Waters of March

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"Waters of March" ("Águas de Março") is a bossa nova song composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Jobim wrote both the English lyrics and Portuguese lyrics. When writing the English lyrics, Jobim avoided words with Latin roots resulting in the English version having more verses.

In 2001 Águas de Março was named as the all-time best Brazilian song in a poll of more than 200 Brazilian journalists, musicians and other artists conducted by Brazil's leading daily newspaper, Folha de São Paulo.

The song lyrics, originally written in Portuguese, do not tell a story, but rather present a series of images that form a collage; nearly every line starts with "É..." ("It's...").

In Jobim's English version, "it" is a stick, a stone, a sliver of glass, a scratch, a cliff, a knot in the wood, the wind blowing free, a fish, a pin, a buzzard, the end of the road, and many other things. All these details swirling around the central metaphor of "the waters of March" give the impression of the passing of daily life and its continual, inevitable progression towards death, just as the rains of March mark the end of summer and the beginning of the colder season.

The inspiration for Águas de Março comes from Rio de Janeiro's most rainy month. March is typically marked by sudden storms with heavy rains and strong winds that cause flooding in many places around the city. The lyrics and the music have a constant downward progression much like the water torrent from those rains flowing in the gutters, which typically would carry sticks, stones, bits of glass, and almost everything and anything. The orchestration creates the illusion of the constant descending of notes much like Shepard tones.

The song was used by Coca-Cola for a television commercial in the mid-1970s.

Guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves relates that Jobim told him that writing in this kind of stream of consciousness was his version of therapy and saved him thousands in psychoanalysis bills.

[edit] Renditions

The definitive, though not first, recording is considered to be the duet sung by Jobim and Elis Regina, from the 1974 album Elis & Tom.
João Gilberto's recording from 1973 is known for its considerable deviation in rhythm and meter from the original.
David Byrne and Marisa Monte recorded the song for the "Red Hot + Rio" Sampler.
Bilingual version on Susannah McCorkle's album "From Bessie to Brazil".
Oscar Castro-Neves also has recorded the English version.
Art Garfunkel, of the singer / songwriter duo, Simon & Garfunkel, recorded the song on his solo "Breakaway" album released in 1975. His recording has a striking similarity to the composer's inflection, rhythm, and evocation of the song recorded on the 1973 album, '"Jobim"', MCA Records MCA-350.
Jazz singer Jane Monheit recorded a critically acclaimed version in English.
The Japanese group Cibo Matto performed the song in Portuguese for their 1997 album Super Relax.
Basia recorded a version that was later included on the release of Clear Horizon: The Best of Basia.
Japanese female singer Akiko recorded an English-language version as a duet with jazz-pop act Swing Out Sister in 2002, and released it as a single.
The Jobim / Elis version was performed by Marco and Debbie, respectively, in an episode of Sealab 2021.
Argentinan pop/rock artist Fito Páez recorded a live version of the song, which can only be found on the Internet.
Recorded by the Brazilian trio Bossacucanova on their album "Uma Batida Diferente" in 2004 with vocalist Cris Delanno.
Irish singers Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan recorded their version of "Waters of March" in Portuguese for the movie "Goldfish Memory"