Bossa Nova
By the late 1950s, musicians were also looking for a new way to express their creativity without abandoning their musical heritage. Bossa nova fulfilled this desire, with its whispering vocals, stuttering guitar, and melancholy atmosphere, conjuring images of firelight and friends stargazing on the beaches of Ipanema (a neighborhood in south Rio de Janeiro), where the music was born. In a few short years, bossa nova, meaning “the new trend,” found audiences throughout Brazil, South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. Its originators, Antônio Carlos Jobim (1927–1994), Vinicius de Moraes (1913–1980), and João Gilberto (b. 1931), set out to create a music rooted in the samba tradition, but with an intimate feel better suited for the area’s rising number of nightclubs than the large big-band halls typical of samba canção and other music of previous decades. Their first recording, Chega de Saudade (1958), often translated as “No More Blues,” remains one of the most popular bossa nova recordings.
