"WATERS OF MARCH" (1972)

In 2001 Brazil’s leading daily newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, polled more than 200 Brazilian journalists, musicians and cultural icons to ask them to name the all-time best Brazilian song. The champion was "Waters of March" ("Águas de Março"), written by Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim in 1972.
Tom Jobim has been called the George Gershwin of Brazilian music, but he could as easily have been called the Ira Gershwin of Brazilian music as well. He composed over 300 songs, including the music and the Portuguese and English lyrics for "Waters of March." March, Rio de Janeiro’s rainiest month with strong winds and torrential rains that carry away sticks, stones, bits of glass and almost anything else, inspired the song. Jobim wrote the Portuguese lyrics first while at his family’s property in the interior of the Rio de Janeiro State when it was raining constantly and the roads were full of mud. The song is a list song that doesn’t tell a story but instead provides a series of images that reflect the typical day-to-day life of those who live in the Rio de Janeiro inland. Details of daily life are enumerated around the central metaphor of the waters of March.
In the southern hemisphere March marks the end of summer and the beginning of the colder weather. Jobim felt the need to change the lyrics for the English version so that they would be more familiar to the residents of the northern hemisphere where March marks the beginning of spring. He wrote the English lyrics in a room in the Hotel Adams in New York City, surrounded by dictionaries, and made a point of using no words with Latin roots. Reportedly there are photos of envelopes from his hotel scribbled with his notes and words in English along with their translations into Portuguese. The English version of the song is longer than the Portuguese, and refers to the waters of March as "the promise of spring" rather than the "closing of summer." Some critics believe that a degree of richness was lost in the English version and prefer the original Portuguese lyrics. However, Jobim was very concerned about the poetry of his lyrics in both languages and said, "In the lyrics in English for Águas de Março I shifted the approach, a bit. The Waters of March, there, are the waters of defrost. It's when the snow melts and the rivers start to flow again. It is another March, fresher than ours…"
"Waters of March" has been described as a collage in which an assemblage of diverse elements is used to create a picture of the passage of time and life’s inevitable progression towards death. A deeper reading of the lyrics suggests that the rains of March could also be interpreted as cleansing the mind and spirit, preparing a person for new experiences. Jobim may have shared that viewpoint because the last line of his Portuguese lyrics refers to the waters of March as "the promise of life in your heart." Oscar Castros-Neves, noted Brazilian guitarist and Jobim interpreter, said Jobim told him that writing a stream-of-consciousness song like "Waters of March" was his version of therapy and had saved him thousands in psychoanalysis expenses.
Jobim made the first recording of "Waters of March" in Portuguese in 1972, but the definitive version was recorded in 1974 as a duet between Elis Regina and Jobim on the album Elis & Tom, and is considered one of the greatest Brazilian pop records ever made. Elis Regina was a very popular Brazilian singer who was known for her fiery temperament; she died of drug related causes in 1982. She was nearly 20 years younger than Jobim and www.brazzil.com described her relationship with him as follows, "Elis Regina didn’t like Tom Jobim and didn’t hide her dislike for the maestro whom she called "a bore," "dim-witted," and "old fogey" backstage in 1974 when the Elis & Tom LP was being recorded. Elis, however, needed to revitalize a career that was being derailed by bad press from critics who were demanding more sophistication from her. The partnership with old Tom made the trick for her." In 1974 Sergio Mendes recorded probably what is the first English version with Jobim on guitar on the album Vintage 74 - Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’77.
After the results of the São Paulo newspaper’s 2001 poll were released, more than water swirled around the "Waters of March;" controversy regarding the song’s origin swirled also and it came under suspicion for plagiarism. Marco Antonio Barbosa, writing for AllBrazilianMusic at www.cliquemusic.com, describes how Brazilian folklorists claimed that Jobim’s song plagiarized a folklore theme named Água do Céu, recorded for the first time by Brazilian singer Leny Eversong in 1956. That song was based on a macumba (African-Brazilian religious ritual) beat collected in 1933 by musician J.B. de Carvalho. Barbosa goes on to relate that Brazilian music critic journalist Luís Antonio Giron stated, "Águas de Março is not only inspired by folklore, it actually is a folklore song. Copied from the folklore." But, if there is legitimacy to these accusations of plagiarism, it is curious that they seemed to first appear nearly thirty years after the song was written and seven years after Jobim’s death in 1994. References to plagiarism accusations prior to the 2001 poll weren’t found, but descriptions of where and how Jobim wrote "Waters of March" do exist and it was known that his sources of inspiration included folkloric samba-de-matuto and a classic poem of pre-Modernist Brazilian literature. The extent to which Jobim used his own experiences of Brazilian daily life and culture or borrowed from other sources to write "Waters of March" likely will never be known for certain.
Regardless of whether or not "Waters of March" was wholly original, most people don’t deny that Jobim was an exceptionally talented songwriter and this song was one of his finest. Bill Janovitz, discussing "Waters of March" at www.Allmusic.com said, "Via a hypnotic, cyclical, chant-like melody and rhythm with very few changes, Jobim writes a litany of seemingly disparate images, the association between them not immediately clear… Precious few song lyrics can stand on their own sans music, nor are many meant to, but most of Jobim's do. Yet the songwriter is also responsible for some of popular music's most sublime melodies as well. Certainly the jazzy influenced melody works on its own. Paired together, his compositions are subtly potent, mellow masterpieces that go far beyond the nostalgic kitsch value of "The Girl From Ipanema."