João Gilberto
Amoroso & Brasil

Who created the tango? We know it was born in Argentina in the 1800s from the meeting of different cultures (Spanish, Italian..), but there is no artist who can be pointed to as the founding father. Perhaps, apart from the Argentines, only Paolo Conte might have wondered which obscure figure, lost in the mists of time, was the first to alter the tempo of a milonga. But who invented rock 'n' roll? Perhaps Bill Haley? Was it a musician coming from boogie-woogie or from country & western? And who was the first cool jazz musician? Miles Davis? Gerry Mulligan? And the first to play free-jazz? Ornette Coleman or Albert Ayler? And Cecil Taylor? Now let's change territory. Was the first punk band really the Ramones? And the Dictators? And the Stooges and, even before them, all those garage bands from the '60s (those, to be clear, from the "Back from the grave" collections)?

However, there is a question we can answer with absolute certainty. Who invented the bossanova? Easy, Joao Gilberto! This extraordinary man in the 1950s walked among others, cast a shadow on the wall like everyone else, but had a rhythm and a sound in his head that no one before then could have imagined and that from the '50s would haunt much of humanity. Miles Davis, after hearing him sing, said that he would be musical even if he read the phone book. Caetano Veloso in his "Verdade tropical" writes that, after "Chega de saudade," Joao Gilberto became his "first reference - as well as the main source of aesthetic enjoyment," I too have long made Joao's music my standard of beauty and obviously, from then on, few things have seemed truly beautiful to me. From Joao Gilberto's rather sparse discography, I would recommend "Amoroso & Brasil" because it encompasses two albums in one.

The first, with the splendid and never intrusive orchestration by Claus Ogerman, sees the Maestro grappling with a heterogeneous and international repertoire, and it is astonishing how Joao becomes the composer of everything he performs. "'S wonderful," after his treatment, can it still be called a song by the Gershwin gentlemen? And Bruno Martino might have felt usurped of the paternity of his "'Estate"'? Of these eight songs, the apex is, in my opinion, represented by the last one. The highly sophisticated interpretation of "'Zingaro" must clearly have been the result of superhuman study, yet - and this is incredible - it seems produced by Our Man with extreme ease. The following "'Brasil," an album where Joao receives his devoted disciples, the tropicalists Veloso, Bethana, and Gil (by chance, like Joao himself, all from Bahia), is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful records of Brazilian music and, consequently, of popular music as a whole. From the initial "'Aquarela do Brasil" to the last "'Cordeiro de Nana" one is literally overwhelmed by beauty.

The meeting between the young revolutionaries of Brazilian music and the already aging genius of bossanova results in an entirely Bahian samba (in which - it must be pointed out - Caetano Veloso's splendid voice steals the scene from everyone, including his sister) because only in Brazil, as James Hillman would say, the puer always reconciles with the senex and, if Orpheus dies, there is immediately another child who takes his place and makes the sun rise.