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Welcome To BossaNovaVideo, my website
dedicated to the most beautiful music in the world.....bossa nova.
All About Bossa Nova!
The bossa nova had its birth in Brazil. It was born in Rio de Janeiro,
the musical city by the sea. A group of youngsters seeking something different in music and a composer by the name of Antônio Carlos Jobim were getting together in local bars to play and create some of their ideas. Little did
they know that a young man from the north by the name of João Gilberto would cross their paths and
take them to musical heights they never dreamed imaginable. João didn’t know it either, but
out of his musical expression, a new idea, a seductive and velvety soft carpet of possibilities was about to emerge. This
was - bossa nova! This webpage honors this movement, contains an in depth history of the music, pictures, the songs and
a list of videos.
Songs like "Chega de Saudade" and "Desafinado" started to appear over local broadcast stations.
Jobims’ melodic display of notes sprinkled delicately over his keyboard along with the deliberate syncopation of Gilberto's
voice and intelligently unpredictable, yet quiet rhythms on his guitar, were beginning to move a country of samba, military
dictatorship, bleak class structure and industrial stagnation onto the global music scene which until today, has never been
surpassed. In the eyes of many, Brazil still is, the bossa nova. 1958 was generally considered by most, as the year that the
bossa nova "movement" officially started. Others argue that it really started with that delicious "syncopated beat" in
1953 with the Laurindo Almeida Quartet.
In the early sixties "The Girl from Ipanema" hit the United States airwaves and caused a musical
frenzy of excitement over this "new beat" and the U. S. State Department sent guitarist Charlie Byrd and saxophonist Stan
Getz to Rio de Janeiro to be part of this new musical culture. In 1962 many of the new musicians and singers came to appear
at Carnegie Hall. The audience fell in love with the new sound and it wasn’t long before bossa nova became an international
phenomenon. Its influence is of major importance around the world.
Other songs like "Meditation", "One Note Samba", "Corcovado", "Insensitive", Aguas de Março","Ela é Carioca", "Agua de Beber", "Wave", and "Só
Danço Samba" began to appear, with such artists as Astrud Gilberto, Nara Leão,
Roberto Menescal, Elis Regina, Carlos Lyra, The Tamba Trio, Os Cariocas and Vinicius de Moraes singing their musical renditions.
The bars, clubs, airwaves and streets around the world were caught up in the new beat, and Brazil was finding her rightful
place in the musical world. Little did we know that the chance meeting of west-coast cool jazz and samba would lead to this
wonderful, seductive and sophisticated sound of this new beat.
Many of the original composers and singers of this movement have passed
on, but surely have not been forgotten. Other forms of music have replaced it but have never taken its place. There will always
be room in this world for just "one more single note" of.....bossa nova.
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| Meet the group that started it all! |
About Bill Dee
Mr. Dee is a bossa nova guitarist and has over 700 original LPs
and CDs that go back to the '60‘s. His collection also contains many books, songbooks and manuscripts that
are bossa nova related. He also collects bossa nova videos (about 178 at present, which is about 71,000 feet of
film footage) that include such artists as Tom Jobim, João Gilberto, Baden Powell, Elizeth Cardoso,
Caetano Veloso, Luiz Bonfá, Sebastião Tapajos, Carlos Lyra, Vinicius de
Moraes, Laurindo Almeida, Stan Getz, Astrud Gilberto, Bola Sete, Nara Leão, Wanda Sá, Toquinho,
Elis Regina, Roberto Menescal and others.
He started playing the guitar at 15 and at age 22 took classical guitar lessons
from Bob Flanary, then during the '70's made three trips to Rio de Janeiro to enjoy Carnaval and lived there for about eleven
months. Bossa nova has always been the light that guides him. The softness and emotional content of its sound...is why this
site exists. He has reached out across the waters to Norway, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Great Britain, Spain,
Switzerland, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Hawaii, Russia, Singapore, Greece, Peru, Puerto Rico and Japan, to find friends
who share this phenomenon called bossa nova. He is very impressed with finding out that this movement is world-wide
and continues to grow. He receives lots of inquiries about bossa nova. Some asking which are the best CDs or old
LPs to purchase, what books to read and where they can buy lyrics and written music. He also has worked on
many compositions of guitarist, Luiz Bonfa and they can be found on Youtube where fingering of the songs are available.
He is looking for people who have their own bossa nova videos,
original film footage or TV recordings, in order to build up his collection, in hope that at some point in time, it
will turn out to be one of the larger bossa nova video archives that can be used for historical reference. Film footage
once held as archives in Brazil are lost forever due to a fire many years ago. He is attempting to restore it as
much as possible with the help of others, so that much of its historical significance can be saved for future generations to
view. This is an undertaking of huge proportions and very much worth the effort. At some point in time the
entire archive will be donated to an appropriate concern that will keep it forever as an important historical reference.
Aside from his love of bossa nova, he enjoys classical music, opera,
jazz, hiking, art, nature, science, archaeology, fine wine, sculpting, birding, foreign films, and digging for fossils. He
also started two groups in Seattle, Dua Bossa and Passarim. The latter is still thriving although he
is no longer playing with them.
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