Gilberto, João

João Gilberto

João Gilberto (born 1931) began his musical career inauspiciously. He was dismissed from one of his early musical groups, Garotos da Lua (Boys from the Moon), after failing to show up for performances and rehearsals, then spent the next several years jobless and living with various friends and relatives. He received a second chance, however, and in 1958 helped define the lilting bossa nova musical style with two hit songs, "Bim-Bom" and "Hô-Ba-La-Lá." He went on to record the most popular bossa nova song of all time, "The Girl from Ipanema," with American jazz artist Stan Getz.

Gilberto was born João Gilberto do Prado Pereira de Oliveira on June 10, 1931, in the town of Juázeiro in the northeastern state of Bahia, Brazil. His father was a wealthy merchant who insisted that all of his seven children receive an education. Gilberto defied his father's wishes however, devoting himself to music after receiving a guitar from his godfather at the age of 14. The following year, Gilberto formed a boys' musical group, which performed at social functions and rehearsed under a tamarind tree in the center of town. Gilberto was influenced by American jazz artists like Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington, as well as the light opera of Jeanette MacDonald, and the Brazilian sounds of Orlando Silva, Dorival Caymmi and several popular ensembles, which he heard played over a loudspeaker at one of the local stores.

Joined Musical Group

By the age of 18, Gilberto had moved to Salvador, the capital of Bahia, where he sought to earn a living as a radio performer. While never finding major success as a solo artist on radio, he gained the attention of a member of the vocal group Garotos da Lua (Boys from the Moon), who performed regularly on Radio Tupi in Rio de Janeiro, and he was invited to join the group. Gilberto moved to Rio to replace the group's vocalist, Jonas Silva, whose subdued style displeased the group's artistic director. Ironically, Gilberto would later popularize a whisper-like vocal method highly reminiscent of Silva. Gilberto lasted only one year with Garotos da Lua. After showing up late or altogether missing several performances, the group fired him.

Gilberto spent the next several years jobless and without a permanent home. He relied on the charity of various friends who took him in, and he became known for sleeping all day and playing music all night. He grew depressed, his appearance became unkempt, and he began to use marijuana heavily. His girlfriend at the time, Sylvia Telles (who later also gained fame as a bossa nova singer), left him. Still, Gilberto would consider no other job than playing music.

In 1955, Luis Telles, the leader of the traditional singing group Quitandinha Serenaders, with whom Gilberto had performed for a time, convinced Gilberto to move to Porto Alegre. There, he put the musician up in an expensive hotel and introduced him around town. Soon, Gilberto began playing regular gigs at the Clube da Chave (Key Club) there. The patrons enjoyed him so much, they took up a collection to buy him a new, nylon-stringed guitar, after the musician revealed he did not care for his own steel-stringed instrument. When Gilberto told them he did not like the guitar they bought, they returned it and brought him another.

Developed Signature Style

After Porto Alegre, Gilberto moved to Diamantina, where he lived with his older sister, Dadainha, and her husband. There, Gilberto played music constantly, often practicing in the bathroom where the acoustics were best. It was in this environment that Gilberto developed his signature singing style, a quiet sound absent of vibrato that allowed him to most accurately set the tempo of his vocals to the rhythm of his guitar. In finessing his style, a variation on the traditional Brazilian samba, Gilberto incorporated the influences of several musical masters, both from Brazil and America. "He incorporated into his music the best features of his various idols," noted Daniella Thompson in a 1998 issue of Brazzil, "the natural enunciation of Orlando Silva and Frank Sinatra; the sustained breathing and velvet tones of Dick Farney; the timbres of trombonist Frank Rosolino from Stan Kenton's band; the cool, intimate delivery of the Page Cavanaugh Trio, Joe Mooney, and Jonas Silva; the interplay of the vocal groups - in João's case, using the voice to alter or to complete the guitar's harmony; and the syncopated piano beat of his close friends Job'o Donato and Johnny Alf."

Dadainha and her husband became concerned about Gilberto's mental health, however, and sent him back to Juazeiro to live with his parents. There, he composed his early bossa nova hit, "Bim-Bom," based on the walking rhythms of the women he watched carrying laundry along the Sao Francisco river. Gilberto's parents committed him to a mental institution during his stay with them. He stayed for one week and, upon his release, gave up drug use.

