Search - Sylvia Telles :: Amor De Gente Mocau

Fundamental

cmartins | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil | 04/06/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"When Amor de Gente Moça (not "Mocau", for Jobim's sake!) was released in 1959, Sylvia Telles was already acknowledged as a major singer. She'd had one huge popular hit, Amendoim Torradinho, and recorded a handful of Jobim songs as singles. But AGM, coming right after Elizete Cardoso's Canção do Amor Demais (first all-Jobim & Vinícius de Moraes album) and João Gilberto's debut album Chega de Saudade, was the very first all-Jobim-music album ever, and not only consolidated him as a major composer but also laid the final cornerstone to what would have been known as "bossa nova". Furthermore, it established Sylvia as *the* female bossa nova voice.



Even before that, she was already a "modern" singer on her own, veering away from the "operistic" voice until then predominant among Brazilian female singers. Not that she lacked what it would have taken: she had the range, the strength, the vibrato and knew how to use them - when and if needed. Otherwise, she could, and would, croon and/or "bop" - again, as needed.



"Gente Moça". Sylvia was just that, "young people". A young voice, singing the songs of youth, from and to a country that, at the time, was bursting at the seems with youthful energy."