Sunday, October 12, 2014

The Updated Brazilian Sound Kindle Edition


The updated 2014 Kindle edition of The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova and the Popular Music of Brazil by Chris McGowan and Ricardo Pessanha is now available. The leading English-language guide to Brazilian musicians and genres has added lots of beautiful color photos and new artists in all genres, including popular contemporary styles like música sertaneja, funk carioca and tecnobrega. Read it on the iPad, Mac, PC and other tablets with free Kindle reading apps from Amazon.

For anyone interested in exploring the vast world of Brazilian music, The Brazilian Sound will serve nicely as a smart and practical road map."Jazziz

“It continues to be the most informative—and eminently readable—book about Brazilian popular music.” —Don Heckman, The Los Angeles Times

“Well researched . . . . its breadth of coverage is impressive.” —Randal Johnson, Hispanic American Historical Review

“Enlightening descriptions of musical styles.” —Martha Carvalho, Popular Music 


Global links for the Kindle edition


Paperback, Hardback & Nook


The Brazilian Sound's Kindle cover design is by Cristina Portella

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Thursday, October 2, 2014

A Simple Way to Save a Life / Salvar uma Vida


We can save millions who have blood diseases now. Nearly everyone has a family member who has had one or knows of someone who has had leukemia or another blood illness. Please help just by registering.

Here's how in the U.S. and Brazil (please share).

U.S. (English)

Brazil (Português):

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Friday, August 29, 2014

Sérgio Mendes Talks About "Brasileiro"

 
 photo by Chris McGowan

In 1992, I was invited by Elektra Records to write the liner notes for the Sérgio Mendes album Brasileiro, which was unlike anything he had ever done.The trademark Sérgio Mendes sound (upbeat, with female voices singing in unison) was there but it was mixed together with the idiosyncratic Carlinhos Brown from Bahia, who contributed five songs and was the cornerstone of the album, three great Brazilian songwriters (Ivan Lins, Guinga, and João Bosco), and the instrumental wizard Hermeto Pascoal and his band O Grupo. Plus the 15-member Bahian percussion group Vai Quem Vem and a hundred drummers and percussionists from the top Rio escolas de samba (samba schools) were there to keep things cooking.
 
I showed up one morning at Mendes' home in Encino. We sat down and had coffee, and Sérgio put a Brasileiro demo CD onto the high-end stereo system in his den. I was expecting to hear a smooth pop rendition of a Brazilian standard or a recent American hit. Instead, something else entirely blasted out of Sérgio's audiophile speakers. Brasileiro opens with "Fanfarra" (Fanfare). The "call" of a lone soloist on repique (tenor drum) is answered by the thundering "response" of a hundred rhythmic masters from Mangueira, Portela, and other escolas. We were listening at high volume and the batucada (percussion jam), once it kicked in, was powerful, overwhelming. I had heard recordings of many samba schools before, but none with such high fidelity. They often sounded busy and muddy. Here you can hear the samba instruments clearly. The batucada stops and a Carlinhos Brown samba de roda ("Cabua-Le-Le") starts. We hear Alceu do Cavaco's cavaquinho and a female chorus. Then the batucada begins again and continues underneath the Brown song, merging with it. The female singing is rather cloying, yet the song works. It is an original and appealing proposition: a meeting of Rio's escolas, Afro-Bahian music, and Sérgio Mendes. All bolstered by state-of-the-art recording technology.

 Carlinhos Brown and Sérgio Mendes

The rest of the album is also innovative and full of surprises, for the most part. I was delightfully surprised, even though Sérgio's hallmark sound—two women singing the lead vocals in unison—could have been used less, especially on Ivan Lins' "Sambadouro" and "Kalimba" (admittedly, those songs might be what many of his old fans like best on this album). And many songs have smooth-jazz underpinnings by Mendes's L.A. studio musicians: Jeffrey Porcaro (drums), Nathan East (bass), and Paul Jackson Jr. (guitar). They are extremely competent studio players, but their slickness gives the music a gloss it doesn't need. The album works best when the studio guys are on the sidelines, such as on the opening number, or when the playing of others predominates. For example, Vai Quem Vem and Brown's percussion is the heart of "Indiado." And "Senhoras do Amazonas" has Porcaro on drums, but Bosco (guitar and vocals) and Arthur Maia (bass) drive the music. The opening of "Fanfarra/Cabua-Le-Le," Brown's "Magalhena" (a fusion of northeastern and Bahian music), the Bahian rap "What is This?," and Pascoal's "Pipoca" and Guinga's "Chorado" have a minimum of "Brasil '66" moments. On the whole, Brasileiro is full of a surprising number of creative risks.

