João Gilberto
Live at Umbria Jazz

THE REVIEW

May 2004. I walk through a city I don't know, an Andalusian city called Málaga. I arrived here after a too long flight, among unfamiliar faces of business class travelers and the forced smiles of a stewardess whose profession is all about kindness. "We are over Barcelona," says a voice from the loudspeaker. I look down and see only clouds. I can't listen to music, yet it's as if I do.

I have this album by João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira spinning in my head. And the "cover" of "Málaga" that haunts me, looping in my brain. An old song by Fred Bongusto. That João Gilberto shapes with his voice, his guitar, his marvelous "violão" that changed the history of Brazilian music. An ecstatic experience, listening to João and his "cold-like" voice unwind each song into the slow, melancholic appeal of bossa nova. A "new wave" that washes onto your heart and leaves you, enclosed like in a shell, all its poetry. All its ocean of melancholy. "My love was born in Málaga", João repeats in this album. I've arrived, finally, in this Málaga. Amidst the suitcase chaos, I glimpse her. There she is. The "morena boa que me faz penar", as João sings, the splendid brunette who makes me suffer. She's here for her thesis. But I don't care at all why she's here. I care, very much, that I'm here with her. And I feel my heart dancing in my throat in that embrace, the heart dancing happily like the notes of a very old samba, "Isto Aqui o Que É?", which opens this splendid concert. "In that house with the old patio how many sweet things I whispered to you..." repeats João. And now I have the "morena boa" here by my side, on this promenade of palm trees and gray sand in a May already blazing with "Estate". That "Estate" by Bruno Martino that João completely reimagines here, painting it with the chords of his bossa nova: "Summer... You are warm like the kiss I lost... You are full of a love that has passed..."

Too much light on this Costa del Sol. Too much, to get drunk on. And the evening is tinged with coolness as the stars light up and burn without ever consuming. The evening with the notes of "Corcovado". The evening with the notes of "Garota di Ipanema", and only her in the heart and on the lips. There is nothing in this concert except João Gilberto and his guitar. And the magic they know how to create together. In the end, João and his guitar are like a man and a woman. They are nothing on their own. But they can be everything, with the spark of love to cement them. With the spark of poetry. Which you might find in small things, in the "saudade" of not being at home, in your duckling shyness that teeters on its own fragile emotions: "O pato, vinha cantando alegramente quen quen...". "Chega de Saudade". Enough with this exhausting, tender melancholy.

The plane leaves. It's all already a memory. I walk alone on the road. Full of nada. The concert is over, the lights go out. But the music remains, like love and its soft, eternal throb. I might be out of fashion, who knows. I might also be "desafinado." But "no peito dos desafinados tambem bate um coração". And João Gilberto, in this concert, makes this heart swell and warm. A must-have.