The Subversive Songs of Bossa Nova: Tom Jobim in the Era of Censorship

Abstract

Bossa nova flourished in Brazil at the end of the 1950s. This was a time of rapid development and economic prosperity in the country, following President Jucelino Kubitschek’s 1956 proclamation of “fifty years of progress in five,” but after the 1964 coup d’état, when General Humberto Castello Branco’s military regime took control of Brazil, the positive energy of the bossa nova era quickly dissipated.1 Soon after the 1964 coup the atmosphere changed: civil rights were suppressed, political dissent was silenced, and many outspoken singer-songwriters, authors and playwrights, journalists, and academics were censored, arrested, and imprisoned. First-generation bossa nova artists, however, were able to avoid such persecution because their music was generally perceived as apolitical.2 This essay challenges this perception by analyzing the ways in which iconic bossa nova composer Antônio Carlos (“Tom”) Jobim inscribed subversive political thought through musical syntax and lyrical allegory in several of his post-1964 songs. We begin by providing a brief overview of the socio-political history of 1960s Brazil, considering some general features of the Brazilian protest song (canção engajada) before focusing on Chico Buarque’s anthemic “Roda viva” as an exemplar of that style. We then move to a detailed examination of the Jobim compositions “Sabiá” and “Ligia,” the lyrics to both of which speak of love, longing, and saudade in the manner of many bossa nova songs, but within which can be found incisive (if carefully coded) critiques of the Castello Branco government. In order to contextualize these works, we will consider aspects of Jobim’s composition studies and describe his affinity with and incorporation of tonal and post-tonal compositional techniques. Because Brazil’s musical landscape—including much of its popular music—was highly informed by European art music syntax, this kind of analysis is relevant; indeed we believe that a careful consideration of such relationships is necessary for a sensitive hermeneutic look at Brazilian popular music generally.3 We will describe how meaning can be coded in harmony: how harmonic syntax can add layers of meaning that reinforce the covert meaning of words through the use of compositional techniques like deceptive motion, mode mixture, and chromatic modulation, similar to text painting in the European art song tradition. By contextualizing Jobim’s work through engagement with its contemporaneous political and artistic history, and by considering the influence of aspects of Jobim’s musical studies through sensitive analysis of the works themselves, we will make claims about the relationship between musical syntax, lyrical meaning, and political motivation.

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