This was a rare case in which one of Sérgio's albums had such a strong imprint of another musician – in this case, Carlinhos Brown (the other major example being his collaboration with will.i.am on Timeless). Carlinhos wrote five of the record's songs, singing on four of them, and the Carmen Alice tune "What is This?" bore his undeniable influence. And five of the record's songs feature the percussion of Brown and Vai Quem Vem, a group formed of former students in a percussion school that he founded in Salvador. For half the album, Brasileiro is a joint venture by Sérgio and Carlinhos, which was essential to its success. Brasileiro went on to win the 1993 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album. It may not have sold as well as Mendes' bigger albums, but it earned him credibility with many discerning fans of Brazilian and World music. It has remained my favorite of his albums.

Besides writing the liner notes, I also got to "coach" Sérgio as he shot video promos for the album. I sat next to the camera in his backyard and prompted him with questions; his answers were edited and used for promotional purposes. I had the sense he didn't realize what an original album he'd produced. Here is the 1992 interview we did that I used to write the liner notes.



Chris: Where did you record the album?
Sérgio: We recorded the basic tracks in Brazil at PolyGram Studios and Som Livre Studios. We did the overdubs and mixing here in Los Angeles. We were five months in Brazil and seven months here. It was the hardest I've ever worked on an album. I wanted to do it really well, the right way.

Chris: What was the point of the album? What were you trying to do?
Sérgio: I tried to have a nice variety, of everything I love about Brazilian music. I wanted to explore a wide variety of the incredible spectrum of rhythms and percussion, melodies and chants in Brazilian music. I had always wanted to do something completely Brazilian and so this project came totally from the heart. It's totally authentic.

Chris: Were you influenced at all by Paul Simon's use of Olodum (the bloco afro from Bahia) on The Rhythm of the Saints?
Sérgio: It's different from what people like Paul Simon or David Byrne have done. These are Brazilian songs and Brazilian songwriters. They're not American melodies with Brazilian rhythms. I didn't want to do a safari. I wanted to be involved putting together the whole thing, from arranging to playing on it to producing. I wanted to do a great presentation, from the heart.

Chris: There is quite a range of musicians and styles.
Sérgio: The escolas de samba, Bahia, Ivan Lins. I was selecting what I felt. The only thing that's missing is a Milton song.

Chris: Have you done anything like this before? Perhaps your album that compares is Primal Roots, from 1972.
Sérgio: Primal Roots was like a small version of this. I had always wanted to do something totally Brazilian, with all the stuff I loved down there. Luckily, Bob Krasnow of Elektra said 'Go do it.' It's rare to have that kind of support from a record company. That's how this album was conceived.

Chris: How did you integrate all recordings done in Rio with the musicians in L.A.?
Sérgio: When I brought back all the tracks from Rio to L.A., to add more tracks with musicians here, there were big smiles in the studio. They loved it and it gave them something fresh and different to work with. They played their best and it was a total integration of their work with the Brazilian Afro rhythms.

Chris: The album really has a distinctive sound, whether you are American or Brazilian.
Sérgio: The presentation of all this music is the way I hear it.

Chris: Tell us about the first number.
Sérgio: It opens with Jaguar playing repique, solo. He is answered by one hundred all-star percussionists from the top samba schools in Rio – Mangueira, Portela, Padre Miguel, Beija-Flor. I always wanted to capture what you hear on the streets of Rio during Carnaval, that power, that energy. So we got the best players, which was not easy to do, and then gathered them together in a parking lot with 24-track equipment. Then I had the idea of putting a chant on top of that.

Chris: So, take us to the Sambódromo in Rio [where the parades take place during Carnaval]. What is happening?
Sérgio: The "Fanfarra" is the opening, played before the escola enters the Sambódromo. One guy, Jaguar, is "calling" [with his repique solo] and the others are "answering."

