Original subtitles

Can you hear me okay? Yeah? Great.

Right. Well, we'll get this party started.

-Allow me to introduce Jeff. Jeff Harris. -Hello.

Author of the book we're going to present tonight.

Now, like many of you, I hope...

...I read Jeff's article in The New Yorker on the bossa nova rage of the 1950s,

-and I liked it so much... -Oh, thank you.

...that I was left with a thirst for more.

So, I asked Jeff to take things a step further.

I urged him to write a book

about that magical music that captivated the world,

especially many of us here in the United States.

-Now, that was the initial premise... -Yes.

...and it was a fairly simple one.

The story, however,

-became more complicated, you could say. -It sure did.

And in my opinion, for the better.

Well, uh, I could go on and on,

but I would much rather have Jeff tell you all about it.

So, without further ado, maestro.

Uh, hi.

Where should I start?

Well, naturally, after getting Jessica's offer,

I accepted it without even a second thought.

I think mostly 'cause it included three trips to, uh, Rio de Janeiro...

...uh, and it was an opportunity to spend time listening to music,

which I love to do,

and gabbing with musicians

and just, uh, wandering around my favorite city.

-Mm. Yeah. -You know, I might even fail, I thought,

to use my return ticket and, uh, stick around a while.

Terrific.

Well, no sooner had my article appeared in The New Yorker

that my mailbox was just crammed

with parcels promoting the latest music trends,

not just Brazilian, but all kinds of world music.

I got 'em, I got 'em. Thank you.

I had five days before my flight to Rio,

so I locked myself in at home to catch up and listen to music.

One day, a piano solo on a recording from the '60s caught my attention.

I checked out the liner notes,

and I came across a name

which until that moment had been unknown to me...

Tenório Júnior.

I wanted to know who this guy was,

this piano player that I'd never heard about.

What else had he done? What was he doing now?

It seemed that in 30 years, he hadn't done a single thing.

I figured he must have died the way most musicians did back in the '70s,

drugs or a car crash while touring.

Ah, there it is!

BOOKS AND CDS MUSIC BOOKSTORE

EVERYONE'S SHEET MUSIC BIOGRAPHIES-STORIES-ROGAHOS

TOQUEIRO LIBRARY - RESEARCH TABLE FOUNDATION STONE

This one, please.

BOSSA NOVA MUSEUM CRAVO ALBIN CULTURAL INSTITUTE

The very next day, I made plans to have a drink with my good friend João,

who is one of the people I know who knows most about Brazilian music,

and I often go to him for help.

And he gave me the names of people that I could talk to,

and he gave me their phone numbers.

And, as he always does, he brought me a very sweet gift of records.

...from the '60s which had been out of print.

Impossible to find, you know?

I have this one already.

By the way, who is this pianist?

Gee, I never heard of him. Who's Tenório Júnior?

Tenório was one of the top figures of samba jazz

during the bossa nova years.

He was the jazzist of the Brazilian pianists.

-What ha-- What happened to him? -He died. A very strange story.

He was in Buenos Aires playing with Vinicius de Moraes,

when one night, he disappeared just like this.

Nobody heard from him again.

Wait a minute. How do you know he's dead?

Well, it happened at the time of military coup in Argentina.

What, was he mixed up in politics or something?

I don't know...

No, not that I know.

Well, I'd like to know more about him.

This was Beco das Garrafas. Bottles Alley.

No! This is Bottles Alley? This was the birthplace of samba jazz.

Why do they call it that?

Ah, because there were so many people coming

that the neighbors couldn't sleep

and started to throw bottles at everything and everybody.

There were just four small clubs.

Some were even hookah joints.

Over there, the Bottle's Club, and there in front was Little's.

-You see that? -Uh-huh.

They belonged to Alberico Campana,

an Italian immigrant who didn't have any money.

He didn't even know that in Brazil we speak Portuguese.

-No kidding! -Yeah, he thought we speak Spanish.

That guy could tell you a lot of stories.

- Yeah, let's talk to him! - There's nothing left from that time.

It was a golden age that lasted only ten years.

It was all new kids.

The bossa nova movement started shyly like that.

They didn't accept it right away.

It was just accepted by the guys who made bossa nova.

It started to grow and grow.

There were 60 people inside and a thousand people outside.

Of those thousand people, three hundred were musicians.

That's why I think that it was a historical thing,

because there was a radical change in the music and what it was.

That's all, folks!

