Songs that remind me of people, things or facts long gone by

João Gilberto

How dull life would be if we were unable to remember old songs, and, which is even worse, if those songs did not remind us of our own past!

I was thinking about this as I walked around the park near my home. So I decided to make up a short list of songs that somehow remind me of what I’ve seen, heard and felt throughout my life.

Here it goes, not in chronological order:

1.   Chega de saudade, sung by João Gilberto. This song was a huge hit back in 1958, the year my father died. I would hear it on the radio a thousand times a day. We had no TV at the time.

2.   For Mamma, sung by Ray Charles. I remember listening to and translating it for my mother as we drove to Campos do Jordão. She was sitting in the passenger seat. My wife and our two kids were in the back seat. I didn’t cry when I translated it. Now I do every time I hear it.

3.   Macarena, by Los Del Rio. How can I ever forget watching my daughter dance to that song at her wedding party, dressed all in white and holding the train of her wedding dress with her hands?

4.   La mer, by Charles Trenet. I got used to listening to my eldest sister play the piano when I was still a little boy. I tried to learn it, by failed miserably. However, without anybody’s assistance, I was able to learn to play a couple of songs whose scores I used to ‘steal’ from her when she left for work. One of them was La mer, which I once dared to play at a small private party. The people there liked it and even asked me to play more. I refused with a display of false modesty.

5.   Chopin’sPolonaise, op. 53 in A flat major. My mother loved piano music. The piano we had at home had been bought by her, not by our father. She had saved every penny she could until one day she got the piano brought into our living room. I hadn’t been born yet. Well, when I was in my teens I had two friends who could play the piano. And whenever they dropped by, they knew they would have to play the Polonaise for my mother. So even today, every time I listen to that masterpiece, I remember the brothers Sérgio and Wilson.

6.   Guantanamera, sung and played by Raíces de América. The very first cassette tape that I bought after I had a Mitsubishi AM/FM car radio with cassette tape player installed in my 1975 Opala was Raíces de America, a very popular South American band in the seventies. One of the songs on the cassette was Guantanamera, which I would listen to over and over again. The song was driving my kids crazy. Every time they heard the first words, “Guantanamera, guajira guantanamera...” they would beg me to turn the radio off.. They were absolutely fed up with it.

7.   Bewitched,Bothered And Bewildered, sung by Ella Fitzgerald. While I was sitting my English exam for São Francisco Law School, I started mumbling that song. The exam was just a translation of a one-page long text. The word bewildered appeared twice in the text, and as I couldn’t remember its meaning, I thought the song might help me. It didn’t.

8.   Casinha pequenina, sung by Carlos Galhardo. I was seven or eight years old. There was a dark painting hanging on the wall above the piano in the living room. It showed a yellow-roofed little house by a stream. The house was surrounded by trees and bushes. Whenever I heard that song I would think of that painting.

9.   Astrovas das Arcadas. With those immortal verses the Coral Acadêmico da São Francisco would close every performance we did. I say ‘we’ because, believe it or not, I used to sing in that choir. We were conducted by Maestro Roberto Zeidler, who studied music with my sister back in the fifties, and whose son Carlos studied English with me! It’s such a small world, isnt it? 

10.               Convencidodo 779, sung by Maria Thereza Mecha Branca. My brother loved that song. He even bought the LP, although he had no record player. When he died, I kind of inherited that record, but now, when I come to think of it, I can’t remember where I put it. Ah, Nicola, I miss you so much!