Chris: And then you mixed that with a Carlinhos Brown song.
Sérgio: I recorded this in April. I wanted to add something on top of it. On my second trip I searched for songs to put on top and it wasn't working. I was stuck with this incredible piece of percussion. Then I went to Bahia and I heard Carlinhos Brown at this song festival and I heard his stuff and liked it very much. He had a samba de roda, "Cabua-Le-Le," that I loved and wanted to use. And he liked the idea of the [samba school] percussion underneath.  I brought him down to Rio and we did a lot of overdubs. I wanted the rawness of the sound, but to organize it a little bit. It took a lot of work putting the pieces together. So, it's an Afro-Bahian song with Rio Carnaval percussion behind it.

Chris: Next is "Magalenha," also by Carlinhos Brown. This sounds to me like a fusion of baiao and samba-reggae, with embolada or calango in the singing part.
Sérgio: Carlinhos is singing and playing triangle, with the Bahian percussion group Vai Quem Vem, and a chorus of four girls, three guys and myself. I put Vai Quem Vem on a bus and they spent two weeks in Rio, rehearsing and recording.

Chris: "Indiado" by Brown is a lively romp, with some funky synth horns and a lively guitar on top.
Sérgio: The vocals are by Carlinhos and Gracinhas Leoparace. It's a mixture of forró and samba-reggae. Vai Quem Vem is playing, plus Jeff Porcaro on drums, Jimmy Johnson on bass, Paul Jackson, Jr. on guitar, and myself on synthesized horns.

Chris: "What is This?" by Carmen Alice of Vai Quem Vem is really something unusual. I don't think I've heard a Bahian rap song before.
Sérgio: It's their reading of the American rap style. In Bahia, they hear everything—rap, reggae, merengue—and adapt it. Carmen's song is so raw and pure, I thought the simplicity and purity of it were really interesting. It's very Bahian.

Chris: It's a lot of fun and so different. Big booming drums to open, very catchy. A rap song played on Brazilian drums and percussion, which we've never heard up here in North America. And a funky berimbau.
Sérgio: We were recording in Rio at Polygram, and having no luck with a couple of songs. Finally, I said, 'Can you play me something different?' And this young girl from Vai Quem Vem named Carmen grabbed the microphone and started doing this incredible rap in English! She is an English teacher from Salvador, as well as a percussionist and singer. Her neighborhood there is called Candeal, it's a poor place, and this rap is about it. It's her reading of the American rap style. It was part of their repertoire that I hadn't heard. I added my synthesizer. I call it organic rap. It's so raw and pure. Here we have the rap rhythm on surdos, etc., instead of on drum machines, giving it a different flavor. It's my first rap.

Chris: You follow that with two Ivan Lins songs. "Lua Soberana" is an Ivan Lins afoxé with a stirring, haunting melody. Then you have his sweetly flowing "Sambadouro."
Sérgio: "Sambadouro" is a samba with Gracinha on the lead vocals. It's very carioca, very Rio de Janeiro. It has some of my old Brasil '66 sound, and reminds me of a gafieira, one of Rio's romantic dance halls where couples dance to samba.

Chris: "Senhoras do Amazonas" by João Bosco has an unusual, beautiful sound with an interesting arrangement.
Sérgio: The vocals are by João and Gracinha. I'm on the keyboards, Carlos Bala on drums, and Arthur Maia on bass. This is the first time I've recorded João. I love his stuff. This is a samba, but not with normal chord changes. There are lots of diminished chords, giving an unusual harmonic structure to the song. And the drum part is somewhat partido alto. I said to him, 'I have to have one of your songs.' João did the music and Belchior the lyrics. All his songs have that onomatopoeia stuff. I said I wanted lyrics whose emphasis was more on their rhythmic value than on pretty words and poetical images.

Chris: Tell us about "Kalimba" by Ivan Lins, his third song on the album.
Sérgio: Here you have tribal chanting in the lyrics with an R&B dance sound underneath. Paul Jackson, Jr. is on guitar, me on keyboards, Jeff Porcaro drums, Nathan East bass, Luis Conte, conga. And Gracinha, Kevyn Lettau, and myself on vocals.

Chris: Carlinhos Brown's "Barabare" sounds Gilberto Gil-influenced, with an ijexá rhythm, a gentle swing, and a somewhat pop-jazzy chorus.
Sérgio: I think this song is very beautiful. It has Bahia and also the flair of Rio, too. It makes me think of Rio's beautiful beaches, in the late afternoon of a summer day. Carlinhos and Gracinha do the vocals. I'm on agogô and keyboards, and Carlinhos Brown on percussion, and Tião Neto on percussion and not [his usual] bass.

