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Sergio Lima: Chico (Buarque) used to say that Tom was his own best lyricist.
Edu Lobo: He was a great lyricist for himself.
SL: It's impressive, that in the days of "Chega de Saudade" he'd already done "Outra Vez", which is a lyric of his that is gorgeous, and it came before "Chega de Saudade".
EL: He wrote great music.
Luiz Roberto: And he did "As praias desertas" ("Deserted beaches") very early on, in 1958. Because of the Tom Jobim Admirers' Home Page (Clube do Tom), I've begun to find out everything about him that I'd never imagined ever learning.
EL: It's quite early. That whole series of songs he did when he was just
twenty-something. Those songs, all of them, "Derradeira Primavera", those
fantastic...
LR: It was vocal chamber music; where in the world do you think he was
getting the inspiration for that...
EL: He had a passion for Villa-Lobos and...
LR: He like Villa, he liked Chopin.
EL: Liked Chopin, but his real passion was for Villa-Lobos. I think he got
all that spirit from Villa. It's very present in his music. Unmistakable!
SL: And even at the end of his life, some of his physical gestures and so
on looked like those of Villa. That business of smoking cigars, for
instance; he took alot of cues from Villa.
EL: I had a conversation with Helena (Jobim, Tom's sister) the other day,
and she said exactly the same thing you're saying, that he started to
become. . . he strove more and more to be similar to Villa, the cigar
thing, whatever. As for the hat, I don't know if Villa used a hat.
SL: The long hair.
The sound of Brazil
EL: He started to take on the characteristics of. . .that he really adored
Villa, took that sonority of his, that spirit, that genial quality that
Villa has, that when you hear it you say, "That's Brazil". Brazil - nobody
else does that...
That's not Stravinsky, it's not Debussy, not Ravel, though all that stuff
is there too... there's Debussy there, there's Ravel, there's Stravinsky,
there's everything, but it's also Brazil, and that part is Villa-Lobos,
pure unadulterated Brazil, it's something that we've lost, people have lost
that enchantment with the sound of Brazil.
LR: With few exceptions, which those few people maintain to this day.
EL: But in general it's been lost around here.
LR: Culturally too.
EL: Exactly. When you see a film about the Amazon with a soundtrack by
some foreigner, y'know, and he composes okay, but you listen and you
realize that it's missing the main ingredient, which is the sound of
Brazil. As good as the guy may be, as much as he may have studied in all
the best schools, as good as he may be as an orchestral composer, there's
just no way. Take somebody, whoever, take somebody whose music I adore --
Gil Evans for example -- he will not have that Brazilian sonority, he'll
have some other sonority that is equally beautiful, but if it's a film
about the Amazon rainforest you've gotta have that thing. Who has that
sound? With Villa-Lobos you hear exactly what I'm talking about.
LR: And Tom showed us that too.
The Bossa Nova
EL: That's why I say that it's very limiting to speak of Tom as the
inventor of the Bossa Nova. I think that's a minor achievement, in
relation to him it's not saying very much.
LR: It was a phase.
EL: Right, a stage in his development. That's why it's bad to label him.
When did the Bossa Nova end? That's what irritates me so much. It ended
when? On what day? "On 17 September 1972 the Bossa Nova ceased to exist."
The fact is, it was transformed, the people changed. The ones who kept
playing the original Bossa Nova sound disappeared along with that sound.
Because things grow, people change, they choose other paths and so on, and
now that thing there is just the name for something that started in '58
which was fantastically important, it opened everything up. Now
everybody's gonna do whatever they want. Go where they feel like going.
In my day I tried hard not to imitate Tom. Nowadays, for instance, I think
my music has much more of Tom's influence now that I'm 53 years old. Or at
least I feel like I reject his influence less than I did when I was 23 or
22, when I had to reject it or else I was sunk. "Choro Bandido" is a type
of song I didn't do much in those days.
SL: I agree with that, especially with respect to your waltzes, I think
they have a lot of...
EL: The "Valsa Brasileira". That has Villa, it has Tom, it has that music
that I learned to like so much, which nourishes us. On the other hand,
there are composers that you admire profoundly but who don't inspire you.
I could listen to Stravinsky for months on end, and obviously I'm amazed by
his music, by his orchestrations. But his language is very distant from
mine.
The Inheritors
SL: I just want to ask one final question: a lot of people think of you
today as the natural heir of Tom. How do you feel about that?
EL: Well, I think I'm one of the inheritors of Tom's mantle...
SL: But they think that you're a great musician and now that Tom's gone
it's your turn.
EL: I think he left a lot of heirs, I honestly think there are a lot of
people of my generation who learned from him and who are out there on the
scene, I don't know. Sometimes you go somewhere and meet somebody you've
never seen before in your life, who's never made it in the market ever, and
he plays a kind of music that has those qualities, those chords and
everything.
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