Bossa Nova / Suspended Animation

Here is the first of a series of short extracts from books in the Reverb Series: from David Treece's forthcoming (May 2013) Brazilian Jive: From Samba to Bossa and Rap. From the second chapter, 'The Bossa Nova Revolution: suspended animation and the tempo of Brazilian modernity', in this section, David considers the 'ecological rationality' of the bossa nova and the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim (Tom Jobim, pictured above) ...

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An ecological rationality: tension, harmonization and the new sensibility

My starting-point is to remember that all sound consists of movement and change — pulses, or cyclical waves of energetic flux and reflux, transmitted via the medium of air and registered as physiological alterations in the anatomy of our ears; as these changes are translated into electrical impulses, firing off neurons in the brain stem and the auditory cortex, they trigger complex networks of memory, connection and alteration which we perceive as transformations in our acoustic environment, and to which we can react in turn, physiologically, emotionally and mentally. If sound is to be understood in this way, as the process by which the effects of movement and change in the external environment are internalised and incorporated by the conscious human body, then music structures and organizes this phenomenon in such a way as to dramatize (to make us undergo in a heightened, concentrated and intensified way) the experience of transformation, of movement from one state of being to another.

In that sense, as José Miguel Wisnik reminds us in O Som e o Sentido (Sound and Meaning), what we perceive distinctly as rhythm, melody, harmony and timbre are simply different manifestations of the same phenomenon. The regular energetic pulse that, up to 10 hertz or cycles per second, we still perceive only as a beat, begins to be heard as a ‘note’ from that threshold onwards, as the acceleration of a pulse’s frequency turns quantitative into qualitative change, translating the temporally perceived vibration into a spatially perceived vibration; what is really a variation in time, the acceleration of a pulse, is heard as a vertical relation of pitch, the up and down of melody, as the rising frequency of the sound wave is experienced as an ascent away from the gravitational inertia of the earth. These spatio-temporal variations, which are then heard ‘horizontally’ as successive notes in a melody, can of course be sounded simultaneously, in the vertical structures we call harmony, while the unique combination of additional, natural overtones or harmonics, which each musical instrument produces when it sounds a single tone, accounts for the distinctive timbres or textures of musical colour. And these basic elements of musical creativity, all of them different expressions of the fundamental phenomenon of movement — the pulse —, can then, in their turn, set in motion ever more complex dramas of change and transformation, of harmonic modulation and tonal development.

If all music is structured, meaningful sonic movement and change, then, we could ask: what specific kinds of movement animate the distinctive musical universe of bossa nova? The concept I propose here to characterize the bossa nova aesthetic — suspended animation — is intended to encapsulate a certain paradox of dynamic equilibrium, a delicately sustained integration of contrapuntal forces shifting endlessly between tension and resolution. Furthermore, this dynamic equilibrium, which to my ears is the source of bossa nova’s almost hypnotic, incantatory fascination, cannot be abstracted from the act of performance, because it resides precisely in the effort to incorporate and sustain, in real time, that live interaction and tension between the vocal articulation of melody, the rhythmic and harmonic sequences played by the guitar, and the lyrical unfolding of the song’s internal, structural logic. This internal cohesion integrating all its constituent elements — formal, performative and semantic — makes it problematic to isolate a separate ‘bossa nova rhythm’, to sing a lone, unsupported ‘bossa nova melody’, or even to perform bossa nova songs ‘in translation’ — the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts that, when heard alone, each constituent element can sound weak and unremarkable.

The sense that the bossa nova aesthetic posed a radical, if subtle and underestimated, challenge to traditional musical sensibilities was present from the beginning, and often self-consciously so, to the point of being incorporated thematically into the lyrical and musical content of certain songs. The Jobim/Mendonça composition ‘Desafinado’ (Off-key), first released by João Gilberto in 1958, can be viewed almost as a manifesto of the new wave — the formulation ‘bossa nova’, literally meaning ‘new flair’, is directly referenced in its lyrics which, adopting the idiom of an injured lover’s protest that he is misunderstood voice a witty defence of an original way of singing.




The point about an incompatibility of tastes or sensibilities is made musically as well as textually, as the opening theme leads twice to a dissonant clash, with an awkward falling interval (F-Db over a G7(b5) chord and C-Eb over an Am7(b5) chord), on the words ‘desafino’ (I sing off-key) and ‘imensa dor’ (enormous pain):

Se você disser que eu desafino, amor 
Saiba que isto em provoca imensa dor
Só privilegiados têm ouvido igual ao seu
Eu possuo apenas o que Deus me deu. 

[Darling, if you tell me that I sing off-key,
Don’t you know it’s hurtful for a guy like me?
Acuter ears like yours belong to just a chosen few
Mine are tuned the way that God designed them to.]