Chris: "Esconjuros" is nice, hypnotic, very interesting at end. The vocals sound to me like they're a little embolada in style, and underneath there's some faint maracatu. It feels sort of like classical music meeting folk. It's one of two Guinga songs on the album, I see.
Sérgio: Guinga did the music and Aldir Blanc the lyrics. Gracinha is on vocals, Steve Tavaglione oboe and flute, and Guinga guitar. Guinga is the composer who impressed me the most when I was there. He's like Villa-Lobos meets Cole Porter. He made me cry. He's very shy, plays acoustic guitar, and writes beautiful melodies.

Chris: Hermeto Pascoal's "Pipoca" takes us in another directly entirely.
Sérgio: We go back so many years. We used to play at the same bars and clubs in São Paulo, accompanying singers. He's one of the most incredible musicians I've ever met. This time, I asked him to write me a samba in 3/4 and he did! Here he plays acoustic piano and I play synthesizer. That's for the jazz fans. It's my thing meets his thing. Only Hermeto writes those kind of melodies.

Chris: Then comes "Magano" by Carlinhos Brown. A speeded-up samba-reggae underneath with merengue on top in your keyboards.
Sérgio: With Gracinha and the singers from Rio in the chorus. The vocalists wish us axé [good vibes, life force].

Chris: And your next to last song is the spare, pretty "Chorado" by Guinga. It sounds Milton Nascimento-ish with beautiful singing, the wordless vocals of Claudio Nucci.
Sérgio: Guinga strikes again. It's a beautiful song and Claudio sings like an angel on it. It's got Guinga on guitar and me on synth cello and oboe.

Chris: And you close with the "Fanfarra (Despedida)" of the samba school percussionists. Perfect. Would you say this is your best album ever?
Sérgio: That would be too pretentious. But it has just about all of my favorite things from Brazil.


I also interviewed Sérgio Mendes in The Brazilian Music Book, a collection of interviews with prominent Brazilian musicians in the areas of bossa nova, MPB and Brazilian jazz. 

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Tuesday, August 5, 2014

MIMO Festival Boasts Spectacular Scenery and Performances in Four Cities


Paraty, Brazil
Travelers who like to combine great music with sightseeing in Brazil should take note. The 11th edition of MIMO, a free music and film festival in Brazil, kicks off on August 29 and will take place in four of Brazil's most beautiful and historic cities: Ouro Preto, Olinda, Paraty and Tiradentes. Producer Lu Araújo launched MIMO in 2004 in Olinda, with the acronym standing for "Mostra Internacional da Música em Olinda." The event grew in importance and added three more cities along the way. According to MIMO, more than 630,000 people have attended the festival to date. This year, the scenery will be spectacular and so will the concert lineups, featuring many notable international and Brazilian artists.

Trilok Gurtu
In terms of music, some of the 2014 highlights are Chick Corea and the Vigil, Lau and the James Duncan Mackenzie Band (both from Scotland), Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu, Mali's Bassekou Kouyate (who plays the ngoni, a West African lute) and his band Ngoni Ba, Spanish early-music maestro Jordi Savall, Jamaican singer Winston MacAnuff and French accordionist Fixi and the European orchestra Chaarts.

Bongar

Pianist-guitarist Egberto Gismonti, guitarist Toninho Horta, percussionist Naná Vasconcelos and violincello player Lui Comibra, guitarist Marco Pereira and accordionist Toninho Ferragutti, singer-violinist Renata Rosa, pianist Hercules Gomes, the group Bongar from Olinda, saxophonist Zé Nogueira and vibraphonist Arthur Dutra, pianist João Donato, and samba singer-composer Diogo Nogueira and mandolin virtuoso Hamilton Holanda (performing their "Bossa Negra" album) are among the Brazilian performers.

Toninho Horta
In addition, the 2014 program includes 21 movies, documentaries and short films. There are also free music-education classes and a MIMO Instrumental Award. All events are free to the public and presented in churches, squares and courtyards of these four cities known for their stunning colonial and baroque architecture. The festival will run Aug. 29-31 in Ouro Preto, Sept. 4-7 in Olinda, Oct. 10-12 in Paraty, and Oct. 17-19 in Tiradentes.

