Hi folks.
I just registered in the forum, and I see there is serious music discussion going on here.
I think it would be nice to discuss the musical aspect of the so-called "hard bossa". This period of brazilian music (late 50's, early 60's) is of major importance for the later development of Brasil's popular music. In short, they managed to transform the samba language, in some way modernizing it, once it has been adapted to the drum, piano and bass formation.
Of course jazz music being produced in US played an important role in this process, but must be stressed the maintenance of the fundamental pilar represented by samba. Samba constitutes the core of this music. The beat is a abreviation of samba beat. Edison Machado, Dom um Romão, Milton Banana, Wilson das Neves were already great sambists when they discovered jazz music.
Although these artists were avid jazz listeners, they managed to incorporate only operational aspects of jazz music to their own music. The harmony comes from jazz, but the other aspects of this music (like compass or beat) are very different from any kind of jazz - swing, bop, cool, etc.
It is important to see that "hard bossa" uses jazz language to adapt samba music to the conventional popular music formation including drum, bass, piano, and eventually some blow instruments. It is like they developed instrumental samba with a much wider range of possiblities, radically differing from the old samba recordings from the 40's-50's. This is where jazz music was important. But, again, the music as a hole is different. The easiest way to understand that is to listen to any jazz record from the 50's and compare it to any of the records mencioned in this thread.
In this way, this music and all it have influenced must not be called "brazilian jazz" or "samba jazz". Maybe "modern samba" or even Bossa Nova are better labels.
I hope you guys have already listened to "hard bossa" enough to actually feel stimulated to discuss.
See ya.