Samba #1

I heard my first samba in 1966.

It was in a cinema on East 34^th Street in New York, and the film in which it appeared was Claude Lelouche’s Un Homme et Une Femme (A Man and a Woman).

Never heard of it?

Then you’re probably under fifty.

Because it was a movie that no one of my generation (or, at least, no one without a heart of stone) is likely to forget.

Sentimental, romantic and lovely.

Have a look at the scene in which the samba appears:

Six years later, I arrived in Brazil. And learned that it had been composed by Baden Powell to lyrics created by Vinicius de Morães, the poet who wrote the words to The Girl from Ipanema.

The English version goes like this:

The original title is Samba de Benção, sometimes called Samba Saravah. Here’s Vinicius himself, singing it at a live performance in Mar del Plata, Argentina (hence the introduction in Spanish) several years before his death.

This is a short post, because I’m off to Helsinki to have a good time with my Finnish publisher and to launch Haudatut muukalaiset. (The Finnish version of Buried Strangers.)

Next week, more on the samba as an art form.

Leighton – Monday

The Girl From Ipanema

You've probably heard the music.

But did you know that there really was a girl from Ipanema?

Her name was Hêlo Pinto and, in 1962, she was a statuesque brunette living on Montenegro Street in the fashionable Ipanema district of Rio de Janeiro.

There was, and still is, a drinking establishment on a corner of that same street, situated about halfway between her home and beach.

Back then, it was called the Bar Veloso.

Tom Jobim was one of the regulars. He was a musician, fond of whiskey.

Vinicius de Morães. another regular, was a diplomat, playwright and poet - even fonder of whiskey. (He once called the stuff "man's best friend - a dog in a bottle".)

Tom and Vinicius used to hole up in the Veloso to drink the afternoons away. Hêlo, the heartthrob of the neighborhood, often passed-by on her way to the beach The composer and the poet, struck by her beauty, wrote a song about her, A Garota de Ipanema. It became an instant hit, first in Brazil and then around the world. 

Vinicius, at the time, was already famous. He'd written the play that gave rise to the film Black Orpheus (Oscar Winner; Best Foreign Film of 1959).

He died in 1980 at the age of 66. The street where the Bar Veloso stood has been renamed in his honor.

Tom went on to compose many jazz standards recorded by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. He died in 1994 at the age of 67.

Rio's International Airport is named after him.

Hêlo, at 61, now Hêlo Pinheiro, is very much alive.

She's dyed her hair blonde and has a lovely daughter.

And the Bar Veloso is now named after the song that made it famous. It's now called A Garota de Ipanema.  If you click on the image to enlarge it, you'll be able to see the name above the blue roof.

 

On the walls you'll find a number of Vinicius's poems. Here are two appropriate lines from one of them:

"...the love I had was not immortal

But it was infinite - while it lasted."

Leighton - Monday