Cartola
Encyclopedia
Angenor de Oliveira, known as Cartola (Portuguese
for top hat
), (kaxˈtɔlɐ; October 11, 1908 – November 30, 1980) was a Brazilian singer, composer
and poet
considered to be a major figure in the development of samba
.
Cartola composed, alone or with partners, more than 500 songs.
district of Rio de Janeiro
. His name given at birth was actually Agenor, and it was not until the age of 55 that he learned that due to an error in transcription the name on his birth certificate was Angenor. When he was eight his family moved to the Laranjeiras
neighborhood in Rio. Due to financial difficulties, the large family moved to Mangueira hill in 1919, where a small favela
was beginning to appear, when he was eleven.
At age 15, after the death of his mother, he left school to pursue a bohemian lifestyle.
In Mangueira, Cartola soon befriended Carlos Cachaça and other sambistas, getting started in the world of malandragem
and samba. In 1928, they founded the Arengueiros Carnival Block, which would later transform in the traditional samba school
GRES Estação Primeira de Mangueira
, one of the most loved samba schools in Brazil. Cartola is considered responsible for the choice of colors of the school, light green and pink, as these were the colors of the "rancho do arrepiados" in Laranjeiras where he participated as a boy playing the cavaquinho (small guitar) that his father had taught him.. (The ranchos were precursors to the samba schools in Rio and were composed primarily of descendents of slaves, and featured a king and queen in their performing lines).
Cartola became popular in the 1930s, with many sambas recorded at that time. In the beginning of his career, Creusa, his daughter, adopted when she was five years old, was extremely important in launching him as composer, as she was a singer of extremely persuasive voice, singing his sambas in radio programs of this decade. As much that later, it makes participation special in the first LP of Cartola. He got his nickname because he used a bowler hat
while working as a construction worker so the cement would not dirty his hair.
Later, in the 1940s, Cartola disappeared from the scene. Little is known about that time in Cartola's life, when he departed from Mangueira after disagreements and became depressed with the death of his wife Deolinda; about that time, rumours of his death were speculated. Cartola was found, in a very popular tale, by journalist Sérgio Porto in 1956, working as a car-washer.
Porto took charge of starting to promote Cartola's return, inviting him to radio shows and divulging his work with new partners. Later, in 1963, investing in his struggle to take the favelas' samba to the city streets, Cartola opened together with Eugênio Agostine and his wife Dona Zica the famous Zicartola bar/restaurant in downtown Rio de Janeiro, which became known as the most important samba establishment of that time, providing a link between the traditional sambistas and the incipient Bossa Nova
movement. Cartola invited people such as Nélson Cavaquinho
, Pixinguinha
, Nara Leão
, Paulinho da Viola
, and Zé Ketti to sing the "low-value" music, as sambistas ironically referred to their work.
Cartola's real commercial success started in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he became quite popular and a lot of samba classics were released, such as "O Sol Nascerá", "O Mundo é Um Moinho", "Corra e Olhe o Céu", "Quem me vê Sorrindo" and "Senhora Tentação", with support from singers Elizeth Cardoso, Clara Nunes
, Paulinho da Viola
and especially Beth Carvalho
. He released his first record only at the age of 66, in 1974, and even living in financial difficulties, composed and sang until his death at age 72.
, especially considering his lack of formal higher education. His poetry binds in an effective manner elegance and emotion, while keeping a relatively low level of complexity, which made his work accessible to larger layers of the population.
With regard to tempo
, Cartola's music had a strong tendency towards calmer, slower sambas in contrast to the faster, brisker sambas de terreiro seen in samba schools and to other composers' music. Some say his sambas had a tendency towards samba-canção. The cavaquinho
s in his records had a certain cry mood which was less percussive than usual, with the exception of his last records where Alceu Maia was the cavaquinist.
As a musician, Cartola made use of many modulations
, some of which were not common in samba at that time. Some of his modulating tunes are "Quem me vê Sorrindo" and "Sim" (I -> V), "Acontece" and "Amor Proibido" (I -> bVI), "Inverno do Meu Tempo" (I -> bIII) and "A Cor da Esperança" (I -> bII). Furthermore, he made use of non-trivial figures such as tritone substitution
s and extensive tritone resolutions to the IIIm7, as can be observed, e.g., in "Alvorada", "Senhora Tentação", "Inverno do Meu Tempo" and "Disfarça e Chora".
