A Sunday Night in Rio

26 Aug A Sunday Night in Rio

I have been traveling to Rio de Janeiro for nearly 30 years, and could wax poetic about it for longer than you’d care to listen. But the defining moment came a few years ago, on a balmy Sunday night in Ipanema. I had just stepped out of Capricciosa, a trendy pizzeria on the corner of Rua Vinicius de Moraes, when I heard live bossa nova playing. Across the narrow street, in front of a shop called Toca do Vinicius, about 100 people were gathered, swaying to the music, as a woman sang and a trio played what amounted to the Tom Jobim songbook: “Desafinado,” “The Girl from Ipanema,” “One Note Samba,” “Corcorvado.”

rio at night

I walked closer and found myself standing next to a teenager sitting on an old wooden stool. He was a parking lot attendant, and in my fractured Portuguese, I asked what was going on.

“Claudia Telles,” he said. “Her mother was Sylvia Telles.”

He said it reverentially, and indeed, the late Sylvia Telles was one of the great bossa nova singers. Claudia, also a Brazilian recording star, had clearly inherited her mother’s gift.

I stood under the thick canopy of trees on Rua Vinicius de Moraes, listening to the blissful and hypnotic music, a block away from the bar called Garota de Ipanema, where Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes had penned “The Girl from Ipanema” so many years ago. The stage was the sidewalk, the only illumination the lights of the store and the headlights of cars that snaked down the narrow street.

After a few minutes, I felt a tap on my shoulder. The kid from the parking lot stood up and gestured at me to take his stool. He went and grabbed another from a doorway, and the two of us sat there for an hour and a half, as Claudia Telles filled the misty night with bossa nova. When it was over, I hung on the edge of the crowd as Telles autographed CD’s. Then I wandered into the store, a trove of CD’s, books, and records, all devoted to bossa nova, a musical movement more than 50 years old. It tuned out that these impromptu concerts happened from time to time. The next one? This is Brazil, so no one could predict when it would occur.

As I left the shop, I saw a small, elderly man with slicked-back white hair and a striking white moustache, wearing a carefully pressed white shirt, white pants, and white shoes. He was painstakingly signing a vintage 50′s bossa nova album for a young fan, who clutched it like a piece of the true cross.

“Who was that?” I asked the fan, as the man in white ambled away.

“Billy Blanco,” he said, showing me the album. “One of the greats.”

The man named “white” dressed in white, a samba ghost, disappeared into the crowd down Rue Vinicius de Moraes, stooped at 80-something but still a star. The spirit of bossa nova was alive and well, at least on this misty Sunday night in Ipanema.

[Note: Toca do Vinicius is located at Rua Vinicius de Moraes, 129, in Rio de Janeiro; tel.: 247-5227.]

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Everett Potter
Everett Potter is the editor and publisher of Everett Potter’s Travel Report, an online magazine that The Wall Street Journal has called “a terrific mix of profiles and interviews, all designed to make the best use of your travel budget.”
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