Bossa nova, roughly new trend in Portuguese, took shape in Rio de Janeiro at the end of the 1950s. Its heart is a quiet, syncopated guitar pattern developed by João Gilberto, who condensed the rhythms of samba onto the nylon-string guitar, beneath soft, understated singing and harmonies rich in jazz-like extended chords.
Elizeth Cardoso’s album Canção do Amor Demais, with songs by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes and Gilberto on guitar, announced the style, and on 10 July 1958 Gilberto recorded his own Chega de Saudade for Odeon, usually seen as its starting point. Bossa nova reached the world through jazz: Getz/Gilberto, recorded in New York in March 1963 with Stan Getz and Jobim and released by Verve in 1964, won the Grammy for Album of the Year, and The Girl from Ipanema won Record of the Year. Its gentle pulse and warm guitar are everywhere in jazz lo-fi.