But after being reiterated twice more (‘If you really must describe the way I play/ as simply devoid of musicality’), this clash leads, via an unexpected harmonic modulation and a more relaxed, descending sequence, to the magical revelation that, literally, ‘this is bossa nova, it’s really natural’:

Se você insiste em classificar
Meu comportamento de anti-musical
Eu, mesmo mentindo, devo argumentar
Que isto é bossa nova, isto é muito natural 

[If you really must describe the way I play
As simply devoid of musicality
Whether right or wrong, I’m sorry, I’ll just have to say
That this is bossa nova, it’s the new reality.]

As well as defending the sophisticated chromaticism of bossa nova which, it turns out, isn’t really off-key at all, the song ends by discreetly arguing for a different rhythmic sensibility, too, the subtle syncopation of the new batida or (heart-) beat:

Você com a sua música esqueceu o principal 
Que no peito dos desafinados, no peito bate calado 
Que no peito dos desafinados também bate um coração.

[There’s something you’ve forgotten, though you think your playing’s smart
For within those who sing off-key, deep within them quietly beating
In the breast of those who sing off-key there also beats a heart.]


[…]

We could characterize the idiom arising out of this structural logic as an ‘ecological rationality’; that is to say, the subjective and objective life of the individual, the flux of human experience from the projection of desire towards its satisfaction, and the musical unfolding of the song itself, all seem to be ordered by the same ‘natural’ cycles and relationships. Operating through a continual dialogue between lover and beloved, self and world, lyrical argument and musical form, the songs enact a kind of harmonization of time, space and consciousness in which the musical drama, its human actors and their natural settings converge towards an equilibrium of intimate communion and understanding, a magical state of ‘grace’.

Tom Jobim’s personal commitment to this idea of the song as a medium of integration between self and natural world was an explicit, consistent feature of his work. One of his finest compositions, ‘Águas de março’ (March rains), identifies ‘the promise of life in your heart’ with the eternal rhythms and cycles of a rural landscape, in an endlessly circular melodic and harmonic structure. Indeed, Jobim’s ecological perspective became an increasingly active political concern up to the end of his life, when he was a prominent supporter of the movement to defend the last areas of original forest on Brazil’s Atlantic coast.




The cultural environment which the first generation of bossa nova artists inhabited in the Rio de Janeiro of the late 1950s, meanwhile, sheds further light on this philosophical dimension of their music. Prior to the rise of Marxist and left nationalist ideas, one of the chief intellectual influences on that generation was French existentialism. In literary circles, for example, the presence of this current of thinking could be keenly felt in the work of one of the period’s most successful young writers, Clarice Lispector.

Ipanema Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1950s

The idyllic, semi-rural tranquility of Rio’s southern beachside neighbourhoods in those years, safe as yet from the economic and social explosion that would soon transform the urban landscape, must have offered an ideal objective correlative for the kind of inner spiritual integrity, the grace-filled enlightenment of ‘being in the world’ that Lispector’s characters strive to discover. It is that striving for wholeness, for completion of the self in the other, in the rhythms of nature and in the rationality of musical form, which defines the ‘liturgical’, magical quality of the classic phase of bossa nova composition and performance.

So, in Jobim’s ‘Corcovado’ (Quiet Nights), Rio de Janeiro’s mountain landscape forms a natural objective correlative for the unity of self and world, viewed through a window of contemplation from within a domestic space of intimacy. A circular structure beginning and concluding on the same unresolved Am6 chord holds suspended together the principal melodic theme and a series of complementary ideas — ‘A little corner, a guitar/ This love, a song/ To make happy the one you love’ — that have replaced the dying flame of a former sorrow with the eternity of new companionship.

Brazilian Jive: From Samba to Bossa and Rap

As Brazil grows in stature as a global power, more and more people are discovering the country’s fascinating culture, especially the striking exuberance and inventiveness of Brazilian popular music. In Brazilian Jive, David Treece uncovers the genius of Brazilian song, both as a sophisticated, articulate art form crafted out of the dialogue between music and language and as a powerfully eloquent expression of the country’s social and political history. 

Brazilian Jive focuses on the cultural struggles that music-making in Brazil represents, from the rise of samba, through the bossa nova revolution of the late 1950s, to the emergence of rap in the 1990s. It describes how the music sprang out of the pain and dispossession of slavery, and as a result, inspired by African traditions and conceptions of the world, it celebrates new ways of moving freely in time and space. Brazil could be said to have ‘performed’ itself as a nation, creating a soundscape redolent with the rhythms and tones of the modern, but expressing as well its dissonances and contradictions. There is also a conversation between melody and word that is the songwriter’s craft, but which in Brazil also signifies a larger, more troubled dialogue between its artistic and political cultures. 