Renata Rosa
For more information about the festival: MIMO.
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Friday, July 11, 2014

Festival Vale do Café 2014

Performing at one of the fazendas.

A unique Brazilian music event, the Festival Vale do Café (The Coffee Valley Festival), began on July 7 and runs until July 27 in the small towns and old coffee plantations of verdant, historic areas in and around the city of Vassouras, about two hours from Rio de Janeiro. The focus is primarily on jazz, choro, bossa nova, regional styles and classical music. Concerts are free in the public squares and churches of Vassouras and nearby cities, while tickets are required for the intimate music shows staged at stately fazendas (plantations).

Singers Fafá de Belém and Joanna will perform this year in free concerts, while the Bianca Gismonti Trio, Duo Santoro, Nicolas Krassik e os Cordestinos, Gabriel Grossi, Orquestra Carioca do Choro, Turibio Santos, Carol MacDavit, Gilson Peranzzetta, Mauro Senise, Cristina Braga, Bia Bedran and Trio Madeira Brasil will also make appearances. During the festival, many free music classes are offered for children. One night (the Cortejo de Tradições) is devoted to folia de reis, capoeira, jongo, cana-verde and other folkloric traditions, peformed by local groups. This is the 12th year of the festival, which was created by harpist Cristina Braga. Guitarist Turibio Santos and Paulo Barroso are the event's artistic directors.

The main house of an old fazenda.

Turibio Santos (guitar) and Cristina Braga (harp).

The main square of Vassouras during the festival.

João Bosco at the festival in 2013.

More info (in Portuguese): festivalvaledocafe.com


Read about Brazilian Music

The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova
and the Popular Music of Brazil

by Chris McGowan and Ricardo Pessanha (Temple University Press)
(the leading guide to Brazilian music in English;
available on Amazon worldwide)

by Chris McGowan
(interviews with iconic figures from Jobim
and Airto to Djavan and Gal Costa)

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Monday, May 26, 2014

The Brazilian Music Book


The Brazilian Music Book:
Brazil's Singers, Songwriters, and Musicians Tell the
Story of Bossa Nova, MPB, and Brazilian Jazz and Pop

by Chris McGowan

Now available in Kindle (see below)

"The Brazilian Music Book by Chris McGowan is an involving work thanks to the insight of the author, his integrity and his deep love for Brazilian music. It is a book destined for success and I hope to see it translated into Portuguese as soon as possible."Turibio Santos, classical guitarist, director of the Villa-Lobos Museum in Rio de Janeiro and artistic director of the Vale do Café music festival.

Journalist Chris McGowan has covered Brazilian music for Billboard magazine, The Huffington Post, and his own The Brazilian Sound blog, and co-authored multiple editions of the definitive reference book on the subject—The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova and the Popular Music of Brazil. Along the way, he has interviewed many of the most important and influential legends of Brazilian music. In this new omnibus volume, McGowan presents many of these interviews in complete and unabridged form for the first time. There are twenty revealing conversations with iconic figures in Brazilian music, including Antonio Carlos Jobim, Carlos Lyra, Milton Nascimento, Airto Moreira, Dori Caymmi, Laurindo Almeida, Antonio Adolfo, Djavan, Ivan Lins, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Cristina Braga, Luciana Souza and Lenine. A Kindle edition of The Brazilian Music Book (which can be viewed on iPad, Android, PCs and Macs) is available now; a paperback version will be available soon.


Kindle editions (in English) from Amazon:

Monday, March 31, 2014

Access The Brazilian Sound: Links for All Editions

Where to find it:


The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova and the Popular Music of Brazil, by Chris McGowan and Ricardo Pessanha, the leading guide to Brazilian musicians and genres in the English language, is available worldwide in paperback (cover above) and ebook (Kindle and Nook) editions (cover below).


A "landmark history of Brazilian popular music"
--Rob Arcand, VICE
 
Links for all print and digital editions,
globally available through Amazon:

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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Carlos Lyra: 60 Years of Bossa Nova



Carlos Lyra will celebrate the 60th anniversary of his career this year with concerts in several major Brazilian cities and the recording of a live DVD, both mostly likely in September. The singer-guitarist-songwriter is one of bossa nova's key figures and most important composers. João Gilberto recorded three of Lyra's songs—"Maria Ninguém" (Maria Nobody), "Lobo Bobo" (Foolish Wolf) and "Saudade Fez Um Samba" (Saudade Made a Samba*)—on Chega de Saudade (1959), generally regarded as the first bossa nova album. Lyra was one of the first bossa artists to release a solo album, in 1960. And he took the genre in new directions in the early '60s, with polemical lyrics and his involvement in musical theater productions that protested social injustice in Brazil.

