Antonio Carlos Jobim by Helena Jobim

Author:Helena Jobim [Jobim, Helena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: MUS024000 MUSIC / Genres and Styles / International, BIO004000 BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Composers and Musicians
ISBN: 9781458429452
Publisher: Hal Leonard
Published: 2011-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Generally speaking, music critics annoyed Tom. If he gave an interview and the interviewer did not capture exactly what he had meant, or, worse, if the interviewer distorted his words, he would become upset. Tom was appeased by family and close friends who told him he was venerated by nearly all people who liked music. His suffering resulted mostly from taking such interviewers’ criticism as an offense, even when they did not seem serious or meaningful at all. Such overreaction was a part of his being.

At the onset of his career he already emerged as a writer who made music that differed from traditional samba. Such a characteristic affected critics who believed samba was untouchable. A significant faction of the Left argued that Tom’s music was Americanized, or, more precisely, North Americanized. Even his nickname, which had been coined by his little sister, was supposedly an American name purposefully picked as such. They contended that he was perverting Brazil’s music culture.

The misunderstanding was so real that a certain music critic practically built his career on continuous articles attacking Tom’s works, just like the way a Guanabara Bay critic, years before, had promoted himself by attempting to annihilate the outstanding career of classical composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Out of that persecution, the cover of a sensationalist magazine announced, in a very large font, a groundless accusation: Antonio Carlos Jobim cheated on his income tax. For the first time he declared he would file a lawsuit against that critic. His stepfather convinced him, though, that such a move was exactly what the magazine aimed for, to obtain greater publicity. Celso, indeed, had always taught his children that an artist should ignore any provocation from the press. He cautioned Tom, nevertheless, to request a document from the Brazilian Ministry of Treasury acknowledging that he paid his income tax in the United States.

At home, his family respected Tom’s worries, even though it was not easy for them to understand how a man like him, so superior in character and talent to that false public image, could succumb emotionally to so little. Sharing her brother’s woes, Helena urged him to take the advice spelled out by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own, a book she had given him for a past birthday. Woolf reacted to the widespread notion that a genius should disregard such opinions, that geniuses should be above caring what is said of them. Unfortunately, it is precisely the men and women of genius who mind most what is said of them. It is the nature of the artist to care excessively about what is said about him or her. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of people who gave importance beyond reason to the opinion of others, though. Woolf also argued that this susceptibility was very unfortunate, because the mind of an artist, to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing itself altogether and freeing the entire the work that is within it, must be incandescent.

Antonio Carlos Jobim’s mind was relentlessly incandescent. Journalist

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