The roots of the Bossa Nova music were created by young Brazillian musicians looking for a new way on an old theme ... The Samba, they added Jazz to it. All roads point to Joao Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá (1922-2001), all three are musician /
Composers who wrote the first Bossa Nova "A felicidade" for the 1958 (1959) film "Black Orpheus," Sidney Frey brought the music to the United States while Elvis Presley and songs like the "The Girl From Ipanema" made it a somewhat popular music. The Music is likened to a subtle Jazz-Samba. The term Bossa Nova is slang for the ''New Thing", "New Wave," "New Way", a "New Beat" or ''New Feeling."
"1962 VARIETY Magazine" has suggested that the record industry may be trying to develop a dance to go with bossa nova. One record publisher was quoted as saying that "a new beat has to have an accompaning Dance. Songwriters tried to create a dance for the Bossa Nova like days gone by. Vocalist Edie Gormé recorded the pop tune "Blame It on the Bossa Nova," a song in which the style is depicted as a dance is a good example. The dance was said to be going to replace the Twist, and other dances, however it did not.
The dance originated around 1960 and was somewhat popular by 1963 as people were trying to dance to the Bossa Nova, however the music was much more popular than the dance due to it's hasty commercialism of releasing the music without a dance to go with it. In a Newspaper poll of Teenagers in 1963, they said they liked the music but hated the dance. They explained it was "to fast for slow dancing and to slow for fast dancing". Others said they liked the dance ... but the general consensus is the dance was not very good... People for some reason thought of the Bossa Nova as a listening or concert type music rather than a dancing music overall which may have been the result of the White House and Carnegie Hall concerts shown on TV as well as not having a dance to dance it.
Pacific Stars and Stripes Newspaper wrote: "Dance studios (Fred Astaire) have come up with versions of the Bossa Nova dance step which seems to be modifications and combinations of the Twist, Mambo, Samba, Conga and Rhumba." Some of the pattern names were Knee Rock, the Walk, the Serpentine, Peeling the Banana and other descriptive terms. The dance is basically the opposite steps of the rumba, (Slow-Quick-Quick) with a subtle Samba flair, very similar to today's much slower Nightclub Two-step. The dance can be done in couple or solo form.
Joe Lanza says (but not verified) that he choreographed the first "Bossa Nova Dance" to "Bossa-Nova Music." Lenny Dale is also credited to have created the First Bossa Nova dance in Rio. There are about 20 reported people who have made the claim of inventing the dance from California to New York and over-seas ... However it was most likely created by Fred Astaire Dance Studios as they are the most reported to have worked on the dance in the first year of its musical release and most likely the ones who had the power to deliver the dance nation-wide (In one interviews Arthur Murray studios said it was working on a dance and in the same interview Fred Astaire was already offering lessons in a Samba/Mambo version c.1/1962 they created).
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