Rio Sonata
Granville 7 Theatre 6
Wednesday, October 6 2010 12:45pm
The soundtrack opens with this powerful rich high tenor voice singing in Portuguese. I wonder who this great male Brazilian singer is, until the aerial beauty shots of Rio de Janeiro dissolve to Nana Caymmi, the great female Brazilian singer. Now in her 60's she's still recording and performing to adulating crowds.
From a musical family, daughter of noted composer Dorival Caymmi, she was a musically talented child along with her brother Dori. But she seemed destined for a domestic life when she married a Venezuelan doctor at age 18, moved to Venezuela, and bore three children in succession. That is until she felt overwhelmed by that life and left and returned to Brazil with her children. She started singing to support her family.
Caymmi becomes a larger than life figure on the 1960's Brazilian music scene working with famed musicians like Gilberto Gil (to whom she was married), Maria Bethânia, Tom Jobim, and Milton Nascimento but she never considered herself a Bossa Nova or Tropicália singer. Caymmi's career might have faded if not for the novelas or Brazilian soap operas which featured her emotionally charged music and kept her in the public eye.
Even as a young woman her powerful, yet warm, and husky voice is mesmerizing, and her delivery is heartfelt. Over the credits, the film ends with the elder Caymmi singing a wonderfully warm and touching version of Smile in Portuguese which may be worth the price of admission.
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