Edu Lobo

 
Edu Lobo is the most important musician of the so-called second Bossa Nova generation. Defined by Tom Jobim and João Gilberto - basically by them - some of the "bossa's" parameters were understood in a deformed way. Which is to say: the deal about "love, smile and pain" was not exactly what is constantly remembered and repeated, to this day, in characterizing the movement as "alienated". The lyrics Newton Mendonça wrote for Meditação, with music by Tom, were clear: "Whoever believed in the love, in the smile, in the pain, dreamt, dreamt and lost his peace of mind". It could have been perfectly perceived as political, had it been written some years later.

However, in the "bossa's" first moments, it is undeniable that social worries were not the order of the day. Born in the end of the fifties, it was the reflection - and Carlos Lyra has said this many times - of an optimism engendered along with Juscelino Kubitschek's developmental politics (we would pay for this later on, but that's another story). And more, the "bossa" did not seem to worry about anything besides itself, its rhythm, its self-centered gaze. Well, some composers, singers, lyricists who came after Jobim, João and Newton Mendonça ended up giving this idea a certain validity, but that's also another story.

Fact is that the "bossa" did not seem worried about another Brazil besides the one that could be seen from the sidewalks of Ipanema. Naturally, Tom and João are not to blame for that. They could not have disagreed more with such a reductionist perspective. Nonetheless, along with the perfectly pitched way of singing, the "bossa" swept away "baiões", "milongas", "toadas", guitar "modas", "cirandas", "maracatus", etc. etc.

Brazil, however, would change from the Juscelinian euphoria to the tensions of the Jânio-Jango period and that which we know followed. It would no longer see itself as a planned, impervious miracle, paradise kissed by the tropical breeze. There was something else. There was something to applaud, but also something to criticize. Actually, there was more to criticize. And thus, in this environment, bossa's second generation was engendered. And that's when Edu Lobo appeared.

As no other composer of his generation, Edu Lobo applied bossa's harmonic sophistication to his vast knowledge of Brazilian popular music - or vice versa. Still, he composed about his backyard. But his backyard was infinitely more vast. It stretched out through the countryside, perceiving other images besides those that sang of sun, of salt, of south as seen through the window. Tom Jobim, always he, had made the existence of this perspective clear. Edu raised the blinds.

He walked, curiously, in two apparently contradictory directions. If he brought the new popular music (the music of bossa nova's second generation) themes such as the northeastern, the black, the Indian, the disowned, that which had not aligned itself to the Juscelinian model (taking the metaphor one step beyond, the fisherman in Arrastão - lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes - highlights that Brazilian who had not yet bought - and who would not buy - his brand new Volkswagen beetle), he progressed, in harmonic and melodic terms, towards an erudite texture - within the possibilities of Brazilian erudite musical language, as Villa-Lobos and the ever-present Tom Jobim wished it. And thus his first album contained that fisherman (was he fishing metaphors?) and the north-eastern with no face in Borandá (with his own lyrics); it also contained the exemplary Canção do Amanhecer (lyrics, which can very well be considered a poem, by Vinicius), consolidating the aesthetic model of the modern Brazilian song.

Caetano Veloso, a man from the Recôncavo Region in Bahia, recognizes, in an elucidating parentheses made in his book Verdade Tropical that: "Actually, the north-eastern modalism came through to us more through Edu Lobo, from Rio, than from the border between Bahia and Pernambuco". Later on, Caetano ascertains, referring to Arena Conta Zumbi, with songs by Edu: "In fact, it is no small feat that a musical, coherent and grounded in Brazil, was staged - something that, to this day, seems like an unattainable goal to Brazilians. Noel Rosa and Ary Barroso, Dorival Caymmi and Lamartine Babo dreamt of it. Edu Lobo, the young composer of the music in Zumbi, made that dream come true in 1965, in a collaboration with (Augusto) Boal and Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, who wrote the text. But later on, we forgot and went back to lamenting the fact that we have marvelous popular composers and cannot organize a tradition of musicals, neither in the theatre nor in films, with which to fill our lives with enchantment".

Well, Caetano was speaking of the compound music-text-stage. He even says that Chico Buarque's attempts to organize the tradition of musicals attest to the fact that the formula was forgotten. Even if the item "stage" is considered under the perspective of this analysis, the stage as motivation, in the partnership between Edu Lobo and Chico Buarque, gave birth to one of the most, beautiful albums ever released in Brazil - and it is reasonable to say anywhere in the world. I am talking about O Grande Circo Místico, composed in the beginning of the eighties Curitiba's Teatro Guaíra ballet. The exemplary song Beatriz originates from this effort, the first mark of the surpassing - of formal maturity - of the Jobinian model of composition. Fifteen years after his debut with stage music, Edu Lobo topped master Jobim, his most constant orientation, and determined himself as the best composer of his time.

