Bossa Nova and João Gilberto: Music and Cultural Context

https://moodle.utu.fi/course/info.php?id=21274 This course aims at examining the Bossa Nova style and giving it a sense of context by looking at its broader relevance in Brazilian culture and its influence abroad. Bossa Nova is a popular musical style developed in the late 1950s, which emerged from the traditional Samba in the context of post-war jazz. Bossa Nova originated among college students united under the identity of modernization and started as an apolitical movement. In the 1960s, Bossa Nova was met with international acclaim through artists such as João Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto, Tom Jobim and Stan Getz. The album “Getz/Gilberto” became the Best Album of the Year 1965 (Grammy Awards) and won the Grammys for Best Jazz Instrumental Album and Best Engineered Recording (Non-Classical), and "The Girl from Ipanema" became the Best Record of the Year. In spite of its success, the musical movement suffered from an ideological split with the raise of a more nationalistic wave aimed at questioning the influence of the jazz in search of a Brazilian authenticity. Bossa Nova raises important questions on musical identity and reciprocal influence of musical genres. In view of this, the position, history, and memory of Bossa Nova is being reassessed and reinterpreted in the scholarly literature. - Prof. Dr. Bohdan Syroyid Syroyid https://syroyid.com/