Bossa Nova Thoughts

My wife asked me to write about how music makes me feel. How it makes me feel. I had just turned on my Bossa Nova Playlist I created for myself to remember my days in the Bay Area coming home from college working pier drilling observation, listening to a cd my Dad had bought from Costco - Stan Getz - Verve Bossa Nova. It reminded me in turn of playing guitar for the first time and the way the 11ths and 13ths made me feel. I had many discussions with my brother Nathan about that. He told me how the music of the Bahia, Salvador, Brazil was where so much Latin influence on the popular music of the early 60s took off. Jazz with these complex chords. The chord structure touched me the way Rach 2 did. The second movement the way it swells with color chord by chord. The way a musical scene sets up the next one, the notes no longer vibrating still existing in the listeners ear to mix with the notes currently vibrating. Wave, Manha De Carnaval, Aquerela do Brazil; Jobim, Bonfa, Barroso. Nathan's favorite came following this classic period in the way Bossa Nova influenced Brazilian pop music: Tom Ze, Jorge Ben, Gilberto Gil, Maria Bethania but more than anyone, Caetano Veloso. His Coração Vagabundo was captivating in it's movement. It's lyrical message even more: "My Vagabond heart wants to the hold the world in me." I imagine the portuguese langauge is soft in Portugal but Brazil has a cadence a tone that is just so smooth like a welcome breeze whistling through the leaves. Velvetlike. It soothes. I often overwhelm myself as the musical world grows and new music comes out that I might like. Like many, the classic music hits harder: the stuff that has made it's way into muzak and instrumentals heard in elevators, super markets and hotel lobbies. There's a reason why things are popular for decades and decades: they're GOOD. They were made well and well crafted arrangements only amplify why they're good in different ways. I could say the same of early doo wop and vocal groups, early rock n' roll, new wave. I know it can be subjective and one of my favorite activities is to crate dig which necessity exists upon the fact that the good stuff has YET to be found. But Bossa Nova touches me in a way, a tropical way, the specific instruments of the samba of Carnaval. The evolution of Portuguese Spanish string instruments and their influence on the tropics the island nations of the pacific. Like the ukelele was born to make it's way through exploration to the islands of Hawai'i. The way African drums evolved as they made their way to the americas North and South but mainly the west african feeling of Samba rhythms. Vigorous yet viscerally rhythmic like a human heartbeat. Vinicius De Moraes "Desafinado" lyrics touch on this, the imperfection of heartbeat and add that it's like a song "slightly out of tune." The wholeness that one feels at hearing something that is flawed, real.