Aloysio de Oliveira, a type provider of means for bossa nova (and the music that followed it, since he produced Edu Lobo's first album after having produced the meeting of Jobim and João), used to say - much later, without being awarded the merit of the assertion, repeated by people outside Brazil - that there was no other music alive in the universe besides the one made here. In the 80's, after living in the United States for decades, and quite disillusioned with what he saw and heard there and in other corners, complained sadly that: "The last great American composer" - and we know so very well that the popular song format was inherited from the United States, due to the adaptation of musicals to the limitations of duration of the wax record - "was Jimmy Webb, who lasted a mere two years after 1970. Aloysio predicted the end of an era. Very well, Webb drowned in alcohol and other addictions. But would it have been possible, for him to continue creating, as he created, in his native land?

Probably not. After the hecatomb-phenomenon called the Beatles, landmark of marketing over musical creation (this occurred with artistic creation as a whole), the decadence of Western culture was accelerated in a speed as extraordinary as the changes mass communications. They are interconnected, such things, and it is necessary to examine the extremely special Brazilian conditions so that we may understand the reasons for our - let us say - resistance.

As no other American nation did, Brazil incorporated the elements supplied by the Indian, first owners of the land, and by the expatriated Africans, to the urban culture. A peculiar lubricious disposition (a peculiar colonizing disorder) of the Portuguese led to the creation of a new race, otherwise, not recognized as such. The territorial immensity, the geographic contrasts, the localized foreign invasions came to add differences to that which was already different. In the body of this new people, object of Darcy Ribeiro's and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's passion, or Villa-Lobos' and (of course) Tom Jobim's, another culture was designed, in continuos formation, yet uncrystallized, yet undefined and for this very same reason, creative, alive, dynamic, dialectic.

It was of these people, of this culture and of its questions, consciously, that the youth of the second generation of the bossa nova wanted to talk about. It spoke of a social body in evolution. It evolved along with it - and was able to perpetuate itself in this search. Edu Lobo established the synthesis-in-motion. Born in Rio, of Pernambucan father, he had diversity at his reach. And so did others. His genius allowed him to take advantage of this diversity more than any other of his time, to compose a musical translation of his people as Villa-Lobos and Jobim had succeeded in doing. Edu is the third tip of the contemporary Brazilian music trinity.

Like the other two before him, Edu Lobo combined inspiration with the innate capacity of translating day-to-day observations into beauty, of finding greatness in common motivations, the great care of the meticulous, perfectionist craftsman. He is a composer of definitive works, of unappealable finish. For this reason, his music for ballet, for films, for television or theatre are a body other than the work it complements, a body with autonomous life (that quite often survives the work which originated it). For this reason, his creations, each and every one of them, are a parameter.

Edu composes, admirably, bossa nova, sambas, marches, frevos, beach songs (which have ceased to be a Caymmian privilege), ballads, incredibly slow songs, marchas rancho, instrumental experimentations - perhaps, the only terrain into which he has not ventured is the samba enredo - theme songs for samba schools - but who can tell the future. He writes beautiful lyrics, even having the best lyricists in the nation as his partners. Distinguished pianist and guitarist, he is an accomplished arranger and first-rate singer. His instruments are always acoustic, though he does not shy away from modern technology when the trade calls for it.

And if it is important to speak of the jack of all trade, it is even more important to highlight the fastidiousness of his writing. As in the case of all great creators, Edu Lobo invented his own music. He created his syntax, his accent, his brand of intervals and syncopations, his harmonic structure, his melodic tracks, his trademark. Even if he makes a point of identifying the deepest roots of what he does. An example: he says Valsa Brasileira is Jobinian (he says the same of another masterpiece, Choro Bandido; both with lyrics by Chico Buarque), and it is true. It is also Villa-lobian. On the other hand, Jobim did not compose it, and neither did Villa - both are presupposed for the existence of Valsa Brasileira, and the third vertex of the founding trinity of our modern music does not appear as a sole emulator, he is, in fact, an essential artisan of the foundation.

In historical terms, and there is nothing speculative about this, Edu Lobo has been walking side by side with a modernity he inaugurated up to a limit which is - and here, I agree - left up to pure speculation. His last pieces, mature works, show the non-accommodated conciseness of those who hold surprises. If, against all market expectations, Brazilian music remains rich, in evolution, Edu Lobo will be ahead of it. The picture painted by this songbook - whose parts Edu made a point of annotating by hand, with the care he dedicates to any task he takes on - allows the music student or lover, to confirm the adjectives used in the text. We are dealing with one of the greatest collections of works of the 20th century. And I'll repeat: it is the best production of the best music made in the world.
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