A taste of an old Brazilian man

Whatup SpaceHeyers!

It's ya [Brazilian Enthusiast], Sleepy M!

And I'm here to proselytize you all into the good word of Bossa Nova. Specifically, my Goat, Jorge Ben Jor's song Mas Que Nada.

Before we begin our lesson on the good news of O Cristo's favorite artist, I'm going to link his most popular song because I don't know how to embed music onto my blog. Trust me, I've tried. However, not even the devil that is the computer can stop me from spreading the good word and music.

Mas Que Nada

Sorry it's not a video, guys... I'm not great with HTML. Or computers. :(( Please give it a listen while you read. I promise it's worth it. And if it's not, just ignore it! I won't know lulz.

*Ahem*

Now to the intro to Jorge Ben Jor.

Jorge was born as Jorge Duilio Lima Menezes on March 22nd, 1945. That makes him an Aries, which sorta makes sense, I think. He was playing music at a young age, much to the chagrin of his parents, who probably wanted him to be a lawyer.

He chose his stage name, Jorge Ben, after his mother's maiden name, Sílvia Saint Ben Lima. (Side note; why do we always put the maiden's last name in the kid's name. My name is [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Soarez Johnson. Like, why is that so common??] He changed his stage name later in 1989 to Jorge Ben Jor. However, it's unclear if it was because he believed in numerology or because some of his royalties potentially went to American artist George Benson.

Viva Jorge Ben Jor! - Trip

Mrs Silvia was a huge influence on him, especially because she was raised by two Ethiopian parents and shared that African culture with him. This influenced his music A LOT. Many of his songs celebrate Black people, especially dark skin and African Brazilians. What a guy!

Now onto the Song's lyrics! Yipee! The part you've been waiting for!

Okay, so another thing, Formatting is Hellish, so I just decided to import a slide photo. Work with me here, I'm not super versed in HTML.

Green is to aid the Clarity of the translation.

Yellow is Important.

Red is just Flavo r text, really.

Story pin image

“This samba, this mix of maracatu,

It’s the Samba of the old Blacks, Samba de Preto-tu

But nothing’s like this cool samba,”

This is clearly the most important line in the song! It’s both hard to translate and

repeated twice! Wowza! So let’s break it down!

Let’s break this down. First up let’s add context to the line, “This samba, this mix of maracatu,” (“Esse samba, que e misto de maracatu”).

Maracatu is a type of performance genre of music that originated from Slaves that were taken from Bantu tribes in Africa and brought to Northern Brazil. It’s sort of a satirical parade and celebration of culture, but for our short slideshow, it’s important you know it’s an African genre. Since his Samba is a mix of maracatu, we know it’s African-infused samba.

We also understand why it’s the “samba of the old generation of black people,”(“E samba de preto velho,”) since the genre originated in the 1800s.

Lastly, “Preto-tu” is not him repeating the last syllable of the word black, but actually him referencing the Bantu peoples.

Basically, he means to say, THIS IS BLACK SAMBA! BLACK BOSSA NOVA! This wasn’t common at the time, since most influential Bosa Nova artists were white. That’s why he says “nothing’s like this cool samba,” At the time, no one was doing it like him! And he definitely helped pave the wave to this new blend of Bossa Nova and Samba.