50 years ago the album was released, a milestone in the trajectory of (1945-1982), which left us prematurely.
Elis has always been unanimous regarding her vocal qualities. Range, technique and tuning justified her being considered one of the greatest performers in Brazil. However, there were snags of taste in his style, some involved with the repertoire and others with certain positions.
One example was the role she took on in a movement against the electric guitar in Brazilian music, which culminated in a march in July 1967, in São Paulo.
The reveals a little of the hesitations and political disputes in the most tuned in musical circles in the years following the 1964 coup.
With the semantic crisis of the love of smile and flower, the so-called second generation of bossa nova entered the scene with a turn towards popular roots, regionalism and protest. Elis was part of this group, alongside, among others, Edu Lobo and Geraldo Vandré.
At the same time, iê-iê-iê, our version of international pop and rock, from Elvis to Beatles, gained prominence in that Brazil that was industrializing and urbanizing.
A was the great opponent in the march against the electric guitar. They would be representatives of an imperialist invasion.
In the famous song festivals, songs such as “Arrastão”, “Disparada”, “Ponteio” and even “A Banda” were valued, in their affable conservatism. There was a desire there, on the cultural and university left, to be national, “authentic”, popular.
The dissonant note was called , which demonstrated a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of the ongoing process. He did not believe that the path was a return to the roots and defended the resumption of what he called the “evolutionary line” of Brazilian song. It was not a case of giving in to a “folklorization of underdevelopment”; It was, rather, about continuing in the cosmopolitan direction of João Gilberto and Tom Jobim’s bossa nova.
Unlike Gil, who, ambiguously, attended the march, Caetano was against it — and had the support of Nara Leão.
The person who explained this movement, in the heat of the moment, was the poet, whose articles collected in the seminal book “O Balanço da Bossa e Outra Bossas” are there to be read and re-read.
Caetano, as we know, led what would become the. In 1967, he performed “Alegria, Alegria” at the Record festival with an Argentine rock band Beat Boys. Gil, in another, took to the stage with the Mutantes to defend “Domingo no Parque”. Elis’s group didn’t like that.
In 1978, when no one cared about the electric guitar anymore, the singer, in the show “Transversal do Tempo”, under the direction of Aldir Blanc and Mauricio Tapajós, was malicious with the song “Gente”, which Caetano had just released. His album “Bicho” was seen as depoliticized. The word “Gente” appeared in the show with Coca-Cola typography.
Caetano was devastated. There was a shudder. He next composed “Diamante Verdadeiro”, recorded by . The title was an ironic reference to “Falso Brilhante”.
Some time later, they made peace – she wrote a message to Caetano who went, with Gil, to watch his last show, “Trem Azul”.
LINK PRESENT: Did you like this text? Subscribers can access seven free accesses from any link per day. Just click the blue F below.