Offering a comprehensive introduction to those new to Brazilian music, Brazilian Jive also provides fresh insight to those already familiar with the music, society and culture of this most vibrant and colourful nation.

David Treece is a translator, researcher and teacher of Brazilian popular music, literature and culture at King’s College London, where he has been Camoens Professor of Portuguese since 2005.

210 x 148 mm | 224 pages | 30 illustrations

Paperback | 978 1 78023 085 6 | Forthcoming May 2013

£14.95

Tango: Sex and the Rhythm of the City

The explosion of participation in dance classes in recent years has led to the re-emergence of popular partner dancing, with Latin American styles at the forefront. Chief among these styles is the most sensual and dramatic of dances, the tango.

Born in the unlit streets of Buenos Aires, tango was danced to the music of immigrants from Europe who crossed the ocean to Argentina, lured by the promise of a better life. The majority of these newcomers were young men, who found small comfort in the brothels and cabarets of the marginal districts where tango found its voice. They spoke the strange language of the streets, Lunfardo, and told their stories of prostitutes, petty thieves and disappointed lovers through the music and dance of the tango. Initially shunned as the music of the lower and criminal classes, after Paris went crazy for the tango before First World War it became acceptable for middle-class Argentines to dance this seductive dance. Spreading throughout the world during the twentieth century to the US, Japan, Finland and beyond, today few cities in the world are without tango classes.

Although the tango is danced and adored worldwide, in the English-speaking world there is very little understanding of tango’s evolution, or the stories told through its lyrics. Tango: Sex and Rhythm of the City sets the history and music, the key figures and, most importantly, the dance in its place and time, explores how it developed, and describes the continuing enthusiasm with which each generation has rediscovered it. Telling the sultry, enthralling story of this stylish and dramatic dance, Tango is essential reading for both casual fans and ballroom aficionados alike.

Mike Gonzalez is Emeritus Professor of Latin American Studies at Glasgow University and has written and lectured widely on Latin American culture and politics.

Marianella Yanes is a Venezuelan writer, journalist and playwright. She wrote soap operas for a number of Latin American television channels and worked in theatre for many years.


210 x 148 mm | 224 pages | 30 illustrations

Paperback | 978 1 78023 107 5 | Forthcoming May 2013

£14.95

Exuberant California, Zen Rock'n'Roll in Classic Rock

David Lee Roth, photographed by Helmut Newton, Pasadena, 1979

From the September 2012 issue of Classic Rock magazine (issue 175), an excerpt from a review of John Scanlan's Van Halen: Exuberant California, Zen Rock'n'Roll:

"Through its ten chapters ... Scanlan takes you through the journey of Van Halen, via various in-depth musings of a social and historical persuasion that, the author suggests, uncover more potent truths than their regularly touted musical inspirations. It's an engaging way of reading up on the ins and outs of 'California Zen', romanticism, and the evolving 60s-80s Hollywood music scene ... a refreshing history lesson [by] a very articulate and knowledgeable writer. (7/10)"

It would have been good if the reviewer had mentioned that the same author wrote the previous year's cover story on Van Halen in the same magazine!

Summer Reading on the Sunset Strip (KCET)

A notorious hand-washer, Mickey Cohen preparing to be called to testify. Photo appeared on November 16, 1950. From the Herald-Examiner Collection. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library

Dating back to 1997 I've been giving Los Angeles bus tours, and one of the most frequent locations is the Sunset Strip. Once avocado groves and poinsettia fields, the Sunset Strip's decadent history ranges from Mafia speakeasies during Prohibition to its evolution into an epicenter of the music scene. Two new books cover these very different histories of the Sunset Strip and Los Angeles history period.

The first is Tere Tereba's new biography Mickey Cohen: The Life & Crimes of L.A.'s Notorious Mobster. Published by ECW Press, the author does a masterful job extolling Cohen's escapades and power: "His finger in every pie, his hand in every wallet, Cohen's influence reached from downtown, Chinatown, and South Central to the Sunset Strip, Hollywood, Culver City, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Burbank, Long Beach, San Pedro, and Glendale. He controlled activities in Gardena and Pasadena and out to Orange County, Lake Arrowhead, Palm Springs, and into Mexico. There was talk that San Francisco, Honolulu, and Manila were in his grip."

By all accounts Cohen is L.A.'s Al Capone. He grew up in Boyle Heights and was a professional boxer in his late teen years, fighting 79 bouts. After years paying dues as an enforcer in the underworld, Cohen got his chance to run Los Angeles after Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was killed in 1947. The savvy Siegel flourished in L.A. for a decade before he was assassinated. Siegel was from New York and already very famous when he arrived in L.A. Cohen was also born in New York, but came to LA at a very early age and worked his way up. Cohen eventually became not only the King of the Sunset Strip but perhaps the most powerful mobster in the city's history. The recently postponed Warner Brothers film Gangster Squad is about Mickey Cohen and his epic battles with the LAPD and other gangsters during the postwar period.

