Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World (21 page)

It was what was heard most often on the radio, and it’s no surprise that Menescal and Bôscoli were unable to identify with it. Those kinds of melodramas were not a part of their lives. They felt much closer to the songs of Tito Madi, Jobim, and Newton Mendonça; to the lyrics of Billy Blanco, Marino Pinto, and some of those written by Dolores Duran; to the harmonies attempted by Radamés Gnatalli, Garoto, Valzinho, João Donato, and Johnny Alf; to the voices of Dick Farney, Lúcio Alves, and Sylvinha Telles, and the vocal gymnastics of Os Cariocas. Of the older set, they liked Custódio Mesquita, Dorival Caymmi, and Vadico, but they felt that Brazilian music could have used a little more Cole Porter, George Gershwin, or Jimmy Van Heusen. And they also felt that Frank Sinatra’s only flaw was not being Brazilian.

Menescal wanted to write music, Bôscoli the lyrics. The two of them arranged to see each other again a few days later, canceled their appointment with each other, and only met again a year later, when they ran into each other at Arpoador Beach. At that time, in 1957, many things had started to take shape. Bôscoli had provided tips during the production of
Orfeu da Conceição
, became a lyricist, and collaborated on “Fim de noite” (End of the Night) with Chico Feitosa; and Menescal played the Sunday dances at the Columbia club in Lagoa and ran the guitar academy with Carlinhos Lyra. The apartment of a student named Nara Leão became an extension of the “academy,” with a noticeable frequency of attendance by the
pair’s best shaped students. Menescal spoke to Ronaldo about the academy, the girls, and how, every night, they would go to Nara’s house with the guitars. He invited him to join in. Bôscoli was very interested—mostly in Nara and their other female students—and promised to show up. And this time, he didn’t cancel.

It
had
to happen. A student, running her fingers distractedly over the folds of fabric of the “academy” sofa, found a recently used
Jontex
condom. João Paulo, the son-of-a-bitch, was still using the apartment as his bachelor flat, thought Carlinhos Lyra in horror. When the student’s hand came in contact with that soft and slimy object, the girl was shocked and screamed aloud. Her mother, sitting in the waiting room, ran in to help. Carlinhos tried to think of how to hide the condom, stuffing it into his pocket or swallowing it, like they did in spy films, but it was useless. They would never believe he wasn’t responsible for its presence. The young offendee canceled her classes and her mother blabbed the incident to the world.

Lyra and Menescal had to close the academy for a while.

The arrival of Ronaldo Bôscoli in 1957 changed the scenery in Nara’s apartment. He brought with him his friend Chico Feitosa. The two of them squeezed themselves into a studio apartment in Rua Otaviano Hudson, in Copacabana, in which they also sheltered Luís Carlos Dragão, a dragon-sized black boy of indeterminate profession. Dragão paid his share of the rent by running small errands for the others, like taking Bôscoli’s column to
Última Hora
, to which he was now also a regular contributor, every day, or going to the corner to buy Coca-Cola for Chico Feitosa. But his main occupation was sleeping. When he was sound asleep, not even World War III would have woken him. Some mornings, Ronaldo and Chico would carry him, still sleeping in his bed, down the service stairs to the entrance to the building, four floors below. When he woke up and found himself practically in the street, Dragão would react in the only way he felt appropriate: he would turn over and continue snoring.

Bôscoli took Feitosa to Nara’s apartment, but not just because he was an expert on guitar and the two of them were writing songs together. In the past year, Bôscoli had been suffering outbreaks of paranoia that made him afraid to leave the house. He was now able to leave the house, but never alone. Feitosa accompanied him, both to work in the old
Manchete
headquarters in Rua Frei
Caneca and back, as well as to the office of his female psychoanalyst, Dr. Iracy Doyle. Feitosa also accompanied Bôscoli to and from Nara’s apartment but, after a short while, his chaperone service was unnecessary. Taking advantage of the extremely liberal attitude of the Leão family, Ronaldo practically moved into Nara’s house, and it was she who then accompanied him everywhere, by taxi or streetcar.

Able to better observe what passed by unnoticed by Menescal and Lyra, he was the first to admire Nara’s tanned and dimpled knees with the eyes of a man. Which was perfectly natural, considering that in 1957 Bôscoli was twenty-eight years old—
very
old, compared to the early twenties of his predecessors. Nara also saw in him what she could not see in the two boys: Ronaldo was a poet, a journalist, and an experienced man. He socialized with Jobim, Vinícius, and Newton Mendonça, he knew the night and the day, and, like her, was painfully shy. He hid his shyness behind such a sharp wit that, although hilarious, it had already earned him a group of enemies.

What girl of fifteen could resist him? Nara was besotted with him, as were her parents, to the extent that old Jairo playfully turned a blind eye to the lack of a few shirts, socks, and underwear in his closet. He knew that Ronaldo, just for the fun of it, had borrowed them.

