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October 11, 96 |
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Jobim is proof positive that in this world there are musicians and there
are magicians. Millions of melodies are composed daily to be sung, to
become part of film scores, or to sell toothpaste on television. Suddenly
one man from Rio de Janeiro takes two notes, repeats them over and over
again to create a tune, and the greatest American jazz critic declares,
"'Aguas de Março' is one of the hundred greatest songs of this century".
Jobim takes the simplest, most banal rhythmic structure, repeats it over and over until he fills up 8 bars of a song and, from the greatest singer of this century -- Frank Sinatra -- to the humblest nightclub crooner in Bangkok, everyone sings "The Girl from Ipanema" to the point of exhaustion (theirs, not the music's). As if this weren't enough, the One-Finger Man, as he's known in the US, beats out a simple samba of just one note and the top echelons of American jazz -- not the ones who produce birthday party music and adore "exotic" Latin rhythms -- but the intelligent ones, the most creative stratum of American music falls down on its knees and repeats that same note to the point where Tom becomes known throughout the US and the world. |
 | Jobim is like Mozart, who at the peak of his creativity composed the simplest, most crystaline "Divertimento for Strings". Take a look at the score and you'll see there's nothing new there. A chord in C major next to a D major. Nonetheless, for 200 years the world thrills to hear this progression that's so "obvious". A friend of mine was with Karajan at the end of his life and heard the greatest conductor of this century declare, "What a shame that I'm going to die now. I just discovered some new mysteries in Mozart's Divertimenti and I need a few more years to understand them better..." |
| Jobim is like Erik Satie who, at the end of the last century, while everyone else was composing music by the barrel-load, caught up in the pathos of romanticism and unbridled passion, this solitary Frenchman was composing his "Gymnopédies". A few notes floating nonchalantly over a pair of seventh chords that follow one after the other indefinitely, and this static monotony manages to crystallize into what theoreticians consider the true starting point of 20th century music. Despite the flood of melodies that this century's culture industry has produced, Satie's "Gymnopédies" continue to reign supreme on the Olympus where musical masters dwell, intriguing and enchanting everyone. |
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| For certain, Jobim is like Mozart, like Satie. Or as Stan Getz put it: "The greatest melodist of the second half of the 20th century". |
Julio Medaglia is an orchestra conductor.
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