” by Duke Ellington; “Siboney” by Gregorio Barrios; “Musica proibita” (Forbidden Music) by Carlo Buti; “Ménilmontant” by Charles Trenet; “Cambalache” by Francisco Canaro; and “Dream Lover” by Jeanette McDonald. No radio station in Juazeiro—if Juazeiro had had a radio station—could have done better.
    And, of course, Mr. Emicles’s program also included a lot of Brazilian music: “Bolinha de papel” (Little Paper Ball) by Anjos do Inferno (Hell’s Angels); “Onde o céu azul é mais azul” (Where the Blue Sky Is Bluest) by Francisco Alves; “Boogie-woogie na favela” (Boogie-Woogie in the Slums) by Cyro Monteiro; “Ave-Maria no morro” (Ave Maria on the Hill) by Trio de Ouro (Gold Trio); “A primeira vez” (The First Time) by Orlando Silva; “Adeus, batucada” (Goodbye, Batucada) by Carmen Miranda, and “O samba da minha terra” (Samba of My Land) by Dorival Caymmi. Except for brief intervals for the transmission of mass, and commercial announcements, Mr. Emicles’s squeaky sound system filled the air in Juazeiro all day long with music of all genres, from all eras, which was torture for some—especially at night, when Mr. Emicles booked a local band to play live.
    So long as the town plant provided electricity, there was music in the air. The plans for Paulo Afonso’s hydroelectric plant were still on the drawing board, and when the lights flickered two or three times around eleven o’clock at night, it was a warning that within ten minutes, the electricity would be cut off and social life in Juazeiro would have to be postponed until the next day. The speakers were silenced, the already dim street lights would go out, and families would go home to bed. From that point on, the soundtrack was provided by the late-nighters with their guitars. They wandered the streets, serenading and making themselves targets for the liquid rewards of chamberpot contents, thrown out of windows onto their heads.
    Obviously, this law of silence did not apply during Carnival or the
roda
of São Gonçalo, a type of Candomblé ritual, during which the city danced all night to the sounds emanating from the speakers. Does that mean then that Juazeiro was like New Orleans? Well, not quite.
    In 1948, Juazeiro was a town of ten thousand, among which was a boy of seventeen whom everybody called Joãozinho da Patu. Jorge Amado waxed lyrical in his description of Juazeiro in his novel
Seara Vermelha
(
The Golden Harvest
), but real life there was depressing. Very few of the streets were paved, and all of the homes had tiled floors which the townspeople had to pour water over every other day, to refresh the body and soul. The heat was Dante-esque, and wasn’t even alleviated by the whirlwinds that swept through Juazeiro. It was worse when it was windy, because then you literally ate dust. The millions of liters of water in the São Francisco river flowing right on the town’s doorstep did not prevent it from becoming a sand pit, in which even the cacti perspired in