Defined Bossa Nova

Gilberto returned to Rio in 1956, where he renewed his acquaintance with musician and composer Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim. In 1958, Gilberto recorded Jobim's composition "Chega de Saudade." Although Gilberto's intense demands in the studio significantly prolonged the recording session, the song was released on the Odeon label as a single along with "Bim-Bom" on July 10 of that year. While the record was not an immediate hit, it eventually gained widespread popularity and established bossa nova, which in English means "new wave," as an exciting new musical form. Gilberto released three albums in the bossa nova style over the next three years in his home country: Chega de Saudade; O Amor, o Sorriso e a Flor (Love, Smile, and the Flower); and João Gilberto, all on Odeon. He exhibited the same exacting standards for his live performances as for his studio recordings, refusing to play in clubs where audiences talked while he was on stage. "When I sing, I think of clear, open space and I'm going to play sound in it," he told the New York Times' John S. Wilson in 1968. "It is as if I'm writing on a blank piece of paper. It has to be very quiet for me to produce the sounds I'm thinking of. If there are other sounds around, it won't have the same vibrations."

American jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd discovered the music of Gilberto, Jobim and other bossa nova artists during a goodwill jazz tour of Latin America sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Byrd introduced the musical form to American jazz saxophonist Stan Getz, and the two recorded a top-selling bossa nova album together, Jazz Samba The album spent 70 weeks on the American pop charts and hit number one. Gilberto moved to the United States (U.S.) in 1962, and in 1964, he and Getz recorded Getz/Gilberto, which featured the Jobim-penned bossa nova classic, "The Girl from Ipanema," sung by Gilberto's then-wife Astrud Gilberto. Both the album and the song earned Grammy Awards that year, beating out the Beatles' "A Hard Days' Night." Gilberto remained in the U.S. until 1980, with the exception of a two-year stay in Mexico. During his time in the U.S. and Mexico, he released only a handful of LPs, including the live album Getz/Gilberto II (1966), Joao Gilberto en México (1970), João Gilberto (1973), The Best of Two Worlds (1976), and Amoroso (1977). The Best of Two Worlds featured Getz and Gilberto's second wife Miùcha, the mother of Bebel Gilberto, herself a successful bossa nova singer.

Of his popularity in the U.S., Gilberto told Robert Palmer of the New York Times in 1985, "For a long time, the U.S. didn't really need anything from the rest of the world except for raw materials. Now it's different; there have been many, many changes. The growing popularity of Japanese cars here, and a growing tendency for America's Latin and black minorities to have more impact on the mainstream, are part of this same process. This is not as selfish a society as it was even a decade ago. More people are willing to listen to something different."

Returned to Brazil

Gilberto returned to Brazil, where he came to be known as O Mito (the legend) and released several more albums, including João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Olieira (1980); Brasil with Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Maria Bethânia (1981); Live in Montreux (1987); Joao (1991); Eu Sei Que Vou Te Amar (I Know I'm Going to Love You, 1995); and Joao Voz e Violao (2000). In the mid-1980s, he also experimented with reggae rhythms, expressed most vividly on his 1985 release Raça Humana. "Of course, when we try to play it, we can't get rid of the fact that we are Brazilians," he told the New York Times' Palmer in 1985. "But for many years, Brazilian musicians have been developing an attitude of wanting to be able to play anything, from any part of the world, especially if it has anything to do with black music. We can identify with jazz, rhythm-and-blues, Cuban and other Caribbean music. We pick up on anything we feel touched by."

Gilberto continues to perform, but only on occasion. He appeared at the JVC Jazz Festival at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1998 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first bossa nova single, and embarked on a U.S. tour in 2003, although it is rumored he left the stage at the Hollywood Bowl due to the noise of the crickets. "One didn't need to understand Portuguese to feel the sadness, longing and job of these songs, the sound of Gilberto's gentle voice was enough," the San Francisco Chronicle 's Jesse Hamlin observed of Gilberto's stage presence in 1998. In the same article, Hamlin underscored Gilberto's profound musical influence. "Along with the late Antonio Carlos Jobim and others, he distilled the raucous energy and rhythms of traditional samba into a more intimate, introspective style that drew on cool jazz and European harmony. Gilberto became the foremost interpreter of the alluring new music whose freshness and subtlety had a major impact on jazz and pop music worldwide."

Books

Contemporary Hispanic Biography, Vol. 2, Gale Group, 2002.

Contemporary Musicians, Vol. 33, Gale Group, 2002.

Periodicals

Brazzil, May 31, 1998.

Chicago Sun-Times, July 31, 2003.

New York Times, October 15, 1968; May 29, 1985.

San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 1998.

Online

"Joao Gilberto," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (January 25, 2005).