I was involved in the Brazilian music scene in Toronto for a number of years, mainly playing surdo in Alan Hetherington’s Escola de Samba. It was great fun, and loud, and I had a good time. Like most people in these parts though, my first exposure to this music was through bossa nova, which shares a lot of dna with its more extroverted parading cousin, but is quieter, often with great melodies and chords, and gorgeous lyrics.

When I got my job as a prof, I dropped out of the Escola – no time, plus – even with earplugs – music by percussion battery (e.g. the Caribana parade) is not eardrum-friendly, you could say.

In the past while though, mainly inspired by my ukulele and the five-volume Bossa Nova Songbook edited by Almir Chediak (Lumiar Editora, São Paulo), I’ve started making my way back into some of these great tunes. Maybe I should get back into the guitar?

The rhythmic quality of bossa nova and samba points back to what was said in the earlier section “Rhythm” re the difference between working in breadth, as in one line at a time — the usual focus for European-biased music students — and working in depth, as in singing and playing, which is what a lot of competent musicians in other parts of the world would take for granted. I don’t really teach Brazilian music, I just like it a lot, so the only thing I can offer here is a bunch of tunes that I’ve edited for my own purposes with, in most cases, their melodies, chords, lyrics, plus – an added bonus! – ukulele voicings, and a 3-page blurb which includes some neat agogo patterns. This whole thing is a work in progress, so I’ll adding more tunes, fixing the ones that are there, etc. in the great course of time.