Get to Know a Brazilian: Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim

Antonio Carlos Jobim (also commonly known by his nickname “Tom”) isn’t exactly an unknown in the States, given his centrality to the establishment of Bossa Nova. Still, as this past Friday would have been his 81st birthday, he seems an appropriate guy to talk about.

Jobim was born in the neighborhood of Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro in 1927, and had planned on being an architect before he became a musician in his 20s. Well versed in the jazz music that he heard from the United States, Jobim tried to bring the sound of American jazz together with Brazilian samba, African rhythms, and lush orchestrations, leading to the central components of what became known as Bossa Nova. By the 1950s, Jobim was already gaining fame as a composer in Brazil after getting a great opportunity when he co-scored the play Black Orpheus (later made into a film) with Vinícius de Moraes.

Jobim’s international big break came in 1962 when the (then) also-unknown João Gilbert sang Jobim’s “Desafinado,” both men became global successes. Bossa Nova was particularly well received in the U.S. as artists such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd made Jobim’s pieces household tunes, leading to Jobim’s coming to be known as “the Gershwin of Brazil.” Soon, many less-accomplished jazz artists were offering their own rehashes of “Desafinado” or “The Girl from Ipanema.” It is almost impossible to find a well-known Brazilian artist (and many lesser-known singers) who haven’t tried to do their own Bossa Nova albums, some (Nara Leão) far more successful than others (Caetano Veloso). Likewise, in Europe and in the United States, it was almost impossible to escape some cultural reference to Jobim (indeed, in one Monty Python’s Flying Circus episode, Graham Chapman and John Cleese, dressed as British working-class housewives, start humming “The Girl from Ipanema”). By the mid-1960s, the songs had become overplayed and, as is too often the case, bossa nova was overplayed and cheapened. Musically, the jazz scene was fundamentally shifting by this time, and it may be that, in the socially divided atmosphere that saw the rise of rock’n’roll, Vietnam, and the Civil Rights, there wasn’t as much interest or room for the simple beauty of bossa nova. Although bossa nova’s popularity lived on in Brazil, coming and going up to the present, in the northern hemisphere, it did not fare as well. After the mid-1960s, it fell out of favor in the U.S. and Europe, coming to be equated in latter years with retirees living in Florida or Muzak soundtracks.

None of this ever stopped Jobim, though. Throughout the 1970s he worked on refining and changing his sound in small but significant steps. On Elis & Tom, he joined with one of Brazil’s most heartbreaking singers, Elis Regina, putting his music and lyrics with her mournful, soft voice. The sound didn’t change much, but the sadness he always expressed in his lyrics seemed to be getting even more personal and more concentrated. After that album, Jobim even began to alienate his Brazilian fans, deciding to try new instruments, sound, and structures on the albums Matita Pere and Urubu, the latter of which starts off with the berimbau, a Brazilian (but not at all bossa nova) instrument made of one string and used to keep rhythm in capoeira contests. Jobim’s music lost much of the “traditional” bossa nova sound on these albums while simultaneously expanding its “Brazilianness” and maintaining the soft, haunting, heartbreaking emotion Jobim had always used. Because he wasn’t making “The Girl From Ipanema II,” these albums didn’t sell the way his old material had in Brazil or in the international community, and Jobim’s output slowed down without ever stopping. This is a shame, because Matita Pere and especially Urubu are two remarkable and wonderful records, floating in and out sonically but with an emotional intensity that is lacking in most other bossa nova.

For whatever reason, his music again became popular in the international community in the mid- to late-1980s, as his music once again filled the living rooms of young and middle-aged bourgeois homes as yuppies tried to show how “cultured” they were, which again was a shame, because the music was far better than many of its “fans” probably realized. Still, the revival was enough that Jobim started hitting the road to tour, and playing and recording music (live and in the studio) both in Brazil and the U.S. It was on one such tour, in 1994, that Jobim died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 67.
Nowadays, Jobim’s music is really only known in the states by people who may have heard “Girl from Ipanema” or in the above-55-years-old demographic. The cheap commercialization of his early production still abounds (just go to your local Borders and take a gander at the jazz section). All of this is an enormous shame, because, despite its apparent simplicity, Jobim’s music revealed subtle complexities in the versions he himself recorded, with strings quietly swelling to add depth, subtle changes in tone and timber, and, later in his career, increasing instrumental experimentation. His bossa nova material is still top notch – just listen to the albums Wave or Stone Flowers, both with just instrumental songs, and the true beauty of bossa nova becomes crystal clear. It’s not hard to see why so many artists both thought they could also do that and failed so miserably.

Get to Know a Brazilian: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, generally known simply as "Machado de Assis," is considered by many to be Brazil's greatest novelist. He is the standard to which all other Brazilian authors are compared in one way or another, and his cultural influence in Brazil has only grown since his death 100 years ago this September.

Born to a mulatto descendant of slaves and a Portuguese woman in 1839 in Rio de Janeiro, Machado de Assis had humble origins. Little is known about his early years besides a few skeletal facts; he lost both his mother and sister at a young age (a fact which may have influenced the pessimistic tone of his later works). Many believe he was self-educated, even in his mastery of both French and English. He got his start writing for newspapers, but upon gaining a public position at the Ministry of Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Works in Rio de Janeiro in 1873, he was able to devote his time to writing.

Despite his fame in short stories and novels, Machado de Assis's first published book, Crisálidas, was a collection of poems, released in 1864. After his marriage in 1869, he began publishing his first novels, including Helena and Contos Fluminenses. His writing style in the 1870s was marked by romanticist tones. However, with the publication of one of his most famous books, Brás Cubas, in 1881, his style shifted heavily. Writing in a realistic style, Machado de Assis's books increasingly employed humor that dulled what was an increasingly pessimism towards human beings. His most famous works came from this phase of his writing, including Brás Cubas, Quincas Borba, Dom Casmurro, and Memorial de Aires, a book that reflected on death (driven in part by the death of his wife in 1904) and was published in 1908, the year of his own death. He also frequently used the narration to talk directly to the reader, and literary scholars consider him one of the first authors not just in Brazil, but in the entire world, to take this approach, creating a narrative technique that would come to have a major role in the development of the "stream-of-consciousness" narrative that exploded in the twentieth century. Machado Assis's poems are not as famous as his novels and short stories, and indeed, are surprisingly different. Where the latter were concise, eloquent, and moving, the former were based more on vernacular, often bordering on vulgar. While respected, Machado de Assis's poetry hasn't received the same level of admiration and attention as his fiction.

Machado de Assis's cultural contributions do not stop with his own literary output. Being fluent in English, he translated many of Shakespeare's works to Portuguese. Additionally, he was one of the founding members of the Academia Brasileira de Letras, and was its president from its founding in 1897 to 1908. The Academia, still existent today, honors 40 Brazilian writers, selected by the Academy and Brazil's population itself, with a new member being elected when an old member dies. The existence of the Academia has helped to keep Brazil's literary tradition and development in the forefront of Brazil's culture.

Upon his death in 1908, his works hadn't gained much in the way of international renown, or even international familiarity. Today, however, Machado de Assis is widely recognized in Brazil and around the world as one of the greatest authors ever. Harold Bloom included him on his list of 100 geniuses of literature and even called him the "supreme black literary artist to date" in Genius.

However, while he is equally admired in Brazil (all Brazilians know at least some of his work, as he is required reading in schools and his works have been turned into movies, and the area of Rio de Janeiro where he lived is now called "Largo do Machado" in his honor), the race issue is far murkier in Brazil. Despite being an obvious Afro-descendant (even the sepia-toned photos of his time demonstrate this), his race is almost never mentioned in Brazil, and oftentimes the photos of him are even "lightened". When his race is brought up, he is referred to as "pardo," or brown, a phrase which is based as much in financial and cultural terms as race (though it is worth mentioning that he would never be considered "black" in Brazil, where such a term is reserved only for the poorest and darkest people unlike in the United States, where the "one-drop" theory makes him black to Bloom and all who are familiar with him).