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
for top hat
Top hat
A top hat, beaver hat, high hat silk hat, cylinder hat, chimney pot hat or stove pipe hat is a tall, flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, predominantly worn from the latter part of the 18th to the middle of the 20th century...
), (kaxˈtɔlɐ; October 11, 1908 – November 30, 1980) was a Brazilian singer, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
considered to be a major figure in the development of samba
Samba
Samba is a Brazilian dance and musical genre originating in Bahia and with its roots in Brazil and Africa via the West African slave trade and African religious traditions. It is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival...
.
Cartola composed, alone or with partners, more than 500 songs.
Biography
The first of eight children of Sebastião Joaquim de Oliveira and Aída Gomes de Oliveira, Angenor was born at Rua Ferreira Viana, 74, in the CateteCatete (Rio de Janeiro)
Catete is a neighbourhood in the southern zone of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It has strong commerce, with the majority of population being middle class.- History :...
district of Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
. His name given at birth was actually Agenor, and it was not until the age of 55 that he learned that due to an error in transcription the name on his birth certificate was Angenor. When he was eight his family moved to the Laranjeiras
Laranjeiras
Laranjeiras is an upper-middle-class neighborhood located in the Zona Sul area of Rio de Janeiro. Primarily residential, It is one of the city's oldest neighborhoods, having been founded in the 17th century, with the construction of country houses in the valley located around the Carioca River,...
neighborhood in Rio. Due to financial difficulties, the large family moved to Mangueira hill in 1919, where a small favela
Favela
A favela is the generally used term for a shanty town in Brazil. In the late 18th century, the first settlements were called bairros africanos . This was the place where former slaves with no land ownership and no options for work lived. Over the years, many freed black slaves moved in...
was beginning to appear, when he was eleven.
At age 15, after the death of his mother, he left school to pursue a bohemian lifestyle.
In Mangueira, Cartola soon befriended Carlos Cachaça and other sambistas, getting started in the world of malandragem
Malandragem
Malandragem is a Brazilian Portuguese term for a lifestyle of idleness, fast living and petty crime - traditionally celebrated in samba lyrics, especially those of Noel Rosa. The exponent of this lifestyle, the malandro , or "bad boy" , has become significant to Brazilian national identity as a...
and samba. In 1928, they founded the Arengueiros Carnival Block, which would later transform in the traditional samba school
Samba school
A samba school is a club or dancing school. They practice and often perform in huge square-compounds devoted to practicing and exhibiting samba, an African-Brazilian dance. The schools are traditionally associated with a particular neighborhood, often shanty towns...
GRES Estação Primeira de Mangueira
GRES Estação Primeira de Mangueira
The Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Mangueira is one of the most traditional and best supported Samba schools in Rio de Janeiro. It was founded on April 28th, 1928 in Morro da Mangueira, near the region of Maracanã by Carlos Cachaça, Cartola, Zé Espinguela, Nelson Cavaquinho, among others...
, one of the most loved samba schools in Brazil. Cartola is considered responsible for the choice of colors of the school, light green and pink, as these were the colors of the "rancho do arrepiados" in Laranjeiras where he participated as a boy playing the cavaquinho (small guitar) that his father had taught him.. (The ranchos were precursors to the samba schools in Rio and were composed primarily of descendents of slaves, and featured a king and queen in their performing lines).
Cartola became popular in the 1930s, with many sambas recorded at that time. In the beginning of his career, Creusa, his daughter, adopted when she was five years old, was extremely important in launching him as composer, as she was a singer of extremely persuasive voice, singing his sambas in radio programs of this decade. As much that later, it makes participation special in the first LP of Cartola. He got his nickname because he used a bowler hat
Bowler hat
The bowler hat, also known as a coke hat, derby , billycock or bombin, is a hard felt hat with a rounded crown originally created in 1849 for the English soldier and politician Edward Coke, the younger brother of the 2nd Earl of Leicester...
while working as a construction worker so the cement would not dirty his hair.
