Tom & Rosa

Abstract

The objective of this article is threefold. First, it attempts at analyzing the crucial role played by the popular song in shaping up Guimarães Rosa's literary project. Second, it aims at pointing out, at least partially, some of the reasons for the Brazilian popular composer's liking of Guimarães Rosa's work. The article aims specially at understanding the influence of the reading of Guimarães Rosa's work on the elegant and sophisticated music of Tom Jobim's songs - mainly on his two authorial records produced in the first half of the 1970s: Matita Perê (1973) and Urubu (1975). Last, this article advances a hypothesis: the existence of a long and venerable intertwining of links between Brazilian literature and popular songs. Because of very distinct factors, the borders between different territories which form literate tradition, written tradition, book tradition and the oral tradition of singing poetry have been systematically blurred by generations of songwriters, poets and writers who have produced a cultural repertoire typical of the country, by making the most surprising crossings between book and song, and between song and poem. At such borders a new way of identifying Brazilian culture is born. It is a poetic space in which a new form of expressing the country is produced, and also an original way of understanding Brazil: the modern popular song.