From the La Times, an appreciation of the fantastic Joao Gilberto who passed away this weekend:
Gilberto’s death at age 88 was announced Saturday through the Facebook page of the musician’s son, João Marcelo Gilberto. The son offered no details on Gilberto’s death.
Over a seven decade career, the guitarist’s quick, liquid acoustic chords hit with a smooth but percussive energy, and coupled with his subtly expressive voice, transformed the music of his country and helped spread the sound across the world.
One of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Gilberto and his peer and collaborator Antonio Carlos Jobim helped create and popularize bossa nova, a toned-down and romanticized take on Brazilian samba music.
“He could read a newspaper and sound good," Miles Davis once said of Gilberto’s tone.
As much a feeling as a set of musical rules, Gilberto’s aesthetic has resonated in the work of artists including Caetano Veloso, Sade, Gal Costa, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Stereolab, Seu Jorge and pretty much every Brazilian songwriter since 1960. Gilberto’s daughter Bebel has been a guiding force in carrying bossa nova into a new electronic century.
"I owe João Gilberto everything I am today,” fellow Brazilian Veloso has said. “Even if I were something else and not a musician, I would say that I owe him everything."
If it’s true that some cultures are just better at making music, Brazil’s reputation was solidified when Gilberto and Jobim, both then based in Rio de Janeiro, joined forces in the late 1950s. Born 1,200 miles north in the province of Bahia, Gilberto was first drawn to the guitar at age 15.
Preternaturally artistic, he drew the concern of his parents at an early age. One story described the son during a mental evaluation. “Gilberto looked out of the window and noted the ‘wind tearing out the trees' hair … Told by the psychologist that ‘trees don't have hair,’ Gilberto replied, ‘And some people have no poetry in their souls’,” according to a 2003 story in The Times.
In 1958, Gilberto recorded “Chega de Saudade," a mesmerizing Jobim-penned crooner. Never much of a songwriter himself, Gilberto, then in his late 20s, regularly tapped Jobim’s work. That symbiotic musical relationship defined a movement, and along the way, bossa nova integrated itself into the global conversation in much the same way rock ’n’ roll did.
The difference? Where Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley upped the tempo, attitude and energy, Gilberto and Jobim soothed and seduced their way onto dance floors.
When the late Brazilian guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves heard his first Gilberto record, he recalled to The Times that he was astonished, comparing it to the first time he heard trumpeter Charlie Parker.
"It changed everything, for every young musician in Brazil. Once we heard what João was doing with the guitar and the voice, we all had to find a way to figure out how he did it," Castro-Neves told writer Don Heckman.
Rather than building Carmen Miranda-esque samba wildfires of big beat percussion to propel loud, expressive singers, Gilberto lighted a few candles and channeled the breathy tones of Chet Baker, Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra, as well as successful Brazilian singers Lucio Alves and Dick Farney. His success earned him a U.S. deal with Capitol Records in 1960.
Joag, Miucha, and Chico Buarque
For those wanting to listen to one of Gilberto's most pure albums that capture his magic and beauty, try Joao Gilberto (1973) which ripples with amazing rhythms and melodies that transcend time.Listen to Eu vim da Bahia.
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