CARTOLA

Rio de Janeiro (Brasil), 1908 – 1980

By Marcelo Silva Souza

Life in the Mangueira favela, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, was the main source of inspiration for the songs that made Angenor Oliveira, known as Cartola, one of the greatest composers and interpreters of Brazilian music. The story of this self-taught songwriter, like that of many other poor and popular artists, is marked by material fragility and creative strength.

From a young age, he participated in street parties, following in his father’s footsteps with the cavaquinho and guitar, the main instruments he would use to compose his songs. After the death of his mother at the age of fifteen, he dropped out of school and started working odd jobs. He received the nickname by which he would go down in Brazilian music history due to a top hat he wore for protection while working as a painter and bricklayer.

At twenty, he was one of the founders, alongside his greatest musical partner, Carlos Cachaça, of the second samba school in Rio de Janeiro, which would become one of the most famous—the Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Estação Primeira de Mangueira.

In 1931, the famous singer Mário Reis approached him in the favela to purchase one of his songs. Ironically, he sold the samba “Que infeliz sorte” for a good sum, which ended up being recorded by Francisco Alves, “the singer of the masses.” Thus, unbeknownst to him, Cartola became part of the new machinery of the recording industry forming in Brazil in the wake of the 1930 Revolution. This scene of selling songs would repeat in the following years, and Cartola’s sambas would gain wider recognition.

In 1940, he was invited by Heitor Villa-Lobos, through Pixinguinha, to join a group of musicians who would record popular songs aboard the ship Uruguai to promote Brazilian music in the United States. It was during this time that Cartola recorded one of his most important sambas, “Quem me vê sorrindo.”

However, after the recording, he went through a disturbing period: he fell gravely ill, his wife died, and he left the favela. Believing he was dead, some even dedicated songs to him. This could have indeed been the end of Cartola’s career if it weren’t for a chance encounter that would change the course of music history. In 1956, the columnist Sérgio Porto (Stanislaw Ponte Preta) found Cartola washing cars in Ipanema, a neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. Sérgio took him to sing on the radio and arranged for him to work at a newspaper.

In the early 1950s, Cartola returned to the Mangueira favela and began living with Eusébia Silva do Nascimento (Dona Zica), also a widow, whom he would marry in 1964. It was with her that he opened the restaurant Zicartola in 1963, which helped launch future masters like Paulinho da Viola and promoted a space for integration between leftist artists of the Bossa Nova, which was starting to divide, and the artists from the favela, or simply between “asphalt samba” and “favela samba.”

The “troubadour of samba” composed around five hundred songs but only had time to record four solo albums; the first, Cartola, was released by the important researcher and producer Marcus Pereira in 1974. Despite the few albums, his innovative interpretation of his own songs and the refinement he gained over the years, expressed in songs that perfectly synthesize lyrics and melody, such as “Acontece,” “Cordas de aço,” and “Alvorada,” make these records a definitive register in the history of Brazilian music. Another anthological work is the album Fala mangueira, produced in 1968 by Hermínio Belo de Carvalho. In it, Cartola sings alongside Nelson Cavaquinho, Carlos Cachaça, Clementina de Jesus, and Odete Amaral.

A civil servant, working as an office boy, in the mid-1970s Cartola and Dona Zica moved to the small house they had built in Jacarepaguá. In 1980, Cartola passed away due to cancer. At his funeral, a small crowd sang the exquisite samba-canção “As rosas não falam,” accompanied by the bass drum of Mangueira’s drummer, Waldomiro, as the master had requested. Cartola also asked to be remembered by the classic “O mundo é um moinho” and “O inverno de meu tempo.”