Later, in the 1940s, Cartola disappeared from the scene. Little is known about that time in Cartola's life, when he departed from Mangueira after disagreements and became depressed with the death of his wife Deolinda; about that time, rumours of his death were speculated. Cartola was found, in a very popular tale, by journalist Sérgio Porto in 1956, working as a car-washer.
Porto took charge of starting to promote Cartola's return, inviting him to radio shows and divulging his work with new partners. Later, in 1963, investing in his struggle to take the favelas' samba to the city streets, Cartola opened together with Eugênio Agostine and his wife Dona Zica the famous Zicartola bar/restaurant in downtown Rio de Janeiro, which became known as the most important samba establishment of that time, providing a link between the traditional sambistas and the incipient Bossa Nova
Bossa Nova
Bossa Nova may refer to:*Bossa nova, a style of music*Bossa Nova , a dance form associated with the music*Bossa Nova , a 2000 film*Bossa Nova - album by John Pizzarelli...
movement. Cartola invited people such as Nélson Cavaquinho
Nelson Cavaquinho
Nelson Cavaquinho was one of the most important singer/composers of samba. He is usually seen as a representative of the tragic aspects of samba thematics, with many songs about death and hopelessness...
, Pixinguinha
Pixinguinha
Alfredo da Rocha Viana, Jr., better known as Pixinguinha was a composer, arranger, flautist and saxophonist born in Rio de Janeiro. Pixinguinha is considered one of the greatest Brazilian composers of popular music, particularly within the genre of music known as choro...
, Nara Leão
Nara Leão
Nara Lofego Leão was a Brazilian bossa nova and MPB singer and occasional actress. Her husband was Carlos Diegues, director and writer of Bye Bye Brasil....
, Paulinho da Viola
Paulinho da Viola
Paulinho da Viola is a Brazilian sambista, singer/songwriter, guitar, cavaquinho and mandolin player, known for his sophisticated harmonies and soft, gentle singing voice.-Biography:...
, and Zé Ketti to sing the "low-value" music, as sambistas ironically referred to their work.
Cartola's real commercial success started in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he became quite popular and a lot of samba classics were released, such as "O Sol Nascerá", "O Mundo é Um Moinho", "Corra e Olhe o Céu", "Quem me vê Sorrindo" and "Senhora Tentação", with support from singers Elizeth Cardoso, Clara Nunes
Clara Nunes
Clara Nunes; August 12, 1943 – April 2, 1983) was a samba singer, regarded as one of the greatest of her generation. She became the first female singer in Brazil to sell over 100,000 copies, and her achievements in the samba genre earned her the title of "Queen of Samba".She had enormous...
, Paulinho da Viola
Paulinho da Viola
Paulinho da Viola is a Brazilian sambista, singer/songwriter, guitar, cavaquinho and mandolin player, known for his sophisticated harmonies and soft, gentle singing voice.-Biography:...
and especially Beth Carvalho
Beth Carvalho
Elizabeth Santos Leal de Carvalho is a Brazilian samba singer, guitarist, cavaquinist and composer.-Biography:...
. He released his first record only at the age of 66, in 1974, and even living in financial difficulties, composed and sang until his death at age 72.
Work
Cartola composed melodies, harmonies, and lyrics. His lyrics are notable for their very correct use of PortuguesePortuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, especially considering his lack of formal higher education. His poetry binds in an effective manner elegance and emotion, while keeping a relatively low level of complexity, which made his work accessible to larger layers of the population.
With regard to tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
, Cartola's music had a strong tendency towards calmer, slower sambas in contrast to the faster, brisker sambas de terreiro seen in samba schools and to other composers' music. Some say his sambas had a tendency towards samba-canção. The cavaquinho
Cavaquinho
The cavaquinho is a small string instrument of the European guitar family with four wire or gut strings. It is also called machimbo, machim, machete , manchete or marchete, braguinha or braguinho, or cavaco.The most common tuning is D-G-B-D ; other tunings include D-A-B-E...
s in his records had a certain cry mood which was less percussive than usual, with the exception of his last records where Alceu Maia was the cavaquinist.
As a musician, Cartola made use of many modulations
Modulation (music)
In music, modulation is most commonly the act or process of changing from one key to another. This may or may not be accompanied by a change in key signature. Modulations articulate or create the structure or form of many pieces, as well as add interest...