Antonio Carlos Jobim praised Lyra as a "great melodist" and "formidable composer," while Marcos Valle commented that Lyra "was the guy who knew how to create bossa nova's most beautiful melodies. Tom [Jobim] was fantastic, with his harmonies and everything, but the melodies of Carlinhos were unbeatable." In the early '60s, Stan Getz, Charlie Byrd, Zoot Sims, Cal Tjader, Herbie Mann, Quincy Jones Vince Guaraldi, Phil Woods, Paul Winter, Lalo Schifrin, Astrud Gilberto, Sérgio Mendes and even Brigitte Bardot recorded Lyra's songs. And Paul Winter performed "Maria Ninguém" at the Kennedy White House in 1962.


Kay Lyra and her father Carlos perform "Você e Eu" on live TV

Despite all this, Lyra's works have had much less of a presence in international jazz and pop recordings since the '60s, as opposed to Jobim, whose compositions are still heavily performed and recorded. In part, this is because Lyra fell out of favor with Brazil's military, which overthrew a democratic government in 1964, and he went into a self-imposed exile from 1964 to 1971. This took him away from the Brazilian recording industry for a long and crucial period in his career, and he spent most of his exile in Mexico, hardly a launching pad for global recognition at the time. Lyra always marched to his own drummer and never put much effort into establishing a career in the U.S., as did Jobim and many other Brazilian musicians. "I never pursued success, not even in Brazil," Lyra comments. "I always pursued quality. My songs, when they were heard, were accepted and recorded by many in the whole world, without my having to ask, do marketing or let go of my life and my tranquility in order to run after success."

As a result of this, Lyra is still a musical hero in Brazil, for his bossa nova classics and for being a symbol of the resistance during the dictatorship, but his catalog of songs lies largely untouched overseas. In the new millennium, Phil Woods and Barbara Casini have covered Lyra's "Você e Eu" (You and I) in 2001, Luciana Souza recorded "Se É Tarde Me Perdoa" (If It's Late, Forgive Me) in 2003, and Rosa Passos interpreted "Lobo Bobo" in 2004. But such efforts are few and far between, and the last ten years have seen an even bigger drought. Jazz and pop artists who appreciate Brazilian music would do well to acquaint themselves with Lyra's work, which is a somewhat undiscovered source of bossa classics, with great melodies and rich harmonies.


Carlos Lyra and Leila Pinheiro perform

"Saudade Fez Um Samba" and "Se É Tarde Me Perdoa."

Lyra was unusual for bossa nova in that he was both a charismatic performer and an acclaimed songwriter; the other principal artists were mostly good at one or the other thing. Jazz saxophonist Paul Winter teamed with Lyra on The Sound of Ipanema album in 1965 and recalls, "He was a little more outgoing than João [Gilberto]. I remember many nights when Carlos just would melt the clothes off every lady in the room. That guy had a magic that probably surpasses that of any other performer I’ve ever known. His music was so alluring and sensual. His melodies are gorgeous, whereas João didn’t write and Jobim didn’t perform a lot."

Lyra started his career precociously. Born in 1936 in Rio de Janeiro, he wrote his first song "Quando Chegares" (When You Arrive) in 1954. The next year, singer Sylvia Telles recorded Antonio Carlos Jobim and Newton Mendonça's "Foi a Noite" (It Was the Night); the other side of the single was the young Lyra's composition "Menina" (Girl). Around this time, he began frequenting the Plaza Bar in the Hotel Plaza in Leme, a neighborhood adjacent to Copacabana. It was a formative site for the creators of bossa nova, a place for the likes of Johnny Alf, Jobim, Gilberto, João Donato, Baden Powell, Sylvia Telles, and Dolores Duran to share musical ideas. 

