This is a story of my youth. More precisely, a story about what I remember of my youth from the limited times I visited Brazil - and how a song (no, several songs) transformed my opinions about the family and country I left behind.
My earliest recollections are, by curiosity and contradiction, both clear and vague: of seeing myself as a toddler, running wildly about our home in São Paulo; of bumping my eyebrow onto the sharp edge of a dining-room table and going to the doctor immediately afterwards to get it stitched up; of badly scraping my knee outside a street in the South Bronx, along with comparable mishaps. Depending on who was recounting the story, the accidents were either my fault or the fault of someone else. Blame for their occurrences, I soon surmised, was swiftly assigned but fairly distributed.
Some of these memories get tangled up with the rare times my parents and brother returned to São Paulo and its surroundings. Over the years, it has become practically impossible for me to differentiate between one event I experienced at age five and similar events that took place a few years later. Anyone forced to recall their youthful wanderings, either in the writing of one's memoirs or through therapy and analysis, will have faced a similar predicament: invariably, specific incidents and personalities are remembered with clarity and intent; while others (dates, times, and places), not so much.
With the above caveats in mind, my first exposure to Brazilian popular culture occurred on or about the year 1965, a pivotal point for music in Brazil and for my growing awareness of a Brazilian identity inside this eleven-year-old brain. It was the same year that bossa nova became a worldwide sensation. But in the country itself, a onda (that is, "the wave") had long since receded. You could say it was waving a firm "goodbye" to all that had come before. Yet, I remained oblivious.
By the time that our family had set foot again in "Sampa" (in the winter of 1965), the heat that bossa nova had produced around the pop-music world had substantially abated. New styles began to emerge by dint of the latest advances. The prevalence of television and, along with it, the phenomenon of mass viewership took hold of Brazilian audiences like nothing else before it. Not inconsequentially, the military had staged a government takeover the year before, in April 1964, which forever altered Brazil's musical landscape - for better or for worse.
Strangely enough, bossa nova had completely bypassed my Brazilian-born parents, who, by their having moved to the South Central Bronx, remained remarkably uninformed as to the artistry and output that had circumnavigated the globe. In the interval between the year they left their homeland (1959) and the time that we, as a family of four, made our first return trip to the big city (1965), bossa nova had been replaced by popular song contests.
To get right down to it, bossa nova espoused a greater degree of sophistication, subtlety, and nuance than what had come before (i.e., choro and samba). The artists who composed the music and lyrics, and then performed those same numbers, which abounded in poetic imagery and reflective ruminations, came out of an entirely separate reality distinct from that of the majority of Brazilians. The sparseness of the orchestration (guitar, voice, drums, piano) belied the complexity of its arrangements. Too, the imaginative use of language and instrumentation raised the intellectual level of both performers and listeners to undreamed-of heights.
Despite some awareness on my part, my limited knowledge of Portuguese prevented me from fully absorbing and appreciating the genre. Naturally, I was much too young, therefore sadly deficient in the cognitive skills necessary to wrap my arms around bossa nova's form. Despite this disparity and my lack of cultural refinement, a treasure trove of memorabilia laid before me: everything from MPB, bubble-gum music, iê-iê-iê, and Brazilian rock-'n'-roll to classically derived constructs. These were much easier to absorb, due to their utter simplicity and absence of erudition. But bossa nova? Not a chance, at least not yet. Creatively speaking, the country had taken two steps forward, one step back.
One couldn't fault my parents for not having "kept up" with the latest trends. They had more pressing matters to concern themselves with - namely, making a life for us in New York City, and raising and caring for two small boys in a strange, bewildering land with its own distinct and immensely diversified culture.
As I mentioned, we immigrated to the U.S. in September 1959. Although my mother and her boys remained at home in the Bronx, my father had gone back to Brazil every other year up through 1965, and then some. Those excursions had something to do with his attending the annual Carnival pageant (in Portuguese, pular Carnaval). At the time, I had no comprehension of what that actually entailed. Despite his month-long absences, dad always managed to bring back plenty of treats, souvenirs, and assorted keepsakes, provided, for the most part, by his and my mother's respective families.
