2023-06-06 17:49:35
She was the one who gave voice to ‘La chica de Ipanema’, that worldwide hit song that was later sung by Madonna, Frank Sinatra, Pablo Milanés, Amy Winehouse and even Antonio González, ‘El Pescaílla’, and which sold millions of records around the world. . The one who first sang that song in English, or rather, whispered, because her song glided like silk over vinyl, was Astrud Gilberto. A pioneer of bossa nova, she was only 22 years old when she recorded the song on March 18, 1963, with lyrics by Vinícius de Moraes and music by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Astrud Gilberto died this Monday at the age of 83, news that was confirmed by her granddaughter Sofia Gilberto on social networks.
«Astrud was the real girl who brought the bossa nova of Ipanema to the world. She was the pioneer and the best. At the age of 22, she gave voice to the English version of ‘Garota de Ipanema’ and gained international fame”, Sofia wrote about her grandmother, who was married to João Gilberto, one of the fathers of the new Brazilian musical style.
With a German father and a Brazilian mother, her real name was Astrud Evangelina Weinert. She was born in Salvador, in the state of Bahia, on March 29, 1940. She had music in her genes. Her mother, Evangelina Neves Lobo Weinert, played various instruments and often sang with her husband in Brazil. Her debut in music came with the presentation of ‘Noite de amor, do sorriso e da flor’, in 1960, the year in which she shared the stage with greats of Brazilian music, such as Nara Leão, Dori Caymmi or Elza Soares.
whims of chance
That his voice went around the world has a lot of capricious chance. The great names of the new genre were gathered in a New York studio in 1963. The Brazilian guitarist and singer João Gilberto was going to record an album with the American saxophonist Stan Getz. The cause of this unusual accumulation of talent was a hot, sensual and sinuous new rhythm: the bossa nova. Gilberto, Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes were the main architects of the invention, while Getz had made it fashionable in the United States with a couple of records that climbed the charts.
There was a rush to record ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ in English and Astrud volunteered. She sang a few stanzas and she liked it so much, her voice was so innocent and demure, that they asked her to dare with another Jobim song, ‘Corcovado’ (‘Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars’). The story of how that ended is pretty dastardly: Astrud Gilberto didn’t appear in a single credit for the LP ‘Getz/Gilberto’, so they sent her work for $120, which the American Musicians Union stipulated per work session.
With the English version of ‘Girl of Ipanema’, recorded with João Gilberto’s guitar and Stan Getz’s sax, Astrud immortalized a song that earned her the Grammy Award in 1965, the first for a Brazilian artist. That year she was also a candidate for best new artist, a prize that the Beatles would end up taking.
After that day, Astrud Gilberto released several solo albums, most notably ‘The Astrud Gilberto Album’ (1965) and ‘Look to the Rainbow’ (1966), a scant sampling of the 19 albums he released. His bossa nova simmered with scraps of jazz and pop and the wisdom of Brazilian popular music, ingredients with which he created a distinguished sound that influenced the waves of musicians and singers that followed. In 1964 he separated from João Gilberto, although he kept the last name for the development of his professional career.
He settled in the US, where he lived most of his life. She married for the second time with Nicholas LaSorsa, from whom she would also end up separating. She came to collaborate with personalities such as Ennio Morricone, Chet Baker, George Michael, Toots Thielemans, Stanley Turrentine and James Last, among others. In 2002 she was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame.
When she retired from music, still irritated by the exploitation she was subjected to by Getz, she became interested in philosophy and painting and was active in the defense of animal rights. She then insisted that she did not miss the concerts and much less the contempt of the recording industry. In the last decades she lived practically forgotten by her compatriots.
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