Maysa

Maysa was not just a voice heard on Brazilian radios in the 1950s and 60s: she was the one who defined the bridge between samba-cancão and bossa nova, with phrasing that moved between melancholy and an almost theatrical elegance. Her way of singing did not follow the rules of the time; she treated lyrics as if they were intimate confessions and adorned them with a vibrato that, instead of softening, accentuated every word. She recorded her first album in 1956, Convite para ouvir Maysa, after a producer heard her sing at a family gathering. The album, filled with her own songs, spread quickly in São Paulo and Rio, and suddenly she became a name that radio stations could not ignore.

What began as a pastime—singing at parties, composing since the age of twelve—became her life when her marriage to André Matarazzo crumbled. The separation in 1957 left her without a safety net, but it also opened the door for her to professionalize her art. That same year, she released her second album, simply titled Maysa, and the song Ouça became an instant hit. Television hired her, critics applauded her, and her name began to circulate in Europe: in 1960 and 1961, she recorded in the United States Maysa sings songs before dawn for Columbia Records, an album where her voice, now more polished, explored jazz and bolero with an intimacy few could match live. But outside Brazil, a song in French would make her even more recognized: Ne me quitte pas, by Jacques Brel, became her most covered version and ended up in the soundtrack of Law of Desire by Pedro Almodóvar decades later.