The Girl from Ipanema

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“Garota de Ipanema (The Girl from Ipanema)”
Song
Writer Antonio Carlos Jobim

Vinícius de Moraes (Norman Gimbel)

"The Girl from Ipanema" ("Garota de Ipanema") is a well-known bossa nova song, a worldwide hit in the mid-1960s that won a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965. It was written in 1962, with music by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes with English lyrics written later by Norman Gimbel. When sung by female artists it is typically rendered as "The Boy from Ipanema".

The first commercial recording was in 1962, by Pery Ribeiro. The version performed by Astrud Gilberto, along with João Gilberto and Stan Getz, from the 1963 album Getz/Gilberto, became an international hit. Numerous recordings have been used in movies, sometimes as an elevator music cliché (for example, near the end of "The Blues Brothers" and "Hitman" when agent 47 shoots a small team of SWAT soldiers whilst they are traveling in an elevator).

In 2004, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.[1]

Contents

[edit] History

Heloísa Pinheiro
Heloísa Pinheiro

Myth has it The Girl from Ipanema was inspired by Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto (now Helô Pinheiro), a fifteen-year-old girl living in Montenegro Street of the fashionable Ipanema district of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Daily, she would stroll past the popular "Veloso" bar-café on her way to the beach, attracting the attention of regulars Jobim and Moraes.

In fact, the song originally was composed for a musical comedy titled Dirigível (Blimp), then a work-in-progress of Vinícius de Moraes. The song's original title was Menina que Passa (The Girl Who Passes By); the famous first verse was different. Jobim meticulously composed the melody on his piano in his new house in Rua Barão da Torre, in Ipanema. In turn, Vinícius had written the lyrics in Petrópolis, near Rio de Janeiro, as he had done with Chega de Saudade six years earlier.

The myth's truth is that the composers did know Helô Pinto, and later attributed the song's composition to her. In the winter of 1962, they watched her pass by the Veloso bar, not just to the beach, but in the quotidian course of her life. The Veloso bar, renamed "A Garota de Ipanema" - The Girl From Ipanema, by its owners, still exists in Ipanema. It is easy to imagine why they noticed her — Helô was a five-foot-eight-inch-tall (1.73m) gimlet-eyed brunette living in Rua Montenegro, already the objet du désir of many of Veloso patrons, where she would enter to buy cigarettes (for her mother) and leave to a flattering wolf-whistle soundtrack.[2] Since the song became popular, she has become a celebrity.

In Revelação: a verdadeira Garota de Ipanema (Revealed: The Real Girl from Ipanema) Moraes wrote she was:

"o paradigma do bruto carioca; a moça dourada, misto de flor e sereia, cheia de luz e de graça mas cuja a visão é também triste, pois carrega consigo, a caminho do mar, o sentimento da beleza que passa, da beleza que não é só nossa — é um dom da vida em seu lindo e melancólico fluir e refluir constante."

Translation:

'"the exemplar of the raw Carioca: a golden-tanned girl, a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of brightness and grace, the sight of whom is also sad, in that she carries with her, on her route to the sea, the feeling of beauty that fades, of the beauty that is not ours alone — it is a gift of life in its constant, beautiful and melancholic ebb and flow."

Today, "Montenegro Street" is "Vinicius de Moraes Street", and the "Veloso Bar" is "A Garota de Ipanema", and there is a "Garota de Ipanema" Park in the nearby Arpoador neighborhood.

[edit] Copyright controversy

In 2005, the song's copyright owners (heirs of their composer fathers) sued Ms. Pinheiro for copyright violation for using her status as The Girl from Ipanema (Garota de Ipanema) — despite it being the original composers' creation for promoting her eponymous fashion boutique.[3] Their lawsuit provoked stormy protest among the Ipanema locals, where she and her history are known as integral parts of local society. They considered her owner of the appellation in virtue of her being its culturally established holder, and because of the composers' intentions.

[edit] Other media

A Brazilian musical film, Garota de Ipanema, inspired by the song, was released in 1967. The song was parodied by Stephen Sondheim and Mary Rodgers as "The Boy From...". The song is sampled in Let Your Body Decide by The Ark. In 1993, Madonna performed the song in Brazilian dates.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Full National Recording Registry National Recording Preservation Board. http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/nrpb-masterlist.html.
  2. ^ Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World, by Ruy Castro, pp.239-240.
  3. ^ Folha Online - Pensata - Marcio Aith - Herdeiros de Ipanema querem destruir a poesia - 13/08/2001

[edit] External links