Estudando a Bossa Nordeste Plaza

by Mariano PrunesAfter 1976's seminal Estudando o Samba and 2006's Estudando o Pagode, in 2008 Tom Zé let his wild genius run riot on that most canonized of Brazilian musical styles (and movements), the bossa nova. The timing of Estudando a Bossa is hardly casual, for 2008 is the year that the entire country celebrated the 50th anniversary of João Gilberto's recording of "Chega de Saudade." As history goes, that 1958 release would kick-start the bossa nova movement and revolutionize music in Brazil -- and then the world -- forever. Appropriately, all year long in Brazil there were endless tributes to the movement, including a bevy of thematic releases and concerts (many by major artists). No one, however, did it with the intelligence, creativity, and -- most of all -- the irreverence of Tom Zé. Instead of performing new versions of predictable standards, Zé chose to put together a collection of 13 originals, each one referencing (actually, mocking) one famous bossa nova song or moment in its title: "O Céu Desabou" for "Você Abusou," "Outra Insensatez, Poe!" for "Insensatez," "Filho do Pato" for "O Pato." Granted, this is an album that for its full enjoyment requires knowledge not merely of Portuguese, but also of the minutia of the bossa nova movement as it happened in Brazil in the late '50s and early '60s -- the international triumph of the genre is of no concern here. In the hilarious "Jõao Nos Tribunais," Zé claims that the Brazilian Supreme Court should rule that João Gilberto must get copyrights for every song that borrows his distinctive guitar strum (that would mean every bossa nova ever recorded worldwide, of course); in "O Céu Desabou" he offers a compendium of all the absurd criticisms leveled at the genre in its day by the traditionalist music community (best one: "That singer is a ventriloquist"); or conversely, in "Bolero de Platão" he mimics the disdain that the snobbish bossa nova lyricists had for the melodrama of the bolero and other Latin romantic styles. ...