Tereba also shows how Cohen was the ultimate Angeleno decades before people even considered such a thought. Cohen enjoyed all the subcultures of Los Angeles long before it was cool to do so. He spent lots of time in the Jazz District of Central Avenue, and would book Black musical acts in his Hollywood clubs in spite of Jim Crow Los Angeles. After growing up in Boyle Heights, Cohen embraced other cultures. "If anyone called someone a kike, spic or a wop in our neighborhood, we would beat his head in," he said. Tereba paints a full portrait of Mickey Cohen and also manages to squeeze in a fascinating historical overview of the Los Angeles underworld.

John Scanlan's Van Halen: Exuberant California, Zen Rock'n'Roll captures a whole other era of the Sunset Strip, but no less compelling. Set in the period from the early '70s to 1984, Scanlan not only charts the rise of Van Halen through the Sunset Strip nightclub scene, he argues that Van Halen's ethos as a band characterizes a state of mind and being called "Zen California."

Historian Kevin Starr in his book "Coast of Dreams" characterizes "Zen California" as "a state of mind, an idea of a time and place, and a way of being that celebrated 'the now'; that rode on its passion for the moment in a manner that could be seen elsewhere in much Southern California culture. It was present, most obviously, in the practice of surfing - the pre-eminent Californian art of mind, body and nature that was defined by receptivity to the moment."

Using the theoretical framework provided by Starr, Scanlan shows how the exuberance of Van Halen epitomized what he calls "California Zen rock'n'roll." Starting from their youthful beginnings in Pasadena and their first gigs as the house band at Gazzari's at the present-day Key Club, Scanlan highlights the unique set of circumstances that created Van Halen. Capturing the chemistry of David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen, he also shows how Roth's early exposure to Greenwich Village poets and musicians prepared Roth to become such a spontaneous artist.

Scanlan writes, "Roth's artistic temperament stemmed from somewhere else. Its main characteristic was a childlike artlessness that combined the immediacy of the everyday with the 'no-mind' of Zen. Like Kerouac, for whom 'future ambitions or past memories' were 'an evasion of the immediate', the 'Tao of Dave' involved, as he often said, tearing off the rear view mirror and looking no further than a few meters ahead." David Lee Roth epitomized California Zen. Scanlan also writes, "For Eddie Van Halen the unconscious was encountered in a manner more common to aesthetic romanticism, and to the synesthetic dimensions of sound, music and feeling."

The book concludes with the first break up of the band in 1984. The author's philosophical and aesthetic observations into Van Halen go a long way towards capturing the spirit of the band and the Sunset Strip just before the onslaught of the hair metal era. One mistake made in an otherwise excellent book is that Scanlan incorrectly notes that John Belushi died at the Sunset Marquis. Considering that Scanlan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom, it is conceivable that he would not know that Belushi died at the Chateau Marmont. The two hotels sound enough alike that the mistake is acceptable, because the rest of the book is accurate and well-conceived. Scanlan offers an enlightening read that significantly adds to the scholarship on Sunset Strip musical history.

This one goes out to Grand Park, Mickey Cohen and Van Halen, benchmarks in the ever-growing landscape of L.A. Letters.

Mike Sonksen, July 27, 2012


http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/landofsunshine/la-letters/grand-park-and-summer-reading-on-the-sunset-strip.html

Boston Globe article

Although I hotly dispute the use of that horrid term 'hair band' - a term applicable to the mid-to-late 80s, I'd say - to describe the subject of Van Halen: Exuberant California, Zen Rock'n'Roll (a book about the SEVENTIES), I would nonetheless like to post here, from the Boston Sunday Globe, an interview about said book with me, the author, which was conducted by the very amiable Keith O'Brien.

Link to story: 'Van Halen, Monsters of Philosophy'

Given some of the things I said in a telephone interview that lasted well over an hour, I am sure it could have looked a lot worse for me ...

And ... sincere apologies Reverb readers for all the posts about this book and nothing else. It's all that is happening at the moment at Reverb. But, we do have a few titles due next year - on Brazilian music, on Tango, and on Nick Drake - all of which are fascinating reads. More info on all that when I have it.

Philosophy you can dance to ...

From Barnes and Noble Review.com:

"Diamond Dave as a Zen master? Eddie Van Halen as musical monk? That's the case John Scanlan makes -- tongue only partly in cheek -- in this learned but lively take on Van Halen's rise to the pinnacle of rockstardom, improvising all the way. Philosophy you can dance to."

Barnes and Noble Review.com