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Rating: Brazil, land of hope
Italy, land of resignation
Brazil, land of whispers
Italy, land of echoes
Brazil, land of drums
Italy, land of bells.
Fast Forward #1 – Roots.
Europe was in the midst of World War II, the markets paralyzed. They had to expand their dominions to nearer lands, the “dream factory” couldn’t be halted. So Mickey Mouse lands in Latin America. Here come José (Zé) Carioca, the “Tico-Tico”, the “Aquarela do Brasil”, cachaça, Carnival. “Saludos amigos” (!): new sounds, rhythms, puffs, colors, dashes, toucans, skins, coconuts, waves. New tropical mirages revealed themselves. It was their turn in the world.
Politics of quiet living, neighbor from Rio de Janeiro to Los Angeles, straight to Walt Disney Studios, Brazilian vice-consul, Marcus Vinícius da Cruz de Mello Moraes.
Vinícius de Moraes, Vinà, or poetinha.
Vinícius de Moraes is many, many things: diplomat, poet, playwright, singer, musician, composer, but above all else a romantic, one who loves deeply, apaixonado, with life, alcohol, and women. Especially women: nine marriages, barely hidden harems, parties and rivers of whisky in his seaside house. “De nada”, a bon vivant for sure, but unceasingly mindful of the joys and pains life gave him—and he responded with his poems, songs, and prayers. Overflowing with emotion and a desperate restlessness for solitude, somewhere his precipices of passion had to find release.
Despite running away from a Jesuit boarding school at only sixteen, his strict Catholic upbringing would deeply mark him throughout his life, even in contrast with his bohemian freedom and later adherence to Candomblé. A mystical and religious existence, servant to passions and encounters, drawn in endless counterpoints; tie off, he’d frequent and write about the prostitutes of Lapa, dance in the cabarets, count sambistas among his friends. In one of the many acts of his life, as a film lover—as well as a writer—he filmed the very reality he lived in, caring for and questioning the daily abyss of people, bridging cultured and popular (between samba and batucada), forging them into granite poetry.
Odes and sonnets later, he began weaving together the Greek myths and Afro-Brazilian ones from the favelas. Ten years of negotiations between his Brazil, Uruguay, Los Angeles and France would become the summa of all his thinking and the apotheosis of the movement he was about to create. At the Teatro Municipal of Rio de Janeiro, “Orfeu da Conceição” debuts, with music entrusted to Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim—better known as “Tom do Vinícius.” The poet-musician is cemented, who sings because it’s natural, who sings for the sheer joy of living.
The success at home was overwhelming, and a few years later the subject was used (mediated as always) for an Italo-French film adaptation directed by Marcel Camus titled “Black Orpheus.”
Orpheus
In the film, Orpheus and Eurydice constantly follow each other, hoping to be the ever-present absence of the other, and meanwhile they dance and sing, entwined with carnival ribbons and shrieks.
But when the distance from the eyes becomes too great, Eurydice vanishes forever.
Knowing she was alive gave him the illusion that something inside him was still present and needed to be uncovered again. Orpheus’s only real mistake was not so much turning back, but rather stopping his samba: between a dance and a pandeiro, worries are just there to set the heart’s rhythm.
Thus, Orpheus dies twice, the second time when he fails to accept death as a perpetual element. Death isn’t dealt with by death, or even worse, with non-life (up there, in paradise, they’re too far away), and so, without hesitation, the budding guitar starts playing again:
“Take it, play, quickly, bring about the sun.
—I don’t know... I don’t know how.
—Try, invent.”
Say the children at the end of the film.
A samba born from death, from longing and absence—a samba to let the sun rise.
Fast Forward #2 – Oil Stains.
A slew of prizes, statues, and cups between Europe and America: Black Orpheus wins an Oscar, and the Seleção wins its second World Cup. “A felicidade”, white nights, “Canções de amor demais”, João Gilberto’s guitar pilfering with “Chega de Saudade”. Downbeat, batida, and new words—the birth of Bossa Nova, where it just takes a whisper to sing.
