Brazilian Music Friday Feature #5
This week's feature is Piano Na Mangueira by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Chico Buarque. I know, I just featured Chico Buarque last week, but I picked this one because I was pondering an unusual melodic feature - the interval of a tritone AKA augmented 4th/diminished 5th AKA the "devil's interval". (Click through for some interesting theoretical and historical information.)
The reason this intrigues me is that I can't think of any American (non-instrumental) songs that use the tritone except The Simpsons theme and "Maria" from West Side Story, and I can only think of one other Brazilian song that uses it in a sung melody. Fellow music nerds, help me out - do you know of any others?
Theory knowledge aside, it's also a great, classic Brazilian samba tune. Here are two different versions, the first by the composers, and the second more in pagode style: