April 12, 2021

Bossa Nova – Jazz from Latin America

Mention Bossa Nova and most people probably think first of Lisa Ono, or of a leisurely weekend afternoon in a café. Some classify it as a branch of jazz, but although it is closely tied to the development of jazz, it does not come from New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, and carries no American blood at all – it is a distinct jazz from Latin America: Bossa Nova.

Bossa Nova is Portuguese, and means literally 'new rhythm'. The history of the style can be traced back to the late 1950s, and it blends samba, mambo and salsa. Authentic bossa nova originated as a native music of Brazil and, after reaching North America, was taken up widely by the jazz world and carried to a global audience, shaping the development of jazz. Bossa Nova inherits from samba-canção its approach to subject matter (mostly a lover, sometimes a lost relationship) and its veiled melancholy, yet it discards the dense percussion structures of traditional Brazilian music and emerges from it as a distinct form – supple, languid and soft.

Mention Bossa Nova and the 'fathers' of the style must come up: Joao Gilberto and Tom Jobim, together with the lyricist Vinicius De Moraes. “The Girl from Ipanema”, something of a Bossa Nova anthem, also has an amusing origin story. Vinicius De Moraes and Tom Jobim were at the open-air Veloso bar near Ipanema when they saw a beautiful girl walk past, and wrote the song on the spot. From its beginnings, then, Bossa Nova already carried a certain feeling – and later, in the 1960s, the American jazz musician Stan Getz, influenced by Joao Gilberto and Tom Jobim, arranged and re-recorded “The Girl from Ipanema” with the two of them, bringing Bossa Nova to North America. The rest is history.
To this day the free spirit of Bossa Nova lives on in different creative works, and many musicians blend it with jazz to produce varied results. Here, let us listen to a few different Bossa Nova pieces:

The Girl from Ipanema – Astrud Gilberto, João Gilberto and Stan Getz