Jobim, Vinícius, Bôscoli, Menescal and Lyra

In 1956, Lyra opened a guitar academy with high school buddy Roberto Menescal, who would become another major figure in bossa nova. One of their students was a young Nara Leão, whose parent's Copacabana apartment became a favorite spot for jam sessions and who later became one of bossa's most renowned singers. By the next year, singer-guitarist João Gilberto had introduced the bossa nova beat to his musician friends, distilling samba rhythms into a simpler and irresistible pattern and acting as a catalyst for much great songwriting to come. Lyra, though, remembers Gilberto as having introduced his new beat at an earlier date, and doesn't give it as much importance as others do, seeing it as part of bossa's repertoire rather than its essential rhythm.

The new style of music made its public debut with Lyra and others before some two hundred people at Rio's Clube Hebráica (Hebrew Club) in 1957. Either the club's events director or an anonymous secretary billed the night's offerings as "Today, Sylvia Telles, Carlos Lyra and the bossa nova group." From that point on, "bossa nova" became accepted as a label for the new style. Odeon released Gilberto's recordings of "Chega de Saudade" and "Desafinado" in 1958, and the album Chega de Saudade in 1959, the latter produced by Jobim and including three Lyra songs as well as three Jobim tunes in the mix.


But Lyra became fed up with the Odeon label's delay in recording him and others and signed with Philips, for which he recorded his first album Bossa Nova in 1959, released in May 1960. This created a small rupture in bossa nova, with some musicians staying with Odeon, which had been nurturing them for some time and making promises, and others going to Philips.

Also in 1960, Lyra began his collaborations with poet and lyricist Vinícius de Moraes, who replaced Ronaldo Bôscoli as his main songwriting partner. Vinícius was the genre's most important lyricist and Jobim's frequent collaborator, and wrote the words for "Garota de Ipanema." Philips released Lyra's second album Carlos Lyra in 1961, and the next year he appeared on Bossa Nova Mesmo with Sylvia Telles, Vinícius and Oscar Castro-Neves, and Bossa Nova at Carnegie Hall, the live recording of the historic concert that introduced many of bossa's main figures to an American audience.

In front: Carlos Lyra, Nara Leão and Vinícius de Moraes

By 1961, with bossa nova booming in Brazil, Lyra had already begun to take his art in a new direction, co-founding the leftist CPC (The People's Center for Culture) of the UNE (National Student's Union), which sought to create revolutionary popular art and popular art forms to take the masses out of "alienation and submission." The CPC also sought to facilitate interchanges between the culture of the povo (the "people," i.e., the poor and working class) and the middle class. At this time, Lyra had begun to feel that bossa nova needed socially conscious lyrics and that, as he would later say, it had "a hell of a lot of form, but lacked content."

He and Vinícius wrote the musical Pobre Menina Rica (Poor Little Rich Girl) in 1962. It had politically conscious lyrics, such as those of the electrifying "Maria Moita," which manages in just a few words to be both a protest against social inequality and an early feminist anthem. Pobre Menina Rica was released as an album in '64, staged in France that year, and translated into Spanish by novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 

A young Antonio Adolfo participated as a pianist in the musical. "It was a privilege having Carlos Lyra invite me and my Trio 3D to participate in the wonderful and magical play by him and Vinícius. He was the one who baptized my trio. We worked on Pobre Menina Rica for three or four months from December 1963 through March 1964, at the Teatro de Bolso in Ipanema. Jobim always mentioned, 'Carlos Lyra was the finest melodist of bossa nova' and I agree completely. His songs are so inspired, and the combination of melody and harmony is really something. Later, during the '90s, when I worked with him again as arranger and producer of his Bossa Lyra album, I had the chance to go deeper into his songs and become more and more passionate for his music. He is one of the greatest composers of all time." 


Vinícius de Moraes and Carlos Lyra

Also in 1963, another of Lyra's new songs was the polemical "Canção do Subdesenvolvido" (Song of the Underdeveloped) about economic exploitation, written with Chico de Assis; it was censored the next year. Lyra was the musical director of Teatro de Arena, which staged controversial productions. One of their most famous shows was Opinião, directed by Augusto Boal, which protested Brazil's poverty and social problems and in which Lyra played an important role.