Carlinhos and Menescal pooled their resources, rented a house in Rua Cinco de Julho, also in Copacabana, and re-opened the “academy.” The condom scandal was forgotten and the beautiful students returned in hordes. Now there were almost two hundred. Menescal was happy to play and teach, but Lyra was more interested than ever in songwriting. He had already written a few things by himself, like “Maria Ninguém” (Maria Nobody), but when Menescal introduced him to Bôscoli, he felt that he had met a potential colleague. The two began to work together, and the first song they produced was “Se é tarde me perdoa” (Forgive Me if It’s Too Late). They followed it up, as a joke, with “Lobo bobo” (Foolish Wolf). The lyrics were not as naïve as people thought, because they told the story of how Bôscoli the wolf was captivated by the ingénue Nara. And the tune, which seemed so spontaneous, was blatantly derived from the theme music for old Laurel and Hardy movies, whose short comedy routines had become popular again on TV. Lyra and Bôscoli thought it was hilarious that nobody really caught on.

Contrary to popular belief, almost nothing was written in Nara’s apartment. Lyra and Bôscoli would meet in each other’s apartments and only afterward go and reveal the results at Nara’s house. The pair did not insist on exclusivity in their partnership. Lyra sometimes wrote alone, like he did with
“Barquinho de papel” (Little Paper Boat), and Bôscoli continued to write lyrics for Chico Feitosa’s songs, such as “Sente” (Feel) and “Complicação” (Complication). But Nara’s apartment was the center. Luís Carlos Vinhas, an ex-colleague of Menescal at the Mallet Soares, and Normando Santos, an ex-student and now a guitar instructor at the academy, were always there. Music occupied the gang twenty-four hours a day. Those who were still studying, like Nara, stopped going to school, unless it was to perform the songs for her pals. Another meeting place was the home of Lu and Aná, two rich girls who lived in the Urca neighborhood, where the boys who liked jazz would hang out.

Things started to heat up even more when Bôscoli introduced the young Castro-Neves brothers to the gang in Nara’s apartment. They were all formidably musical and each one of them specialized in a particular instrument: Mário, the piano; Oscar, the guitar; Léo, double bass; and Iko, percussion. They had formed a group, the American Jazz Combo, in their apartment in the Laranjeiras neighborhood, and had been fans of Jobim ever since “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” (Rio de Janeiro Symphony). Bôscoli’s friend was Mário, the eldest, but it was Oscar, then seventeen years old, who first wrote a little something with Ronaldo entitled “Não faz assim” (Don’t Do That), which later would be considered one of the first bossa nova songs.

Meanwhile, Mário gave Ronaldo a complicated and dissonant tune, inspired by Garoto’s “Reloginho do vovô” (Grandpa’s Pocket Watch), and allowed Ronaldo to summarize in his lyrics what was on all their minds: “Take it up with Daddy / If I was born so modern / Ask Mommy / If dissonance lives within me / I took the nursing bottle and was rocked to sleep by atonality / And my dreams are lulled by an infernal rhythm.// If the hearts of people understood that this is OK/ No one could convince me that I am out of tune.// I’m asking you if a samba like this is wrong / If those who don’t play the
tamborim
aren’t truly Brazilian.// I wasn’t born a conformist / I cannot conform / But my samba has the right to live and speak.”

This samba, “Mamadeira atonal” (Atonal Nursing Bottle) would never be recorded and, from what followed, it didn’t need to be. In 1957, everyone heard it at the Mello e Souza and Mallet Soares schools, and at the homes of Nara, and Aná and Lu—where it was sung by João Gilberto. Two years later, in 1959, when the first official bossa nova shows started, “Mamadeira atonal” had already been left behind. There was another song, in the same style, but much better: “Desafinado” (Off-Key).

Say, did you mention João Gilberto?

A few months before, in the middle of 1957, Menescal was at home, at his parents’ silver wedding anniversary celebration, in their Galeria Menescal apartment, when someone knocked at the door. It must be another guest. He went to open the door and a young man he had never seen before asked: “Do you have a guitar here? Maybe we could play something.” Menescal’s face twisted into a question mark. He didn’t know what to say. All became immediately clear when the guy introduced himself: “I’m João Gilberto. Edinho, from Trio Irakitan, gave me your address.”

For Menescal, if
that
truly was João Gilberto, the name of singer-guitarist Edinho was irrelevant by way of recommendation. He had already heard of João Gilberto. Who, among the young Rio musicians in the last few months, hadn’t? He knew he was a half-crazy and cheerful Bahian, who was a fantastic guitarist and an extremely refined singer who sometimes appeared at the Plaza. He invited him to come in. João Gilberto cut through the dozens of guests as if they were made of steam—likewise, no one saw him—and they went into one of the back rooms. He saw nothing else. He just examined Menescal’s guitar, loosened a few of the tuning pegs, strummed a couple of chords, and sang “Hô-ba-la-lá,” his own composition.