Saturday, February 19, 2011

BOOK: Bossa Nova Cover Art by Soul Jazz



This is the first ever collection of bossa nova record cover artwork, featuring stunning modernist and revolutionary designs that reflect the radical and exciting idealism of Brazil at the start of the 1960s.

Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records) bring you this amazing new deluxe hardback 12" x 12" book, 200 pages, 100s of stunning absolutely killer Bossa Nova sleeves from Brazil plus loads of historical, cultural and social text as well as biographies on loads of the artists!

As Brazil developed into an urban society, with ‘apartment living’ and consumer goods, bossa nova projected an image that was modern, sophisticated and cool. Bossa Nova music arrived in Brazil at the end of the 1950s with an optimism and modernism that parralleled the arrival of the new Brazilian president, Juscelino Kubitschek, who promised 'fifty years of progress in five' in his election campaign and announced the building of a new capital city, Brasilia, deep in the heartland of Brazil. The city was designed by Oscar Niemeyer, a man who had just designed a new musical theatre production in Rio of a play written by Vinicius de Moraes and with music written by Antonio Carlos Jobim. These two, along with the singer João Gilberto were about to make Bossa Nova, the first modernist Brazilian art form, the most succesful Brazilian export since coffee.

This book is a unique collection of the cover art of Brazilian bossa nova music, containing hundreds of record covers complete with a history of bossa nova, biographies and essays on many of the artists involved in the movement. The book follows on from our previous cover art book on Jazz called Freedom, Rhythm and Sound, also edited by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker.

To coincide with the book, there is also a separate double-CD album, 'Bossa Nova and the Rise of Brazilian Music in the 1960s' also released on Soul Jazz Records.

Stuart Baker interview on Jungle Drums mag





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