Family. A word, a term, a concept this soon-to-be-eleven year old was vaguely familiar with. The only "family" I knew was my younger brother Anibal, my father Annibal Sr., my mother Lourdes, her younger sister Tia Deolinda, her husband Tio Daniel, and my two older cousins Daniel Jr. and Dario. A year or more before we made our trip, another of my mom's charming sisters, Tia Iracema, had spent a year living with us. In fact, she had immigrated to the U.S. in 1963, but returned to the country in order to care for her father Francisco, or "Grampa Chico" as we called him. He had been struck at age sixty-five with throat cancer.
Gather 'Round the Television Set, BoysMuch of the bounty dad had brought back from these trips was comprised of phonograph records, usually of the compacto duplo variety. These handy little items, known in the U.S. as EP's (or "Extended Play"), had the capacity for two songs per side, for a total of four numbers in all. A healthy smattering of long-playing records, Brazilian magazines ( Manchete, Veja, Marie Claire, etc.), O Guia da Televisão ("TV Guide"), tasty and highly edible sweets, and a half-dozen or so children's books comprised what remained of the lucre.
To me, the unfamiliar names of these Brazilian artists and entertainers, to be found among this assortment of souvenirs, were foreign-sounding and nearly unpronounceable. These were difficult enough for adults, but you can imagine how challenging it was for us kids! To compensate, I used what nascent abilities I possessed of the Portuguese language to try my hand at reading the Brazilian versions of Walt Disney comics: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and Scrooge McDuck.
To pass the time, I took it upon myself to draw these and other cartoon characters (Bugs Bunny, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, The Flintstones) on makeshift writing pads; when those were unavailable, my mother would tear up brown-paper shopping bags for me to scribble on. I even tried jotting down my impressions of these characters in feeble-sounding Portuguese. Little did I know that my childish efforts at words and images would come in handy decades after the fact. On the days when I didn't feel like drawing, I would listen attentively to the music.
One good thing came out from all of these activities: the more songs I heard, the more I liked and learned from them. It never occurred to me that Brazil harbored such a wealth of music programs to accompany what I encountered in our makeshift record collection. Since I had grown up outside the country, I wasn't privy to what the native population had been exposed to on an ongoing basis. To have noticed these melodies at the time this form of music was becoming more widely accepted and circulated proved a timely fluke.
One program that I heard mentioned was the weekly Festival de Música Popular. My boyish earbuds were primed for absorbing these fantastic new sounds. Hearing the likes of Jair Rodrigues, Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, Roberto Carlos, Erasmo Carlos, Wanderléa, Agnaldo Rayol, Dalva de Oliveira, Nana Caymmi, Gilberto Gil, Agnaldo Timóteo, Elis Regina, and so many others shaped my appreciation for Brazilian music and song. The weird thing about all this was that I had never seen this music program while I visited Brazil, nor had I seen these artists perform in any capacity, that is to say, until much later in life. I only learned about them from hearing my relatives discuss the merits of this or that singer who appeared on this or that TV show.
Speaking of which, the show Jovem Guarda on the newly christened TV Record had one of the highest national ratings (known as IBOPE) of any of these programs. Another was O Fino da Bossa! ("The Best of Bossa!"). Not knowing anything about ratings or programming, I became frustrated with my relatives' efforts to initiate me into the electronic medium. For instance, I heard so much talk about a fellow named Jair Rodrigues and his smash song hit, "Deixe isso pra lá" (Alberto Paz, Edson Menezes), that in my infantile mind I honestly believed that I had seen Jairzinho on Brazilian television.