, some of which were not common in samba at that time. Some of his modulating tunes are "Quem me vê Sorrindo" and "Sim" (I -> V), "Acontece" and "Amor Proibido" (I -> bVI), "Inverno do Meu Tempo" (I -> bIII) and "A Cor da Esperança" (I -> bII). Furthermore, he made use of non-trivial figures such as tritone substitution
Tritone substitution
In classical music, a substitute dominant is "a chord sufficiently akin to the dominant to be reasonably set against the tonic, and yet remote enough to give a chromatically expressive, large-scale dissonance to the structure"...
s and extensive tritone resolutions to the IIIm7, as can be observed, e.g., in "Alvorada", "Senhora Tentação", "Inverno do Meu Tempo" and "Disfarça e Chora".
Albums
- 1974 - Cartola
- 1976 - Cartola
- 1977 - Verde Que Te Quero Rosa
- 1978 - Cartola 70 Anos
- 1982 - Cartola - Ao Vivo
- 1982 - Cartola - Documento Inédito
Contributor
- 1942 - "Native Brazilian Music" - Leopold StokowskiLeopold StokowskiLeopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
- 1967 - "A Enluarada Elizeth" - Elizeth Cardoso ("Seleção de Sambas da Mangueira")
- 1968 - "Fala Mangueira!Fala Mangueira!Fala Mangueira! is a 1968 tribute album to the Mangueira Samba School founded by Cartola. The live album features several medleys and individual singles by five of the greatest traditional samba artists of the 1960s and '70s: Odete Amaral, Carlos Cachaça, Cartola, Clementina de Jesus, and Nelson...
" - Odete Amaral, Cartola, Clementina de JesusClementina de JesusClementina de Jesus was born on February 7, 1901, in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She worked as a maid for more than 20 years until she was discovered in 1963 by the composer Hermínio Bello de Carvalho. She is considered queen of the Samba style Partido alto and represents the musical...
, Nelson CavaquinhoNelson CavaquinhoNelson Cavaquinho was one of the most important singer/composers of samba. He is usually seen as a representative of the tragic aspects of samba thematics, with many songs about death and hopelessness...
, Carlos Cachaça - 1970 - "História da música popular brasileira" - with Nelson CavaquinhoNelson CavaquinhoNelson Cavaquinho was one of the most important singer/composers of samba. He is usually seen as a representative of the tragic aspects of samba thematics, with many songs about death and hopelessness...
- 1974 - "História das escolas de samba: Mangueira" -Various
- 1975 - "MPB - 100 ao vivo" -Various
- 1980 - "E Vamos À Luta" - Alcione Nazaré ("Eu Sei")
- 1993 - "No Tom da Mangueira" - Tom Jobim e Velha Guarda da Mangueira (incluída sua gravação de "Não quero mais amar a ninguém")
Tributes
- 1984 - "Cartola, Entre Amigos" - -Various
- 1987 - "Cartola – 80 Anos" - by Leny AndradeLeny AndradeLeny de Andrade Lima, better known as Leny Andrade, was born in Rio de Janeiro, on January 25, 1943, and is a Brazilian singer and musician. Both Andrade's first and last names are sometimes misspelled in English as "Lenny", "Leni", and "Adrade". She has had several hits on the Brazilian charts...
- 1988 - "Cartola - Bate outra vez..." - -Various
- 1995 - "Claudia Telles Interpreta Nelson Cavaquinho e Cartola" - by Claudia Telles
- 1998 - "Sambas de Cartola" - Grupo Arranco
- 1998 - "Só Cartola" - Por Élton Medeiros and Nelson Sargento
- 1998 - "Cartola – 90 Anos" - Por Élton Medeiros and Márcia
- 2002 - "Cartola" - by Ney MatogrossoNey MatogrossoNey de Sousa Pereira, known as Ney Matogrosso is a Brazilian singer who is distinguished for his uncommon sopranino voice.-Biography:...
- 2003 - "Beth Carvalho canta Cartola" - by Beth CarvalhoBeth CarvalhoElizabeth Santos Leal de Carvalho is a Brazilian samba singer, guitarist, cavaquinist and composer.-Biography:...
- 2008 - "Viva Cartola! 100 Anos" - -Various