Getz/Gilberto first, Sinatra/Jobim with “Garota da Ipanema” later. Dark days, wild passions cut short by the upheaval of the fierce military dictatorship. To the unwanted children, disliked by the regime—artists and political opponents—two options were given: flee the country or face torture and death. Some chose London, others Rome.
In Italy, the first feverish hints could be found with Mina, Lauzi, Jannacci, Endrigo.
The legend knocks at the doors of Pavia, revelations in the Bardotti household.
Sergio Bardotti, Bardoci.
Bardotto, at first a scholar/literary man, playing piano in the meantime for various groups in nightclubs, old dance halls, farmyards, and provincial churchyards. A lover of French chansonniers and American crooners, but forced to play tango, waltz, and cha-cha-cha until the early hours. Certainly formative but unfortunate experiences.
With the rising cantautori style, he reinvented himself as “Sergio Dotto, the literary singer-songwriter,” sold 50 copies, a flop. After a brief break from slow dances he graduated in literature, and thanks to a professor’s help, signed his first contract with RCA; the first job was simple (so to speak): curate a record series of poets reciting their own works, “Edizioni letterarie: la loro voce, la loro opera.” So he began directing Montale, Quasimodo, Pasolini, Ungaretti. The literary collection failed (truly unlucky) and he became a backup as music assistant for Gino Paoli, Bindi, and Endrigo.
It’s hard to pin a definite job on him: producer, translator, singer-songwriter, lyricist, poet, poet for music, “transcreator” (eh?). A lover of words, sound, musicality, language, the pen beating against the teeth: line-dot-line-dot-dot, a mosaicist, stitching accents and lengths together to insert new and different ones, often adding poetry to poetry, betraying and revealing (to the original author in case of translations) different, previously unknown, intimacies and spiritualities. Chiseling on paper, tailoring on flesh.
Ocho atrás (eight steps back). The other Sergio, inseparable companion, a young orchestra singer met between a service and an exchange during a ping-pong match in one of the many nightclubs they both frequented. Through these rallies an inseparable pair was born: one on piano, the other the voice. For Bardotti, Endrigo would be the initiator of many revenges, already famous in Italy and the world thanks to “Io che amo solo te”, bringing the first records of Vinícius de Moraes directly from São Paulo, thus opening the windows to a world always yearned for and brushed against. Evenings listening to bossa nova records, studying Portuguese, deciphering the chords of “Chega de Saudade” and succumbing to the infatuations of “Samba em preludio”: a new dimension of poetry in Brazil. Thanks to Endrigo, Bardotti finds his first redemptions with “Era d’estate”, and after that all downhill, amid commercial success and songwriter pieces written for Gino Paoli and that devil Lucio Dalla.
With the latter, his first participation as author at the Sanremo Festival, the first of three consecutive last places... disaster returns. He tries again, last chance or face discographic exile, and in 1968, together with Endrigo, presents “Canzone per te.”
Fast Forward #3 – Conquistadores.
The first festival hosted by Pippo Baudo, shadows still thick, Armstrong and aliens anticipating moon landings, fierce competition. O Rei, Roberto Carlos, the designated foreigner, paired with Endrigo. Longings and ovations, “Canzone per te” wins the Sanremo festival.
Off to Brazilian tours, imperial welcomes, hints of notes and public choirs, in Italian until the end. First meetings with Chico Buarque and Pelé. Dreams, desires, and new beginnings.
Return to Rome, waiting rooms and hideaways, Hotel Raphael, Brazil-England 2-1, “Hein Bardottinho, como vai.” Lifelong friendships in a new life.
Moraes-Bardotti layover.
“Life, my friend, is the art of encounter.”
The Hotel Raphael in Rome was, at the time, a safe haven for passing Brazilian artists (think: “Águas de Março” was born there), and de Moraes, self-exiled, had only just “retired” from his diplomatic post to immerse himself unreservedly in his art.
Bardocì trembles, finally face-to-face with the long-desired bard, memories surfacing of when he would translate his works just for the love of it, an act of sincere affection. Right there, in that hotel, the idea for the album was born—a concept intertwining their greatest passions: music and poetry.
