Word: desafinado
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...best music, no matter how far away its origins, makes you feel right at home and speaks directly to your heart. Tom Jobim's gentle Desafinado, once "exotic," now seems neighborly and familiar. If De Castro has his way, people around the world may soon know all about Sao Paulo. But they may forget that it's in another country...
...Gene Lees, the lyricist who worked with Antonio Carlos Jobim on English-language adaptations of such bossa nova classics as "Desafinado" and "Corcovado" once commented that Brazilian songwriters tend to endlessly rhyme the words "song," "guitar" and "heart" - which actually do rhyme in Portuguese, cançao, violao and coraçao, respectively. Having attended the first week of Rock in Rio, having seen an endless procession of Brazilian bands, having heard an endless series of Brazilian songs, sweated under Brazilian sunlight, eaten Brazilian food, danced (or attempted to dance) Brazilian dances, I think I've gotten some idea...
...right as we land, right after the plane's crew thanks everyone for flying with them, guess what song comes on the over airplane's speakers? A Muzak version of "Desafinado." The guts of the song - the swing, the soul, the samba, the bossa-novaness of it - have all be ripped out and replaced by loaves of white bread. It is an almost perfect ending. A trip to Brazil to see how artists there are improving on the music of the world ends with a return to the outside world that ends with a display of how foreigners are screwing...
...That Muzak version of "Desafinado" is still playing...
...acts of the period were singing and performing in more overtly expressive ways, the vocals and guitar playing in Jobim's work were intimate and quiet, and commanded attention like the whisper of a secret. It was a music proud of its nonconformist nature (one of Jobim's hits, "Desafinado" (or "off-key") celebrates the genre's subtly unsettling sound). Of course, today, decades later, people in the States listen to "The Girl From Ipanema" and, to unschooled ears, it sounds like a novelty song, kind of the way "Livin' La Vida Loca" sounded five minutes after I first heard...