Not at all! What typically transpired was that every time I found myself in someone else's house or apartment, I would ask the occupants about "that guy Jairzinho." Their response would be, "Oh, you should've been here last night when he was on TV," or "Come by next weekend, you are sure to see him then." Seeing my disappointment, they would compensate by describing, in minute detail, Jairizinho's over-and-under hand movements, which became his signature gesture; topped off with that broad, toothy grin, a smile that enveloped the beaming crowd but that, to me, seemed to emulate a dark-skinned version of Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat. Despite their kind offers to come over (usually, on the weekends), our time with the relatives was limited. Alas, I never got to see Jairzinho perform, no matter how many people I talked to or visited.
That same, frustrating response followed another popular singer, the song idol Roberto Carlos Braga. Although he hadn't yet become brega, a variant on his official surname and what, in Portuguese, meant "tacky," Roberto Carlos was the nearest thing to a world-renowned pop star that Brazil had at its disposal (outside of soccer sensation Pelé). Still, there was one song of Roberto's that, for me, stuck out from the rest of the mawkish crowd of ballads and pseudo-teenybopper tunes. And that was the number, "Quero que vá tudo pro inferno" ("Let It All Go to Hell").
I first heard this song in New York, possibly a year or so after we returned from our trip. Oddly (well, maybe not so oddly), I became fixated on the title - especially the "Hell" part, which, if you were fortunate enough to have grown up in polite society, or in a somewhat religious environment, was strictly verboten (you'd REALLY burn in Hell if you dared to speak the "F "bomb in public!). Mesmerized by that word inferno, I listened carefully to the lyrics over and over again, not understanding the words or the sentiments being expressed, yet all the time wondering to myself how the "Hell" Roberto got away with saying this forbidden term:
De que vale o céu azul e o sol sempre a brilharSe você não vem e eu estou a lhe esperar
Só tenho você, no meu pensamento
E a sua ausência, é todo meu tormento
Quero que você, me aqueça neste inverno
E que tudo mais vá pro inferno
(Copyright © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC)
What is the blue sky worth or the ever-shining sun
If I'm left pining for you to be here by my side?
All I have is you, you are always in my thoughts
But your absence is a constant torment
All I want is you, to warm me through this winter
And that it all goes to hell
(English translation by the author)
What did I expect, some Shakespearean sonnet? Witty poeticisms analogous to Baudelaire? This was nothing more than easy-listening music, a love poem pure and simple. Years later, I read that Roberto had written these verses to Magda Fonseca, his girlfriend at the time, who had gone to the U.S. to study English. His songwriting partner, Erasmo Carlos (né Erasmo Esteves), helped him out with the lyrics. The orchestration was of its time and included a bombastic Hammond organ solo spiked with a Beach Boys-like surf-rock beat. The end result: Twenty-four-year-old Roberto's honest expression of longing (caused by Magda's absence) and his frustration with conditions in military-run Brazil spilled over into youthful rebelliousness.
Hell, I was all of eleven years old. What did I know of youthful rebelliousness? I knew nothing of the military's overthrow of the Brazilian government, or that the CIA had been behind the power grab, or that barely three years later (in 1968) the suppression of dissidents would only make things worse for the populace, leading to the expulsion of songwriters and others associated with the genre of Tropicália and such. Roberto Carlos' "pure and simple" love poem, a monster triumph upon its release, signaled both the beginning and the end of rebellion.
What I, myself, took away from our visit was not rebellion but a sense of togetherness. For the first time in my young life, I experienced a closeness to my Brazilian family members I never knew existed: from aunts and uncles I had not grown up with, from grandparents and cousins I had hardly known, and from friends and acquaintances I had never met. I came away with the sense that they all had fun just by being together and, you'll pardon the cliché, "in the moment." Their openness to me and to my brother was warmly received and, to be honest, completely unanticipated.
Having spent several extremely cold winters and blisteringly hot summers in the Big Apple, the balmy sun-filled São Paulo skies seemed to reflect back at me in the sunniness of the dispositions I met during our month-long stay. I felt accepted, loved, and listened to, for once, by those inside and outside the family circle - feelings that were roughly alien to me for the first six years of our residence in the Bronx.
Another six years would pass before I was able to recapture those feelings.
(End of Part One)
To be continued....
Copyright © 2020 by Josmar F. Lopes
