Vinicius de Moraes

Marcus Vinícius da Cruz de Melo Moraes (Rio de Janeiro, October 19, 1913 - Rio de Janeiro, July 9, 1980) was a Brazilian musician, diplomat, and poet. He stood out especially in contemporary Brazilian popular music, especially as one of the main authors in Bossa nova. As a poet he wrote the lyrics of a large number of songs that have become classics, and as a performer he participated in many albums..

The first Bossa Nova he composed was "Loura ou Morena", at the age of 14. In the early 1960s, he abandoned a fledgling diplomatic career to dedicate himself fully to music and acting. His way of presenting himself on stage was peculiar: a table, a glass, a bottle of whiskey, and a bucket with ice. From his table he sang, recited, chatted and, in short, established total communication with his audience.

Vinicius de Morães knew how to combine Brazilian music with jazz in a pioneering way. Among the lyrics of his best-known works, it is worth mentioning & # 34; Garota de Ipanema & # 34; (The Girl from Ipanema), "La samba de una nota", "Tarde em Itapoã", "Carta ao Tom 74" and "Chega de Saudade". Singers such as Frank Sinatra and Pierre Barouh performed his compositions, which, together with his distinguished artistic career, eventually led to the name of Vinícius de Moraes enjoying great prestige international in life, which has remained today, and has turned it into an enduring symbol of Brazilian music and poetry.

Biography

Early Years

Born into a family fond of music, de Moraes began writing poetry at an early age. At the age of 14 he became friends with the brothers Paulo and Haroldo Tapajós and with the latter he composed Loura ou Morena , his first song. In 1929, he began to study law in Rio de Janeiro. Beginning in 1932 he wrote the lyrics to ten songs that were recorded by the Tapajós brothers. When he finished his studies, he published his books Caminho para a distância (1933) and Forma e exégese . Later (1935) he began working as a film censor and wrote his third book Ariana, a mulher (1936).

Advanced studies and beginning of your career at the OMA

In 1938 de Moraes settled in England on a scholarship awarded by the British government to the University of Oxford and wrote Novos Poemas. In 1941 he returned to Rio and began writing film reviews for newspapers and magazines. Two years later he joined the Brazilian diplomatic corps and published his book Five Elegies . In 1946 he was sent to Los Angeles as vice consul on his first diplomatic assignment and published his work Poems, sonnets and ballads .

In the early 1950s, de Moraes returned to Brazil due to the death of his father. His first samba (composed together with the musician Antônio Maria) was Quando tu passas por mim and was published in 1953. That year he moved to France as second secretary of the Brazilian embassy. His play Orfeu da Conceição won the São Paulo IV Centennial Competition in 1954. The following year he wrote the lyrics to some of Cláudio Santoro's chamber music pieces. In 1959 Marcel Camus made the film Orfeu da Conceição with the title Black Orpheus. At that time, de Moraes came into contact with Antonio Carlos Jobim, initiating a friendship and a collaboration that some time later, with the incorporation of João Gilberto, would give rise to a movement of renewal in Brazilian music. Jobim writes the music for Se todos fossem iguais a você, Um nome de mulher and other songs in the film, recorded, among others, by Luís Bonfá. Black Orpheus won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the British Academy Award.At the time he was consul in Montevideo. After a return to his diplomatic postings in France and Uruguay, he published his works Livro de sonnetos and Novos poemas II .

The beginnings of bossa nova

In 1958, the singer Elizeth Cardoso released the album Canção do amor demais, which marked the beginning of bossa-nova. This CD only contains compositions by the Jobim-de Moraes duo or by one of them (Canção do amor demais, Luciana, Estrada branca, Chega de saudade, Otra vez...), in a production that also featured João Gilberto on the last two tracks. From this album the career of all of them received a great boost.

There is a majority consensus among music critics (and specialists in the genre) that Chega de saudade is the theme that opens the bossa nova.

Musical recognition and collaborations

In the 1960s, Vinícius collaborated with many well-known Brazilian singers and musicians, particularly Toquinho (De Moraes' most frequent collaborator and one of his great friends). His songs Para uma menina com uma flor and Samba da bênção (with music by Baden Powell) were included in the soundtrack of Un homme et une femme (by Claude Lelouch, 1966), winner of the Cannes Film Festival.

