BOSSA NOVA MOVIE

“The Girl from Ipanema” in particular became a lounge music standard in its own right, piped into nearly every elevator movie scene as bland filler muzak in what’s now become an inescapable Hollywood trope, as Brazilian historian Bryan McCann points out in his 33⅓ book on the subject.īut bossa nova’s roots run deeper than “The Girl from Ipanema” alone, and the so-called “new fashion” represents a broad expanse of diverse artists, releases, and styles. Even in the States, the style’s trendiness always had a limited lifespan, flooding jazz clubs with a delicate, danceable energy that could never escape being pigeonholed as a fad.

Bossa nova soon became a relic of a simpler time when celebrating Afro-Brazilian cultural identity didn’t mean cheering on military violence. The prospect of celebrating Brazil’s contributions to popular culture took on darker undertones in the advent of a military dictatorship, and by 1964-the same year as “The Girl from Ipanema’s” breakthrough success internationally-the genre entered a period of sharp decline domestically, as McGowan and Pessanha also point out. Politicians were arrested, outspoken artists, activists, and academics were tortured, and-as Chris McGowan and Ricardo Pessanha note in their landmark history of Brazilian popular music-hundreds of dissenters were killed in the violent coup. The version of bossa nova exported to North America was never the same as its Brazilian counterpart, and many of the genre’s greatest innovators grew frustrated with the singular success of “The Girl from Ipanema.” While Americans were soundtracking cocktail parties with breezy lounge music, Brazil faced one of the bloodiest political interventions in its history as a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup swept through the country. Yet not everyone was happy with bossa nova’s international success. The LP earned them the 1964 Grammy Award for Album of the Year, got them invited to perform at Carnegie Hall, and spent a record 96 weeks on the Billboard albums chart. The single went on to appear on Getz/Gilberto, a collaborative album from the group which to this day remains among the best-selling jazz albums of all-time. Tom) Jobim, and Gilberto’s then-wife Astrud-into a new level of celebrity unprecedented for a South American act. 5 on the Billboard singles chart way back in 1964, the song helped revive Getz’s career and launch his collaborators-João Gilberto, Antônio Carlos (a.k.a. Perhaps the biggest hit of the era, “The Girl from Ipanema” has become an inescapable part of the American songbook-jazz, pop, or otherwise.