The sad end of the creator of bossa nova: Video

The legendary Brazilian musician João Gilberto is overwhelmed by debt. While his daughter, the singer Bebel Gilberto, seeks to keep all their documentation and bank accounts claiming that the prestigious creator presents a picture of “mental confusion”.

The bossa nova, the music that is the hallmark of Brazil has given great popes that integrate a kind of unique artistic and creative Olympus. It is enough to think of names like those of Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto, that added to great interpreters and poets such as Vinicius de Moraes, Toquinho, Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethania, Elis Regina, or Chico Buarque among so many, allow us to measure that country , the size of a continent, it is also, artistically immense.

The fate of the musicians and their personal life transits through other lanes different from those of fame, prestige and, even to those of respect and recognition of the public. It is not new, in the history of art in general, that great talents, end their lives poor, rejected, forgotten, or tragically.

An unfortunate situation suffers, precisely, one of those heroes of the bossa nova, as João Giberto, who at 86, is about to lose everything he has achieved in his life, is burdened by debts and claims, whose origin is in your own family.

According to the latest issue of Veja magazine, the musician lives in “absolute financial hardship”, with accusations, from his own daughter, Bebel Gilberto, of presenting a picture of mental confusion, so he intends to intercept all the documentation and accounts banking of the prestigious creator. Bebel, got his father declared incapable, try at all costs that can not sign contracts or make movements in your bank account.

The magazine publishes the last picture of father and daughter together, when everything was more or less right, and it is 2015. Bebel lives in New York, but is in Brazil, to be in the first line of control of his father’s actions . Veja says that on November 27, Bebel, along with a lawyer and a justice officer, went to the musician’s apartment in the prestigious area of ​​Leblon to give him the notification that he was tied hand and foot at the mercy of the whims of his daughter. The artist did not open the door. For now, João Gilberto has been relieved of this family and judicial persecution, but deadlines are running out and time runs against him. According to Bebel, his father lives in precarious conditions, is full of debts and much of his copyright and assets have gone to a bank.

According to Veja, Giberto’s health is precarious. Those who have seen it, indicate that it weighs not more than 55 kilos and its state is deteriorating, it is locked up in its houses, in its pajamas, doing nothing, resisting. The shows announced by the composer and singer of recent years have been canceled. The future is uncertain. As the note of the Brazilian magazine ends, “it is sad that, in the final stretch of life of the Brazilian genius, as in Chega de Saudade, ‘there is no beauty, it is only sadness and melancholy.'”

Brief musical biography

Who is João Gilberto? He was born in Juazeiro, on June 10, 1931. He is considered, along with Antônio Carlos Jobim (Tom Jobim), one of the creators of bossa nova. A self-taught guitarist, he has been living in Rio de Janeiro since 1950. According to his biography, at that time, he had some success singing in the band Garotos da Lua, but he was expelled from the band due to rebelliousness, he spent some years without work, but with the persistent idea to create a new form of musical expression through the guitar. After meeting the composer Tom Jobin, a classical musician but with great taste and influenced by jazz, they merged rhythms, created their own path and there bossa nova was born. For example, João Gilberto is credited with creating the technique through which a percussive and syncopated rhythm, derived from samba, called cucrachinha, could be performed on unaccompanied guitar. “He also introduced a new way of singing, at low volume, with the pronunciation of the syllables done a few times before and sometimes after the rhythmic base and with the voice trained to eliminate almost any noise from breathing and other imperfections,” they explain. his biographers.

In 1958 was the presentation in society of the new style, through the album Canção do Amor Demais by the singer Elizeth Cardoso, which included compositions of Jobim accompanied by lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. Then, João Gilberto recorded his first album, called Chega de Saudade. The song that gives title to Gilberto’s album was also on Cardoso’s album and was a hit in Brazil. This work launched the musical career of João Gilberto, and also the musical movement Bossa nova. In addition to several compositions by Tom Jobim, the disc contained several sambas and popular songs of the ’30s arranged with the distinctive style of the newly created bossa nova. In 1960 and 1961, Gilberto released another two albums containing songs composed by a new generation of singers and composers such as Carlos Lyra and Roberto Menescal.

In less than five years, the bossa nova had already been adopted by American jazz musicians of the prestige of Stan Getz, who invited João Gilberto and Tom Jobim to collaborate in what turned out to be one of the best-selling jazz albums of the history, Getz / Gilberto. Of this work highlights the composition of Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes Garota de Ipanema that became a classic song of international pop and brought to fame Astrud Gilberto, then woman of João Gilberto and singer in this piece.

Joao and Bebel, in other times

“The next album, Ela é Carioca, was released in 1968, when João Gilberto was residing in Mexico, and the album João Gilberto, released in 1973, represents a change since the creation of bossa nova. Two Worlds, with the participation of Stan Getz and the Brazilian singer Miúcha, sister of Chico Buarque who had become João Gilberto’s wife in April 1965. The album Amoroso (1977) had arrangements by musician Claus Ogerman. In 1980 Brazil, João Gilberto worked with Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and María Bethania, who at the end of the 60s had created the Tropicalismo movement based on bossa nova and merging it with rock elements. have no composition by Tom Jobim and, instead, use songs by Caetano, Cole Porter and compositions in Spanish.The work João Voz E Violão, launched in 2000, marked a return to the classics of the bossa-nova and had the musical production of Caetano Veloso. João Gilberto also released live recordings. Examples are Live in Montreux, Prado Pereira de Oliveira and Live at Umbria Jazz. His personality has a reputation as an eccentric, perfectionist”.