Ella Fitzgerald did four days at Copacabana Palace

and those four days,

she left without giving an encore to run to Beco.

Everyone who appeared in Rio de Janeiro came to Beco.

It was a wonderful city.

Everybody was happy, joyful, nothing happened.

Oh, yeah.

It was an absolutely strange thing, completely new.

The lyrics were completely new, the music was completely new,

the singing was completely new...

and it had guitar that no one had played like that either.

Music was not made that way.

Before "Chega de Saudade" and after "Chega de Saudade"

it was another thing, another matter, very clear.

What is this "Chega de Saudade" thing?

I went crazy for all of that...

that way, that poetry.

That was it. "Chega de Saudade" changed my life.

♪ Go, my sadness ♪

♪ And tell her ♪

♪ That without her it can't be... ♪

After that song, nothing ever was the same.

The song was called "Chega de Saudade", "No More Blues",

and brought together the holy trinity of the new Brazilian sound...

João Gilberto,

the poet Vinicius de Moraes, who wrote the lyrics,

and Antônio Carlos Jobim,

who contributed the music and arrangements.

It was 1959.

The bossa nova in Brazil and the Nouvelle Vague in France

changed the history of music and film.

And when the Brazilian musicians hit New York City

for their legendary concert at Carnegie Hall,

it was unstoppable.

American musicians went absolutely wild over Brazilian music.

Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie.

And when Stan Getz recorded with João Gilberto,

they knocked The Beatles right off the top of the charts.

Even Frank Sinatra made two records with Jobim.

This made a lot of sense since the precursors of the bossa nova

had been members of the Frank Sinatra and Dick Farney fan club in Rio

back in the '50s.

The entire world began singing and dancing to Brazilian music.

There hadn't been anything like it since the mambo rage of the 1940s.

Everyone talks about the influence of the bossa nova on American music.

But bossa was influenced by American music too,

especially West Coast jazz.

When they asked Elis Regina which singer had most influenced her,

- you know who she said? - No.

- She said Chet Baker. - No kidding!

By the way, tomorrow there's a screening of a documentary

on Vinicius de Moraes produced by his daughter.

It could be interesting.

♪ If you want me to stop crying ♪

♪ Tell time to stop passing ♪

♪ Time cries the same tears as me ♪

♪ Him and me both ♪

♪ In order not to make you sad ♪

♪ What can I do but sing? ♪

After Tenório disappeared, my dad stayed for a while in Buenos Aires.

Actually, he had an Argentine girlfriend at the time.

The next to last just before Gilda.

Another coincidence was that the consul of Buenos Aires

when all this shit was going on

was my ex-husband, Rodolfo.

My dad asked him to help find Tenório, but it was impossible.

Has anyone ever told you about Malena?

Malena? Who's Malena? You mean his wife?

Well, not exactly.

He was married, right? And he had a lot kids, or...

Yeah, four, and I think they were expecting their fifth.

But he was in love with Malena too.

And why did they arrest him? Why did they-- Why did they kill him?

Nobody really knows.

It seems Malena wasn't feeling very well,

and he went out to the pharmacy to get some medicine,

and that's it, he just vanished.

He vanished. He disappeared.

I know her.

Do you want me to give her a call?

Malena? Uh...

Did-- Did you know that Tenório was with another woman when he disappeared?

Yes, of course.

Jeff, Gilda was Vinicius' last wife.

Just yesterday I was telling Jeff about Tenório Júnior.

It was a mystery, a very distressing thing for Vinicius.

It was very difficult for a day to go by

without Vinicius talking about Tenório

and that terrible episode.

He died with the anguish of Tenório's disappearance.

He did?

Malena doesn't want to talk about it.

She kept quiet for 35 years out of respect for the family,

and she's not going to start talking about it now.

I know musicians who were friends of theirs.

If you'd like, we could try to locate his widow through them.

Well, you mean his wife.

Since the body was never found,

she was never compensated as a victim of the dictatorship.

She doesn't even get a pension. Can you believe that?

Oh, boy. Yeah.

-Hello? -You're still here?

-João? -I just met a friend

who knows Tenório's wife, Carmen.

He told me she lives in a small village in the middle of nowhere

and doesn't have a number.

You have to call a public pay phone on the street. You know what I mean?

"He went missing in mysterious circumstances..."

Torture and murder.

A few days later, I caught a flight to Tucson

to meet with Bud Shank,

one of the great figures of West Coast jazz,

along with Chet Baker.

