A banda
A Banda ( Portuguese for The Band) is a samba written by Chico Buarque in 1966 that became internationally known in the instrumental version of Herb Alpert and became a number one hit on the American Adult Contemporary Charts.
Chico Buarque wrote the song in 1966, after a record titled Pedro Pedreiro and Sonho de um carnaval from 1965, the second release by Chico Buarque. In the same year won by Nara Leão interpreted Title the Festival da Música Popular Brasileira TV channel TV Record ex aequo with the song "Disparada" by Geraldo Vandré and Théo de Barros, the Jair Rodrigues presented at the festival. In 1966 the song was released as the first track on the album Chico Buarque de Hollanda (Vol. 1) . The single reportedly sold millions of copies within the first 40 days.
The Portuguese text of the song tells in simple language how a band strolls through the streets of a city, “sings of love” and how “the long-suffering people” pause in what they are doing: “the serious man stops that Counting money, the girl in love stops longing for the stars, the old man forgets his tiredness and does a little dance, the sad rose blossoms and the ugly girl leans out the window because she thinks the band is playing for her". At the end of the text, Buarque makes it clear that the text, which at first glance seems harmless, has a second level of meaning: The chapel symbolizes the military that invaded the cities of Brazil in 1964 as part of the coup d'état by Humberto Castelo Branco . It briefly attracts people's attention and hope, but “when the chapel passed everything returned to its place, but the joys of life were gone”. The censorship of the military government only recognized the subversiveness of the song and its potential effect on the easily influenced parts of the population of Brazil after winning the prize at the festival. In the years that followed, Buarque was harassed many times by the military police, most notably when he staged his play Roda Viva . Chico Buarque therefore published at times under the pseudonym Julinho da Adelaide.
In 1967 Astrud Gilberto recorded the song with an English text written by Bob Russell for Verve / Copacabana . Herb Alpert had a number one hit in the USA in 1967 with his instrumental version. A German-language version with a text by Fred Weyrich and Fred Conta was sung by France Gall ( Zwei Orfelsinen im Haar) in 1968 and reached number 16 in the German single charts . Gall's version was awarded a gold record for 500,000 units sold in Germany . The 3 Tornados parodied the song under the title Terror-Rosita and released it in 1979 on their album Tornados a Gogo.
An Italian version comes from Mina under the title La Banda. The Swedish singer Siw Malmkvist published the Swedish vocal variant on her album Harlekin from 1968 with the title Den Som Lever Fӑr Se . Dalida again sang a French version under the title La Banda .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Herb Alpert Awards. Retrieved March 30, 2013 .
- ↑ 85 anos de Música Brasileira Vol. 2 , 1997, 34 (1st edition)
- ^ Jean-Paul Delfino: Couleurs Brasil . Le Passage, Paris 2014, ISBN 978-2-84742-236-8 , pp. 7-13 .
- ^ France Gall - A banda. Retrieved March 30, 2013 .
- ^ Günter Ehnert: Hit balance sheet - German chart singles 1956-1980 . 1st edition. Verlag popular music-literature, Norderstedt 2000, ISBN 3-922542-24-7 , p. 444 .
- ↑ Terror-Rosita based on the tune of A Banda , Die 3 Tornados on YouTube
- ↑ Dalida - La Banda. Retrieved March 30, 2013 .