Ary Barroso
Ary Barroso was Brazil's first great song-factory hitmaker — a Rio-based composer, radio announcer, and pianist whose 1939 samba-exaltação 'Aquarela do Brasil' (later just 'Brazil') became one of the most recorded songs in the world and something like Brazil's second national anthem. Across the 1930s and '40s he turned Carnival marchinhas and sambas into a national songbook performed by everyone from Carmen Miranda to Hollywood orchestras, occasionally stepping up himself to sing and play his own catalog at the piano. His nationalist, big-gestured exaltação style gave younger Bahian songwriters — Caymmi among them — a template for turning place into anthem.
we haven’t charted Ary Barroso yet
this stretch of the river isn’t mapped. we trace the watershed one artist at a time — and we’re always heading further upstream.