FROM THE KINGS OF THE RADIO
TO THE “BOQUINHA DA GARRAFA”
Tom Tavares
When the first official radio transmission took place in
Brazil, eighty loudspeakers spread around the old federal
capital broadcast the speech of the President of the
Republic, Epitácio Pessoa, in his last year of government.
After the sound of power, it was the turn of the power of
sound: the overture of the opera "O Guarani", by
composer Antonio Carlos Gomes, was broadcast directly
from the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro.
Carmen Miranda
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ll this happened on the 7th of September,
1922, at the celebration of the one hundredth
anniversary of independence. In one hundred years,
the federation had been through successive political crises,
distinguished by a fragile economy, already indebted to
England, as a transfer from anachronistic royalty to the royal
farce of a new republic that proved old early on.
When that September arrived, in spite of the immoderacies
A
Theater, side by side with the already famous Vicente Celestino;
and Ernesto Nazareth enjoyed the success of compositions
like “Brejeiro”,“Odeon” and “Apanhei-te Cavaquinho”.
There was more: in São Paulo, Zequinha de Abreu made
couples dance to the sound of “Tico-Tico no Farelo”,
later turned into the world famous “Tico-Tico no Fubá”.
More to the south, in Porto Alegre, Radamés Gnattali played
the piano in the Cine Columbus, producing his first
practiced by the leaders of the country, it was also a time to tally
some good reasons for hope and optimism. One of
the reasons was the musical production. We had a good sound
legacy from the flute of Joaquim Antonio da Silva Calado
and we still had the piano of Chiquinha Gonzaga. I
t was twenty years before the first recording of Brazilian
popular music (“Isto É Bom”, by Xisto Bahia, cut by
Casa Edison) and seven months after the “
Week of Modern Art”, an event in which Brazilian music was
represented by Ernani Braga, Fructuoso Vianna
and Heitor Villa-Lobos.
In the early 1930’s, Brazil was already “artful”.
Some of the most important artists of our history appeared
at that time: Pixinguinha toured France and recorded
at RCA-Vitor, Argentina, with the “Oito Batutas”;
on the mandolin, Luperce Miranda integrated the Jazz
Leão do Norte, in Recife; the sound of the piano of
Ari Barroso filled the foyer of the Iris Cinema, at
Largo do Carioca; Josué de Barros returned to Brazil after
making the first Brazilian music recordings in Europe;
Francisco Alves made his debut in the São José
scores with distinctly Brazilian musical elements.
Thus, when Roquette Pinto inaugurated our first broadcasting
station, Radio Sociedade, on the 20th of April, 1923,
the collection of compositions developed in Brazil
was already vast and varied enough to meet the
demand of the audience reached by the new communication
medium. The deficiency was not, therefore, in the
field of creation. It was in the area of recording, since the
existing studios did not yet have the best technical
resources for capturing and reproducing sound.
The 78 rpm records did not offer fidelity, neither
did the microphones, nor the transmitters
and much less the rare receivers.
But they would do. The radio became popular.
The radio age had begun.
New radio stations were quickly created and involved
in a healthy competition for audience through quality.
Not only for the capacity of the producers and
presenters. The men of radio back then, perhaps due
to lack of better options, structured the whole program
based on music. Luckily, thanks
Photo: Mario Thompson
Photo: Prensa 3
Sílvio Caldas
to their competence, the music was good.
Thus a relationship was established where all interests were
met: the record company had its work divulged; the artist,
broadcast by the radio station, expanded his field of action;
and the radio station, in development,
devoid of material to fill its program, fed on the rich
and varied musical vein. It is true that the
Rádio Jornal do Brasil distinguished classical music.
But it is also true that the other radio stations never
tired of broadcasting the best of our new music
of those days . The new music of Pixinguinha,
Noel Rosa, Lamartine Babo, Mário Reis, Ari Barroso,
Carmen Miranda, Silvio Caldas, Donga.
New music full of new rhythms, of lundú,
maxixe, choro, march, samba, that, thanks to the
inexorability of time, would soon integrate the repertoire
of what was called “old guard”.
Complementing the sound collection from the record
companies, radio stations in the 20’s started to broadcast live
music, played right there in the transmission studios.
Once again, this proves the quality of the
Nelson Gonçalves
artists of that period: only the really competent can play live.
So competence there was.
With the creation of Radio Nacional, in 1936, the audience
started to compete for a place to see the radio programs.
That’s right, to see the radio.
The live auditorium programs arrived, dividing their time
between presentations of musicians, famous singers and
also new ones, called “calouros”, which
increased the already extensive list of musical attractions.
At that time, the radio went through its first transition.