While working on a film soundtrack, Lyra had visited Mangueira, a poor neighborhood that is home to a venerable samba school of the same name, and gotten to know Cartola, who introduced him to fellow samba composers Nelson Cavaquinho, Zé Keti and Elton Medeiros. They met often at the apartment of Lyra, who sought to introduce their music to a wider public. He introduced them to bossa singer Nara Leão, who would record their songs on her 1964 album Nara; one of the tunes was Keti's "Diz Que Fui Por Ai," which became a hit. Later, Leão, Keti and northeastern composer João do Vale starred in the politically charged musical Opinião, which debuted in December and was a big success. Lyra contributed two songs, "Lamento de Um Homem Só (Song of a Man Alone) and "Marcha da Quarta-Feira de Cinzas" (Ash Wednesday March) and was present in the early rehearsals of the show, a precursor of the MPB (eclectic post-bossa Brazilian popular music) to come with its mixing of bossa, samba and regional music.

While Lyra wanted to take bossa nova in a different direction, he also surprised some CPC colleagues by unashamedly stating that he was part of the bourgeoisie and that he created bourgeois, not popular, culture. He was always true to himself and wouldn't let others sway him. When Lyra appeared in one of the first televised bossa performances, on TV Excelsior in São Paulo, he was told backstage beforehand that he would be offered some Mentex chewing gum (Mentex was one of the show's sponsors) and should say, "Thank you. I love Mentex." He refused, replying that he wouldn't plug their product or anyone else's for free. The show's representatives didn't give up and tried to force the issue. During the performance, a girl dressed as a bunny approached him and asked if he'd like some Mentex. "No, I hate it," he replied on live television.



The Sound of Ipanema (1965) with Paul Winter (left) and Carlos Lyra (right)

In 1964, he recorded the The Sound of Ipanema with Paul Winter (released in '65) and appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival with Stan Getz. His career was flourishing, but the military had overthrown Brazil's democratically elected government on March 31 of that year. Lyra knew his days there were numbered, as sooner or later the government would come after him. He left Brazil, came back, and left again, this time for seven years. While he was gone, he toured with Getz in 1965 and '66, and decided to relocate to Mexico, where he lived for five years. While there, he married the American actress-model Katherine Lee Riddell (now Kate Lyra); their daughter Kay is now a singer.

After he returned to Brazil for good, he still had to tread carefully. His album Herói de Medo (Fear's Hero), recorded in 1974, was initially censored entirely. He left to live in Los Angeles for two years, where he took Arthur Janov's "primal scream" therapy (there, he met John Lennon, a fellow participant) and studied astrology. Since his return to Brazil in 1976, he has performed often, but recorded relatively few works, with the exception of the retrospectives Bossa Lyra (1993) and Sambalanço (2000); Carioca de Algema (Carioca in Handcuffs), a 1994 album of original songs; and group efforts like Vivendo Vinícius Ao Vivo (1998), with Baden Powell, Miúcha, Toquinho, and Os Bossa Nova (2008) with Roberto Menescal, Marcos Valle and João Donato.



Leo Gandelman (sax) and Charlie Hunter (guitar)
improvise to "Quem Quiser Encontrar o Amor."



Some of his other well known compositions not mentioned above include: "Aruanda," "Minha Namorada" (My Girlfriend), "A Certain Sadness," "Influência de Jazz," "Coisa Mais Linda" (The Most Beautiful Thing), "Quem Quiser Encontrar O Amor" (Who Wants to Find Love), "Samba do Carioca" and "Primavera" (Spring). The retrospective DVD Carlos Lyra: 50 Anos da Música (2005) is an excellent introduction to his work; Lyra performs 27 of his best known songs with guests such as Leila Pinheiro, Antonio Adolfo, Roberto Menescal, Marcos Valle, João Donato, Wanda Sá and his daughter Kay Lyra.

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*saudade = missing someone or something.

references:
-Much of the background information is from a 2013 interview with Carlos Lyra by Chris McGowan (for The Brazilian Music Book).
-Jobim quote from Carlos Lyra Songbook (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Lumiar, 1994).
-Marcos Valle quoted in the DVD Carlos Lyra: 50 Anos de Música (Biscoito Fino, 2005).
-According to Paul Winter, interviewed by Chris McGowan in 2014.
-Mentex story from from Magda Botafogo, Carlos Lyra's agent and manager.



Read about Brazilian Music

The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova
and the Popular Music of Brazil

by Chris McGowan and Ricardo Pessanha (Temple University Press)
(the leading guide to Brazilian music in English;
available on Amazon worldwide)

by Chris McGowan
(interviews with iconic figures from Jobim
and Airto to Djavan and Gal Costa)

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