With this wealth of music to work with, it was only a matter of time before Brazilian music burst its national boundaries, something that duly happened in the late 1950s with the phenomenon of bossa nova. Several factors led to its development. The classically trained Tom Jobim , equally in love with Brazilian popular music and American jazz, met up with fine Bahian guitarist João Gilberto and his wife Astrud Gilberto . The growth in the Brazilian record and communications industries allowed bossa nova to sweep Brazil and come to the attention of people like Stan Getz in the United States; and, above all, there developed a massive market for a sophisticated urban sound among the newly burgeoning middle class in Rio, who found Jobim and Gilberto's slowing down and breaking up of what was still basically a samba rhythm an exciting departure. It rapidly became an international craze, and Astrud Gilberto's quavering version of one of the earliest Jobim numbers, A Garota de Ipanema, became the most famous of all Brazilian songs, The Girl from Ipanema - although the English lyric is considerably less suggestive than the Brazilian original.
Over the next few years the craze eventually peaked and fell away, though not before leaving most people with the entirely wrong impression that bossa nova is a mediocre brand of muzak well suited to lifts and airports. In North America it eventually sank under the massed strings of studio producers, but in Brazil it never lost its much more delicate touch, usually with a single guitar and a crooner holding sway. Early bossa nova still stands as one of the crowning glories of Brazilian music, and all the classics - you may not know the names of tunes like Corcovado, Isaura, Chega de Saudade and Desafinado but you'll recognize the melodies - are on the easily available double-album compilations called A Arte de Tom Jobim and A Arte de João Gilberto; Jobim's is the better of the two.

The great Brazilian guitarist Luiz Bonfá also made some fine bossa nova records: the ones where he accompanies Stan Getz are superb. The bossa nova records of Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd are one of the happiest examples of inter-American co-operation, and as they're easy to find in European and American shops they make a fine introduction to Brazilian music. They had the sense to surround themselves with Brazilian musicians, notably Jobim, the Gilbertos and Bonfá, and the interplay between their jazz and the equally skilful Brazilian response is often brilliant.

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Live bossa nova is rare these days, restricted to the odd bar or hotel lobby, unless you're lucky enough to catch one of the great names in concert - although Tom Jobim, sadly, died in 1995. But then bossa nova always lent itself more to records than live performance.

Brazilian women singers
Brazilian music has a strong tradition of producing excellent women singers. The best of all time was undoubtedly the great Elis Regina , from Rio Grande do Sul, whose magnificent voice was tragically stilled in 1984, when she was at the peak of her career, by a drugs overdose. She interpreted everything, and whatever Brazilian genre she touched she invariably cut the definitive version. Two of her songs in particular became classics, Aguas de Março and Carinhoso, the latter being arguably the most beautiful Brazilian song of all. Again, the A Arte de Elis Regina double album is the best bet, although there is also a superb record of Elis with Tom Jobim, called Elis e Tom. After her death the mantle fell on Gal Costa , a very fine singer although without the extraordinary depth of emotion Elis could project, whose version of Aquarela do Brasil inspired Terry Gilliam to the idea for the film "Brazil", and whose LP, named after the song, is highly recommended, along with the A Arte de Gal Costa compilation.

More recently, a new generation of women singers has carried the tradition forward. The most prominent amongst those who have come into their own in the 1990s has been Marisa Monte ; the classic Cor de Rosa e Carvão is the best introduction to her enormous talent. Other up-and-coming women singers include Silvia Torres , Belô Veloso (a niece of Caetano), and the latest sensation, Virginia Rodrigues ; it took a couple of albums for her remarkable voice to find the right producer, but her most recent album, Nós, suggests that Marisa Monte may have to look to her laurels in the years to come.

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