Despite this glossing over of the race issue (acknowledging that the father of modern Brazilian literature is even "brown" would butt up against many Brazilians' racial conceptions), he is widely respected throughout the world, with figures as diverse as Woody Allen and Carlos Fuentes openly acknowledging his influence on their works. His literary output is well worth of its canonization, and for any interested in reading his works, they are easy to find, and many of them have been translated into English, including Brás Cubas, Memórias de Aires, Quincas Borba (as Philosopher or Dog?), Dom Casmurro, and numerous collections of short stories. While I have yet to read any of the novels (one of my 2008 resolutions is to read them in Portuguese), his short stories are some of the finest I've ever read, giving a great introduction to his work and his writing style, and are (in my opinion) as good a place as any to start.

Get to Know a Brazilian: Pedro Álvares Cabral

The first entry in "Get to Know a Brazilian" isn't even Brazilian, but given that Pedro Álvares Cabral is credited with heading the first European mission to encounter Brazil, he seems as appropriate place as any to start.

Born in the mid-1460s, Cabral was the son of the governor of the Portuguese regions of Beira and Belmonte in central Portugal, and allegedly a descendant of the first king of Portugal, Afonso I, on his mother's side. There doesn't seem to be much known about Cabral's early years, but it is clear that he at some point became able enough a seaman that Portugal's King Manoel I considered him an appropriate choice to continue the work of Vasco de Gama, the Portuguese navigator who had finally successfully sailed around Africa and reached India (Bartolomeu had previously sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, but de Gama was the first to reach India in this fashion).

As was common at the time, Cabral's mission for the king was to "spread Christianity" and establish strong commercial connections in India, with a liberal use of arms being encouraged at the slightest sign of contestation of the King's plan. With his fleet of 13 ships, Cabral set sail from Portugal in March of 1500. Things did not fully go as planned, however, and whether it was due to incompetency or to the weather, Cabral and his men ended up being blown off course, taking a much more southwesterly direction than they had anticipated. On 22 April 1500, an anonymous sailor spotted land, and on the 23 of April, Pedro Cabral set foot on what he thought was an island but was in fact the coast of Brazil, near what is now Porto Seguro, in the southern panhandle of the state of Bahia. Probably hoping the land was east of the line of the Treaty of Tordesillas (which, in 1494, by the hand of Pope Alexander VI, divided the Americas on the East-West axis between the Portuguese and the Spanish, with little concern for the inhabitants of the lands), Cabral, in true "discoverer" fashion, planted a cross, held a religious service, and declared the land to be the domain of the King of Portugal.

After a little more than a week, Cabral set sail for his original intended point of arrival, India, on a trip that was ultimately rather disastrous (only 4 of his 13 ships made it back to Portugal). He never set foot in Brazil again, and died around 1520, relatively poor and forgotten, a fate that may not have been undeserving for somebody who unwittingly took the first step in what would lead to economic colonization that invariably relied upon the exploitation and death of indigenous peoples and, later, African-imported slave-labor . Brazil, too, would be relatively forgotten by the Portuguese crown, which nominally held control for the next 50 years through a series of captaincies that offered little of the economic returns Spain was reaping from New Spain and Peru. By 1550, Brazil displayed none of the economic, geopolitical, or continental power it would one day come to assume (occupying nearly 2/3 of the South American continent by itself). No doubt, nobody could have possibly conceived the enormity of Cabral's unintentional arrival in 1500 would have over the next 500+ years.

Introducing: "Get to Know a Brazilian"

I've been wanting to do this for a long time, but I'm finally getting around to doing my own "series" on the blog (similar to Erik's "Forgotten Americans"). Every week, I'll examine somebody different from Brazil's history, from the colonial period to the present day. (And I only exclude the pre-colonial period due to the fact that, unlike in Mexico and Peru, we don't really have any chronicles of pre-Contact figures, only indigenous groups in broad swaths). These short pieces will look at figures who are famous and relatively unknown, and whose lives had/have an important impact on the political, social, economic, and/or cultural in Brazil. There will be no chronological order - I'll jump around plenty, trying to emphasize different types of people and different aspects of Brazilian history and culture from week to week. I hope to due this every Monday (though dissertation requirements may lead to some missed weeks). Hopefully, this will give people the chance to learn some more about Brazil and its people online from somebody who occasionally knows what he's talking about, and if it doesn't, well, it will be a fun little form of self-importance for me.