Bossa Nova Is Not Snapped on 2 and 4: A Study on Content Lost in Translation, Cultural Appropriation, and Racism with Geovane Santos

This research is about approaching bossa nova from intra and extramusical perspectives aiming to create interdisciplinary discussions about music. I analyze the Brazilian music genre as a social phenomenon raising hypotheses from various frameworks (race, class, identity, politics, US American imperialism, and culture appropriation) to support a linguistic study about content lost in translation in both music notation and music performance. I compare celebrated versions of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s composition Chega de Saudade (charts from U.S. Fakebooks, a chart from Brazilian Songbook, and my transcription of Joao Gilberto’s version of the song) to highlight the ways in which U.S. Jazz musicians mistranscribed, mistranslated and erased the Brazilian “accent”/groove as they proliferated Jobim’s work through recordings and Fakebooks. Ultimately, I discuss how these musicians failed to capture the underlying Afro-Brazilian essence of the genre and misrepresented the tradition, with lasting consequences on how much of the non-Brazilian world still hears and plays bossa nova today.