De Oliveira, Jocy
A Musica Seculo Xx De Jocy
A virtuoso pianist and composer of seminal works in early electronic and experimental classical music, Jocy de Oliveiras musical output has had a great influence within Brazil and abroad. Her sole contribution to Brazilian popular music, her 1959-recorded album, A Msica Sculo XX de Jocy in many ways stands apart from the rest of her artistic oeuvre. The original vinyl release marketed the record as adding to Brazils samba heritage with a simple and original dialectic, naming its style vanguard samba, which differs from both traditional samba and Bossa Nova, in its infancy at the time. Listening to Jocys 20th century music in the context of the contemporaneous and vastly more influential Bossa Nova style is especially striking. Where Bossa Novas innovators incorporated influences from jazz and French piano music to a samba foundation, Jocy de Oliveira took a greater leap, wedding her centurys classical music to samba. Where Bossa Nova dawned a new epoch of poetic lyricism in Brazilian popular songs with great poets such as Vinicius de Moraes and themes of longing, love and nature, Jocy de Oliveiras lyrics are concerned with scenes of urban tragedy and decay, presenting an alternative vision to Brazils stereotypical tropical paradise image almost 10 years before the emergence of the Tropicala movement.