Little by little, announcers lost the command of
the programs, now exercised by exclusively
hired singers and composers. Rádio Mayrink Veiga had
Carlos Galhardo and Silvio Caldas; Tupi bet on
Dircinha Batista; Rádio Educadora presented the
“Horas Lamartinescas”; the presence of Alimirante was
unmistakable in Tamoio; Ari Barroso
shone in Cruzeiro do Sul. Rádio Nacional,
in turn, had a heavyweight team on the air, in which the
highlights were Francisco Alves, Linda Batista,
Nuno Rolando, Manezinho Araújo,
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Nelson Gonçalves and Orlando Silva.
Absolute audience leader in the 40’s and 50’s,
Nacional had, under contract, 15 conductors, as well as two
regional groups and a great orchestra made up of
144 members. It also employed soloists of the caliber of
Jacob do Bandolim, Abel Ferreira, Luperce Miranda,
Luiz Americano, Dilermando Reis, Garoto and
Chiquinho do Acordeon. Not satisfied with that, it overturned
our presidential regime by crowning Marlene, Dalva de
Oliveira, Emilinha Borba, Ângela Maria and Dóris Monteiro,
the Queens of the Radio, golden voices in the sound tracks of
the romantic years of the first half of the twentieth century.
From 1950, the competition for audience incr
eased even more with the dawn of television in Brazil.
The most important television stations implanted at that stage
were Tupi, Nacional, Rio, Paulista, Continental, Excelsior,
and Record. This new communication medium
conquered Brazilian homes using as attractions the same great
radio names. Although the programs were truly diversified,
with soaps, news, films, the leadership of the musical
programs was undeniable. So television was also born,
learned to walk, and grew on a foundation of
Brazilian music: not only the effective one but also the music
resulting from the new movements that rocked the
country between the fifties and the sixties: Bossa Nova,
Jovem Guarda and Tropicalismo.
There was room for all of them on the screen
when the MPB Festivals (launched by TV Excelsior in 1965,
imitated by Record and, later, TV Globo) selected the
repertoire to be sung by the nation. Tom Jobim,
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Vinícius de Morais, Baden Powell, Geraldo Vandré,
Jair Rodrigues, Chico Buarque, MPB 4, Nara Leão,
Wilson Simonal, Roberto Carlos, Edu Lobo, Elis Regina,
Caetano Velloso, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes,
Tom Zé, Sérgio Ricardo, Dori Caymmi, Nelson Mota,
Luiz Bonfá, Antonio Adolfo, Milton Nascimento,
Guarabira, Paulinho da Viola, Marcos Valle, Sueli Costa,
Ivan Lins, Beth Carvalho, Antonio Carlos and Jocafi,
Gonzaguinha, Egberto Gismonti and Jorge Benjor
were some of the great names that appeared at that time.
The musical programs, such as “O Fino da Bossa”
(TV Record),“Um Instante Maestro” (TV Tupi),
“A Grande Chance” (TV Tupi),“Vamos S’imbora”
(TV Record),“Esta Noite Se Improvisa”
(TV Record),“Rio Hit Parade” (TV Rio)
dominated the prime time. Young people
could choose from “Todos os Jovens do Mundo”
(TV Record),“Os Brotos Comandam” (TV Continental),
“Festa do Bolinha” (TV Rio),“Jovem Guarda”
(TV Record),“Jovem Urgente” (TV Cultura),
“Poder Jovem” (TV Tupi),“Brasa 4”
(TV Itacolomi-BH), and others.
This ebullience continued way into the seventies, leaving
the scene when Paulista, Tupi, Excelsior and
Continental television stations were swallowed by the big
networks, whose paradigm is TV Globo.
The process of dismantlement obviously included the
dismissal of regional groups, whole orchestras,
conductors, in short, all the musical heads that did not
surrender to the dictates of the newest
Gilberto Gil
Photo: Prensa 3
Donga
even sabotaging, the free development of artistic thought,
squeezing everything and everyone, all wrapped in the same
package, through the mouth of the bottle.
Tom Tavares – Composer and Conductor, Professor of the School of Music
of the Federal University of Bahia .
Photo: Mario Thompson
art director of the TV stations: the market. For the vacancies
left by the radio kings and queens, the media owners
elected their ideal stars: luminous kings of submission,
of subservience, ideologically barren lambs.
It was the end of a plural and culturally successful
relationship between the industries of music and
communication. From then on, the big networks
imposed their will like great looting armies, frontally
disregarding the legislation that allows their operation.
The radio and TV stations practically dumped the law of
concessions, teaming up with entrepreneurs whose musical
sensitivity is restricted to the allure of tingling coins.
It seems like fiction, but regrettably it is the truth.
There was a time when music, projected through loudspeakers,
identified, in the conical format of this accessory, one of its
symbols. It was the representative outline of growth, evolution,
expansion, freedom.
Today, the media refuses to contemplate diversity, discouraging,
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