Today I’m departing from the usual format of this blog to tell a little story I found funny about a lyric-less choro song. If any of you, my dear readers, are fans of the 1981 comedy Stripes, and happen to have watched it enough to have the soundtrack fully fixed in your memory, then maybe you’ll remember the scene backed by this tune (as my super-impressive mega-mooning friend Geoff did, calling my attention to this whole matter):
Billboard story on the 1968 Song Fest.
If you don’t remember the scene, it’s a pretty gloomy one: Bill Murray’s car has just been repossessed and, as he protests, his fresh, warm pizza slides onto the street on a dreary New York day. It’s a moment when just about anyone might start crying softly. And as it happens, Elmer Bernstein’s tune to match the moment is astonishingly similar to a Brazilian choro by just that name – “Crying softly” – from 1963. The similarity is so striking that I decided to have a look around for Bernstein-Brazil connections, and found that five years after “Chorando baixinho” was released, Bernstein came to Rio de Janeiro to be a judge for the III International Song Festival of October 1968. Perhaps the world-renowned composer heard “Chorando baixinho” and saved it for a dreary day?
Here’s “Chorando baixinho” (Abel Ferreira, 1963)
Correio da Manhã (RJ) – 8 October 1968 – lists Elmer Bernstein as the judge from the United States
My name is Victoria Broadus and I'm currently living in Washington, D.C., pursuing a PhD in History at Georgetown University. I learned Portuguese while working toward a Master's degree at Georgetown back in 2008/09, which is also when I began traveling to Brazil. I started this site in late 2011 when I was living in New York City, missing Brazil but fortunate to be surrounded by lots of great opportunities to hear Brazilian music. I wanted to share that music with friends and family and any other readers out there who wonder what the songs they're listening to are saying, and why. From 2012-2017 I lived in Brazil -- first São Paulo for a year, then Rio for nearly five -- before coming back to the United States for my PhD program. Because of the demands of the PhD program, I haven't been able to post as frequently as I'd like, but am still writing whenever I can and when inspiration strikes!
Please let me know if there is a song you would like translated or would like to hear more about. You can leave a comment here or anywhere else on the site, or on the Facebook page.
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