Apart from his fellow Brazilians, hundreds of performers of many nationalities and styles have recorded some of his more than 400 songs. Among them, Garota de Ipanema (with music by Tom Jobim) stands out for the countless number of interpretations, versions, adaptations, translations and recordings of which he has been the subject. It is estimated to be one of the three most covered songs in the history of contemporary music, along with Bésame Mucho (written by the Mexican Consuelo Velázquez) and Yesterday, by Paul McCartney. Perhaps it is due to the fact that Vinicius' poetry is closely linked to Bossa Nova and Brazilian popular music, coupled with his lifestyle, that his work does not enjoy the consideration it deserves within intellectual circles and the world of letters However, there are several poets, writers, critics and essayists inside and outside of Brazil who consider him one of the three greatest exponents of poetry in the Portuguese language. His poems achieve a highly appreciated harmony and aesthetic beauty, and the philosophical-romantic background in them is interpreted as true shortcuts to happiness. Perhaps the best example of the above is the poem Para viver um grande amor, where all the philosophy and poetic form preferred by this great bohemian are synthesized.

A special mention deserves his enormous attraction to women. Everything seems to indicate that Moraes was married at least seven times and fathered ten children.

Death and Legacy

Vinícius de Moraes suffered from alcoholism most of his life, and on one occasion expressed: «O uisque é o melhor amigo do homem — é o cão engarrafado» ("Whiskey is man's best friend, is the dog in a bottle"). After a long period with health problems, which included several visits to rehabilitation clinics, he died of pulmonary edema at his home in Rio de Janeiro on July 9, 1980, at the age of 66. At the time of his death, she was in the company of his ninth wife, Gilda de Queirós Mattoso, and the faithful Toquinho. He was buried in the San Juan Bautista Cemetery in Rio de Janeiro.

In 2006, Moraes was posthumously reinstated into the Brazilian diplomatic corps. In February 2010, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approved his posthumous promotion to the rank of ambassador (first class minister).

In December 2014, following a three-week public vote, the mascot for the 2016 Summer Olympics was named after him.

The Fuse

Vinicius with the poet Pierre-Seghers.

One of his great works is the record from the recording sessions at the café-concert La Fusa in Buenos Aires, in 1970. Due to its success, a second album was recorded in La Fusa from the city of Mar del Plata (Buenos Aires province), where in the summer of 1971 they played several famous songs, with the voice of Maria Creuza and the guitar of Antonio Pecci (Toquinho). Vinicius suggested to achieve a better result of the album, that the songs be recorded in the studio and that later, the voices of the enthusiastic, happy and emotional public from Río de la Plata be added. Today, if you listen carefully to the record, you can appreciate how Toquinho improvises while Vinicius addresses a few words to his audience; then the cut of the recording is heard, and the change in tone of Toquinho's guitar is noted. Vinicius says that those were some of the best years of his life, where there was no shortage of women and whiskey. With his cava voice, tinged with cigarettes and alcohol, Vinicius sings like never before.

The idea of making a LP of the show that I recently presented at La Fusa (the adorable concert café of Silvina and Coco Pérez) together with the Bahiana singer Maria Creuza and the guitarist and paulist composer Toquinho (Antonio Pecci Filho), found an immediate response in the sensitivity of Alfredo Radoszynski, director of the label Trova. In the case of a record for the big audience and not just for a minority of fans, I suggested to Alfredo to record it in the studio, to avoid the common distortions in live recordings, where the artist has to be more attentive to the public than to sound reproduction devices. So we did, recording also the atmosphere of La Fusa and the heat of the applause that the Portuguese public gave us in our recitals. [...] I then asked my friend Alfredo to invite two excellent Argentine musicians he had worked with in November 1969 at the Émbassy Theatre. It was Mario Mojarra Fernández and Enrique Zurdo Roizner, who fulfilled their work perfectly. It was two night sessions that ended with the first lights of the day, totaling 12 hours of work in an atmosphere of bohemia, of great cordiality; where the primordial elements were not missing: bottles of whisky and beautiful women. We record our show with the same spirit of intimate communication and informality that we like to convey our songs. The rest is due to the refined ears of technician Gerd Baumgartner and the good offices of Mike Ribas, whose fraternal collaboration we deeply appreciate.

Vinicius de Moraes, August 1970.

PD: the percussion was carried out by Chango Farías Gómez, you can currently read in the disk data.

Most famous songs

• Garota de Ipanema (music: Tom Jobim)
• Samba Em Preludio (music: Baden Powell)
• I sing to Lucia de Yoan (music: Tom Jobim)
• Happinesse (music: Tom Jobim)
• Water to drink (music: Tom Jobim)
• Insensatez (music: Tom Jobim)
• I know you love (music: Tom Jobim)
• Chega de saudade (music: Tom Jobim)
• Or what a tinha to be (music: Tom Jobim)
• Tarde em Itapoã (music: Toquinho)
• A tonga da mironga do kabuletê (music: Toquinho)
• Samba de bênção (music: Baden Powell)
• Berimbau (music: Baden Powell)
• Você e eu (music: Carlos Lyra)
• Song of Ossanha