Hi,
There are some fun things about this piece.
Vinicius de Morais wrote the lyrics, and he was a poet, not a songwriter! Major difference ... and the words were adapted by Stan Getz and Antonio Carlos Jobim to match a song structure. Vinicius is better remembered as a writer than a pop/song writer, which I think is marvellous, but not something that too many folks can appreciate in a location like this. Notice that Wiki also says "Essayist" which is something that is highly appreciated as critical studies of literature, that you can't do in America. I, pretty much, do the same thing here, but there are a lot of folks that do not like it.
Thank you Bapu for bringing that up ... but it was not exactly a good time in Brazil, for us, anyway, and the following year, there was the Military Coup that took it all away, and helped create another wave of revolutionary music, one of the better known folks in it having been Maria Betania, who had a song called "Carcara" that was a vicious attack on the portuguese of old, in the same flame as the military in those days. During that time there was a major exodus of artists from Brazil for political reasons, and thus, even Wiki suggests this happened in New York, which is a bit different, but does help the mistique and idea of the Rio beach girls ... like they are any different than the California girls!
What likely helped, and specially the Brazilian music scene, is that the song made it humongous in America, thanks to Astrud that spoke very good English ... however, you will notice if you hear her doing this ... that she is not exactly singing ... and the Sonar experts would not like that today a whole lot! And it helped bring about a massive amount of Latin Music brought to America. Even the likes of Harry Belafonte was doing many of these island and Latin rhythms.
What the heck ... made Rio famous, even though that was not the cleanes and prettiest of all the beaches ... but no one goes to Santa Monica to talk about the beaches either ... they go for ... that too, Bapu!
post edited by Moshkiae - 2012/07/05 09:57:46