There’s no such thing as perfect music. We’re reminded of that fact whenever someone gets close. João Gilberto, the bossa nova mapmaker who died on Saturday in Rio de Janeiro at 88, spent the greatest years of his musical life right there, singing softly to the edge.
His voice was one of the most intimate sounds of the 20th century — more melodic than a sigh, more rhythmic than chitchat, only just barely. Every syllable that appeared on his lips carried an air of effortlessness, but Gilberto had worked hard to locate that sacred place where a human breath becomes music. It gave his ballads their focus, their circumspection, their secret rigor. Were it not for Gilberto’s mindfulness, the big-time sensuality of bossa nova probably would have hit this planet like a satin pillow. Instead, the sound went off like a noiseless bomb in Brazil, changing the nation’s musical identity in an overnight kind of way. Over here in the United States, bossa nova became a full-blown phenomenon with the runaway success of Gilberto’s 1964 album with jazz saxophonist Stan Getz.
