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Vinicius de Moraes (Rio de Janeiro 1913-1980) always wrote songs, from a very young age, but he did it secretly. It didn't look good for a young poet adored by academics to be a composer. "It was as if I had two personalities that were hiding each other, one did not tell the other that they existed," says actress and singer Mariana de Moraes, 50, a granddaughter of Poetinha who sang about love and longing like no one else. The first composition was made at the age of 15, in 1928, but Loura ou Morena was only made music in 1932, thanks to the composer Haroldo Tapajós.
Now, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of her death, Mariana rescues the stories behind this and other lyrics and poems from her grandfather in a four-class online course. On January 25, the anniversary of the city of São Paulo, the tributes began with a concert in which Mariana sang Vinicius's repertoire, which she intended to transform into an album this year. But the coronavirus pandemic has delayed her plans.
- The torment of Vinicius de Moraes
- Vinicius de Moraes, a friend of Neruda, belonged to the spring
Throughout almost 30 years of career, Mariana, daughter of photographer Pedro de Moraes and actress Vera Barreto Leite, has participated in various projects on Vinicius around the world and, although she had not recorded her grandfather's songs, she always admired his work. "Not because I am her granddaughter, but because I am a faithful follower of João Gilberto, who was the first and best interpreter of Vinicius," she says. Mariana always mixes poetry, stories and music in her shows. The opportunity to prepare a course on her grandfather, which begins on August 10, gave her the idea to take her stories to the stage when the quarantine is over. "I want to tell her stories, the story of her songs and the ethical values that she transmitted to her family, about how to live life."
One of these stories is about how the consecrated young poet, who received a scholarship from the University of Oxford, met who was perhaps his greatest companion: Tom Jobim. Vinicius had written the play Orfeo de la Concepción and was moving heaven and earth — borrowing from friends and getting into debt — to fulfill his dream of staging the play at the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro. While looking for a songwriter for the musical, he met Tom Jobim. And the dream came true. The play was on the bill for three nights and went down in history as the first time that 36 blacks performed in the pantheon of Brazilian performing arts. Orfeo de la Concepción would become the film Orfeo Negro (1959), directed by Frenchman Marcel Camus, which would win the Oscar for best foreign film and the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
The grandfather died when Mariana de Moraes was 11 years old
"In some of his texts, Vinicius reveals how he developed this idea of transferring the Greek myth of Orfeo to the favela of Rio and that he was not a Hellenic hero who plays the lyre, but a black man who plays the guitar", says Mariana , which highlights Vinicius's admiration for all African and Afro-Brazilian culture.
It is not strange, then, that he dedicates one of the classes in his course to the Afro-sambas that Vinicius composed with his friend Baden Powell. “One of the great flags of the life of his life was to show that popular art is not less than scholarly or academic art and to dare to unite both. Her career shows how this erudite poetry found its way into the popular artist and made music in Brazil acquire a dimension that it had never had before ”, says Mariana.
From this fusion arose bossa nova and its holy trinity: Vinicius, Tom and João Gilberto. “These and other friendships are a very important chapter in his life. Everyone talks about the nine women she had, but, in fact, what she cultivated the most were friends, from all areas, "says her granddaughter. From Pablo Neruda to the painter Carybé, passing through the poet Manuel Bandeira, the writer Rubem Braga, the maestro Pixinguinha, to Carmen Miranda and the filmmaker Orson Welles, whom he met in Los Angeles, the first destination of Vinicius de Moraes as a cultural attaché. of the Ministry of Foreign Relations.
Mariana lived with her grandfather more when he left his diplomatic career, which he practiced between 1943 and 1968. Vinicius died when she was 11 years old, on July 9, 1980. “Four years before, I went to live in exile, to France, with my parents. Just at that time, the military dictatorship had expelled him from the Ministry and he was free to be an artist. It was his phase as a pop star ”, he recalls, referring to the concerts that Vinicius began to do abroad. “He always took me to the concerts he did in Paris and, at least three times a year, he was the only person in the family that he saw. The memory I have is of a very loving grandfather ”.
He cultivated friends such as Carmen Miranda, Orson Welles or Pablo Neruda
Mariana, who was tuned since she was little, was the apple of the poet's eyes. “He was very proud of me because I sang and I was a fine-tuned girl who knew all João Gilberto's songs,” she laughs, fondly remembering when Vinicius gave her a tape recorder so she could practice. Mariana speaks with equal affection of her aunt, Susana de Moraes, Vinicius's first-born. "She did for me what he would have done, she was a great friend and advisor." It was her aunt who advised her not to sing her grandfather's repertoire until her career was consolidated. "She said that first I had to make a place for myself and be recognized by my own voice," says Mariana about her aunt, for whom Vinicius composed Valsa de Eurídice on his 15th birthday, long before officially presenting himself as a composer.
Timeless Vinicius
Mariana points out that the figure of Vinicius de Moraes, as well as his work, is timeless, despite the fact that, according to her, it is currently not “in fashion” in Brazil. “The artists of this country are abandoned. Brazilian popular music is abandoned. It is very sad, because popular music gave Brazil an identity, just like soccer in sport. From Cartola to [Heitor] Villa-Lobos ”, he laments and criticizes the lack of cultural policy of the Government of Jair Bolsonaro.
The artist believes that, if he were alive, her grandfather would position himself "with his loving pragmatism" against this reality. “It was important for the career of practically everyone who makes popular Brazilian music today. I am sure that, if I were here, I would use your privilege to put yourself politically against the current socio-political panorama of the country, of fascism, racism, ignorance ”, she says, and then adds, nostalgically:“ How I wish I had drunk with my grandfather! ”.
"He showed that popular art is not minor," says his granddaughter
But, even in a less romantic reality than the Poetinha's songs, Mariana also finds parallels and glimpses of hope in remembering her grandfather. “The other day I found a text of his on World War II, in which he talks about the pain of that moment and even uses the word quarantine to refer to the situation of the relatives of the soldiers who went to war. It was a difficult moment, but it is over ”. As he wrote in Chega de saudade , Vinicius de Moraes reminds us that love prevails and that "distance does not exist."