Back to Bossa.(bossa nova music)

Rosa Passos is often described as the heir to, or female equivalent of, Joao Gilberto, which is a way of saying that she is a distinguished interpreter of bossa nova at a time when gifted young Brazilian singers, like Marisa Monte, have adopted more fashionable pop styles. This won't necessarily sound appealing to those who recall bossa nova as an easy-listening diversion of the Kennedy years, epitomized by Astrud Gilberto's girlishly vacant invocation of "The Girl from Ipanema." But there has always been a difference between the musical phenomenon that began in Brazil in the late fifties and the watered-down version that flourished in the United States. Though the latter inspired brilliant collaborations--Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto; Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim--bossa nova quickly became a lounge-music punch line. "Blame It on the Bossa Nova," Eydie Gorme wailed, as Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 made a sedative of "The Look of Love." In Brazil, the perspective is entirely different. While Joao Gilberto reigns as a god, Astrud is hardly known on the beaches of Ipanema. And many key bossa-nova figures, including the incomparable Elis Regina, never found a North American audience. The divide between the domestic bossa and its export-market derivative is sure to be much brooded over next year, when Brazil celebrates bossa nova's fiftieth anniversary.

Bossa nova grew out of long-standing samba traditions, but its emergence is usually traced to a 1958 album, "Cancao do Amor Demais," by the hugely popular singer Elizete Cardoso. The album had a strange evolution. A few years earlier, Vinicius de Moraes, a playwright, poet, and diplomat, hired Jobim to write music for his play "Orfeu da Conceicao." The play, a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, was a success and generated interest in a film--the 1959 hit "Black Orpheus." But the French production company wanted a new score, leaving Vinicius scrambling for a way to introduce the songs he had written with Jobim. He chose Cardoso for her popularity and musicality, and, though initially reluctant, she agreed to make the record. (Imagine Lennon and McCartney, unable to get a record deal, having to persuade Vera Lynn to introduce their songs.) But the interpretative twist that gave the music a genuinely new feeling came from the participation of an obstreperous guitarist from Bahia, Joao Gilberto.

Jobim and Gilberto belonged to a generation that had grown up with bebop. While the tunes written by bebop innovators like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell were often too volatile and complicated for contemporary listeners, Jobim found a way of using bebop harmonies--especially the tritone, or flattened fifth--as the basis for irresistibly lyrical melodies. One of his most famous songs, "Desafinado"--the title means "slightly out of tune," or "off key"--is built almost entirely on discords. Gilberto, meanwhile, refined rhythms, banished vibrato, and subdued emotion, forging a style that was neither Brazilian samba nor American jazz. The music historian and producer Zuza Homem de Mello says that the first use of the phrase "bossa nova" was in a liner note that Jobim wrote for Gilberto, describing his "new way" of doing things; the phrase also appears in the lyric of "Desafinado."

In 1958, Rosa Passos was six years old and had been playing piano for three years. She grew up in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, her imagination fired by the early recordings of Gilberto and by the success of "Black Orpheus" (with its Luiz Bonfa score). By the age of fifteen, she was performing on local television. Yet her career was slow in taking off. She made an album in 1979, "Recriacao," introducing songs written with her longtime collaborator, Fernando de Oliveira, and then retired to Brasilia, where she married and raised a family. She rarely performed during the next decade and did not record again until 1991. In 1996, her album "Pano Pra Manga" brought her renewed attention, including an appearance at the Hollywood Bowl. Jazz musicians began to discover her: she performed in ...