The singer, composer and guitarist Carlos Lyra, who has died aged 90, played a key role in the development of bossa nova, the “new wave” in Brazilian music of the late 1950s. This cool, sophisticated fusion of samba-canção (samba song), jazz and western classical influences emerged from the bars and clubs of Rio de Janeiro to become massively popular in the US and around the world.
Unlike many other early bossa heroes, Lyra was both a charismatic performer and a fine songwriter, known for his exquisite melodies. He was also determined to bring a political edge into a style associated with gently languid songs about young women and sunshine. Interviewed for the BBC series Brasil, Brasil in 2007, he told me that bossa was “the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie … something that came from the middle class for the middle class”. And this was something that he was determined to change.
His celebrated bossa contemporaries were the guitarist João Gilberto, the composer Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim and bossa’s finest lyricist, Vinicius de Moraes, and Lyra was closely associated with all three. One of his early songs, Menina (1954), was recorded as a single by Sylvia Telles, with a song by Jobim on the flip side; Jobim praised him as “a great melodist”. Gilberto recorded three of Lyra’s songs – Maria Ninguém, Lobo Bobo and Saudade Fez Um Samba – on his classic first album Chega de Saudade (1959). And in 1960 he began to collaborate with Moraes, with whom he wrote some of his most celebrated songs. He described Moraes as “fat, short, bald and women loved him … he would listen to a song and come up with the perfect lyric”.
Lyra had started writing songs while still a student (he said he wrote Maria Ninguém during a French class), and along with his school friend Roberto Menescal, another bossa star, he became part of the group who would meet in the apartment belonging to the parents of the young singer Nara Leão or at the Bar Do Plaza, where Telles, Jobim and Gilberto discussed musical ideas.
His first album, Bossa Nova (1959), included his own versions of Menina and Maria Ninguém, and was followed by Carlos Lyra (1961) which included collaborations with Moraes, including the classic Você e eu. Now established as a bossa star, he was determined to shake up the music scene. He co-founded the People’s Centre for Culture of the National Students Union, which aimed to introduce music from the favelas and rural areas to a middle-class audience. And he began to write socially conscious lyrics, arguing that bossa had “a hell of a lot of form but lacked content”.
The result would be angry songs such as Cancão de Subdesenvolvido (Song of the Underdeveloped), about economic exploitation. He also became increasingly interested in theatre, and the new approach was shown in the musical Pobre Menina Rica (Poor Little Rich Girl) that he co-wrote with Moraes. It included Maria Moita, a feminist song about inequality.
By now, bossa was becoming popular in the US, after the visit to Brazil by the jazz musicians Charlie Byrd and Herbie Mann, and the success of Jazz Samba, a reworking of bossa favourites by Byrd and the saxophonist Stan Getz. The result was a remarkable concert at Carnegie Hall in New York, at which Byrd and Getz played alongside Brazilian stars including Gilberto, Jobim and Lyra. Lyra sang Influência de Jazz, arguing there shouldn’t be too much jazz in bossa, and said the show was “terrible” because the producer “just wanted a recording session on stage”.
But it did help establish Lyra’s reputation in the US. In 1964 he played with Getz at the Newport jazz festival and the following year released The Sound of Ipanema, recorded with the saxophonist Paul Winter.
His career was flourishing, helped by his 1964 album recorded with Dulce Nunes (which included Primavera, another classic song written with Moraes). But the military coup in Brazil in 1964 changed his life. His most political songs were censored and he went into exile, first in the US and then Mexico, where he recorded two albums. He returned in 1971, but after his 1974 album Herói de Medo was censored by the military he went into exile again, this time to Los Angeles, where he took “primal scream” therapy, met John Lennon and studied astrology.
Returning to Brazil in 1976, he continued to record, with albums including Carioca de Algema (1994) and Sambalanco (2000) and to perform his bossa classics, now with an international audience that included a following in Japan.
Born in the Botafogo district of Rio de Janeiro, he was the son of José Barbosa, a naval officer who played the flute, and his wife, Helena, who played violin. His mother brought him a guitar while he was in hospital for four months after breaking his leg in an army long-jumping competition, which he had won. “That’s how the whole thing started. For self-taught, I think it’s pretty good,” he said. He studied at schools in Rio, São Bento, Santo Inácio and the Colégio Militar, and finally at Mallet Soares college in the Copacabana district, where he began writing songs.
He is survived by his wife Katherine Lee Riddell, an actor, whom he married in Mexico in 1969, and by their daughter Kay, a singer with whom he sometimes performed.
• Carlos Lyra (Carlos Eduardo Lyra Barbosa), musician and composer, born 11 May 1933; died 16 December 2023