Instruments in hand, only the models were missing, and between them, there was no shortage of friends. A skillful “director of meetings”, born organizer, Sergio knew exactly whom to call.
Naturally, Orfeo is present with “A felicidade” and since it’s about poetry, the main name had to be Giuseppe Ungaretti, called “Ungà” by Vinícius, who in turn was called “Vinà.” The two were friends, who had met when Ungaretti was teaching Italian literature at the University of São Paulo and translated several poems by the poetinha, some of which (adapted by Bardotti) are present on the album itself. It’s Ungaretti’s duty to recite them.
Ungaretti, reciting, twists and turns, gives momentum, then goes down, subdued, deep; he mutters, looks heavenward, stretches out his worn, booming voice… rasping and cavernous in his throat.
De Moraes, on the other hand, is honeyed dough, melting, sweet, liqueur-like. A lingering caress, an enveloping wave. Notable in this sense is “Poetica I”, in which their two voices intertwine.
When it comes to singing, the assignment is obvious, the adherence natural. Endrigo’s voice, always composed and melodious, gives body to the Portuguese whispers with his perpetually disenchanted and fatalist, yet extremely romantic, manner. Songs like “Perché (O que tinha de ser)”, “Se tutti fossero uguali a te”, and “Poema degli occhi” seem custom-tailored.
With the lyrics set, all that was missing was the music—and music filled the evenings spent in Bardotti’s home in Mentana, neighbors like Luis Bacalov (album arranger) and Ennio Morricone, days spent playing football in Gianni Morandi’s field in a kind of almost Italy-Brazil 1970. The tenth man on the field was brought in by Chico Buarque: his name’s Antônio Pecci Filho, known as Toquinho, also a musician, o violão. Toquinho’s guitar, at 23, sounds eternal, a seamless thread connecting the whole album from beginning to end, weaving together recitals and songs. He gets two interludes: “Serenata dell’addio (Serenata do adeus)” and “Deixa.”
An album made of sentimental songs, for children and long poems, in some sense sacred, a miracle of macumba and faith in the unknowable, of which Rio’s shores are full.
It’s no coincidence that it opens and closes with a blessing (“samba is a prayer, if you want it”) nor that “The Day of Creation (O dia da criação)” is included.
From here on, take up needle and pin, “all poets are translatable if you know them deeply,” a concept expanded when you consider that Vinícius and Bardocì, in a sense, were the same person: letristas-cantores, indulging in life and living it with someone else, intermediaries of feelings and relationships, of the selfless act of giving love. Bardotti translates, effortlessly making songs singable, helping us understand their meaning, adding poetry to poetry with new sounds and images, balancing the losses of adaptation; if he succeeds, it’s because he is more like the man than the poet, because both conceived of life as an art of encounter, and music is merely a way to believe.
Altar and consecration of the entire album is “La Casa (A casa)”, a nursery rhyme written by the Carioca poet for his grandchildren, transformed by Serginho in just ten minutes, with stylistic novelties like the line about pipi and the potty, warmly welcomed because “kids love little naughty words.”
The house becomes departure and arrival. In Via dei matti, madness and fun rule: a place where children, more creative than adults, overturn reality.
Fast Forward #4 – New Branches.
You need a flower, Rodari meets Endrigo, parceiro until the end, Toquinho meets Vinícius, new translations, Chico Buarque meets Bardotti.
New longings, madness, recklessness, and joie de vivre.
“It’s not in the files that you find people,” repeats the missing persons clerk to Orpheus.
So let me tell you where you can find them, if you’re lazy… I hope not skeptical. Welcome the “Samba of Blessings”—you can find them all gathered there, because Vinícius de Moraes and Sergio Bardotti taught me, between a smile and a saudade, that where one rhythm ends, another beat is born, and sooner or later, the whole world learns to samba on top of it.
Vinícius de Moraes saravá!
Toquinho saravá!
Giuseppe Ungaretti saravá!
Sergio Endrigo saravá!
Luis Bacalov saravá!
Sergio Bardotti saravá!
«Se todo mundo sambasse, seria tão feliz viver» [Chico Buarque]
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