He was the first person to mix samba and jazz together during the mid-1950s.

Hey!

On our way to his house, Bud told me about those pioneer recordings

with Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida in L.A.

Just when I was in Rio, I met-- I met a whole bunch of guys.

It was that same time I was at Carnival.

I got to Rio just the day that Carnival started.

And, uh, I didn't know a soul in Rio.

All the time I was there, Carnival was going on too,

so everything was... all over the place, you know.

I mean, 24 hours a day.

So, you couldn't really judge--

Is this really Rio, or is this Rio during Carnival, you know?

It was like going to heaven.

I never danced in the street anywhere in my life before that or after that.

I just started wandering around,

and I walked-- I walked into a club, which was right by my hotel.

I was very impressed with his playing, which was also--

I found very refreshing, you know.

A more contemporary-- A younger approach. You know, it was a delightful...

Well, imagine my astonishment

when he told me that the piano player was Tenório Júnior.

I never did know whether Tenório was his first name or last name.

Everybody called him Tenório.

As I said, he spoke very good English.

He was, uh, an intellectual, you know.

I mean, he could talk about a lot of subjects and especially about music.

And he was younger than Jobim and all that bunch.

And I sure did enjoy playing with him and we talked about samba a lot.

And he went on to tell me

that he'd wanted to bring him to the United States to play in his band.

...which never happened.

Instead, Sergio Mendes came and Tenório didn't.

Sergio Mendes wanted to be a pop star.

That was evident in the beginning, you know. I mean...

Listening to him talk,

I realized at some point he has no clue about what happened to Tenório.

I decided to tell him, uh, that he had disappeared,

and that nobody ever saw him again,

and that his body was never found.

I had no idea about all that.

- That's-- That's a terrible story. - Yeah.

Tenório's story. Man, that's heavy.

Yeah, isn't it?

Wild story.

I really did like the guy. And I liked him as a person.

But why Tenório?

He drove me back to the airport, but he didn't speak the entire way.

Two weeks later, I was back in Rio.

I've lined up a bunch of interviews for you.

A who's who in Brazilian music.

Also, Susana de Moraes called me.

She wants you to come for dinner tonight.

Apparently, Malena has changed her mind,

and now it seems she wants to talk to you.

Malena?

Malena, the girl who Tenório was with in Buenos Aires.

You want to speak to her?

Yeah, of course.

But first, we have an appointment with Ferreira Gullar.

Wh-Who's that?

Oh, he's a great poet.

He wrote "Poema Sujo." Uh, "Dirty Poem."

He was a close friend of Vinicius

and was exiled in Buenos Aires when Tenório disappeared.

He could tell you some interesting things,

and he lives only a couple of minutes from your hotel.

After you drop off your bag, we'll go to see him.

-It's okay? -Yeah, great, let's go.

Vinicius always toured over there,

by Punta del Este and then Mar del Plata

and then Buenos Aires in the summertime.

He was living in an aparthotel

and then I went there to his apartment

and I heard a conversation

with a young lady who was Tenório's girlfriend

and who went in there and said: "Tenório hasn't come back yet."

He told us that the girl wasn't feeling well

and that Tenório went down to the pharmacy to buy medicine,

disappeared and never came back.

Then Ferreira Gullar shared something incredible.

Now the following happens: when I arrived in Buenos Aires,

my son had a psychic problem

and he disappeared,

disappeared, ran away from home, left home and disappeared.

I was in a state of despair and I talked to my Argentinean friend...

A female friend of Ferreira then told him

that she knew a clairvoyant named Haydée.

And then she tells me the following, "Mr. Gullar,

I know you don't believe in these things.

If you want, I can give you her phone number

so you can try to see if she can find your son."

I said, "Okay, give me the phone."

I called her. "I'm so-and-so, friend of Beltrana.

I'm calling you because my son disappeared."

What's his name?

As soon as I said the name, her voice changed pitch,

her voice got strange and she said...

He's underground.

Ferreira thought that his son was dead,

but she reassured him that he was not.

He has no memory. Something happened to him.

Call the Brazilian Embassy. You'll find him there.

I said, "But, Mrs. Haydée,

I'm an exile and I can't call the embassy

without ending up in jail. If I go to the embassy..."

Call the embassy!

Ferreira's son had spent two days on the street

before somebody took notice.

Since he only spoke Portuguese, she took him to the Brazilian Embassy.

They set up a cot for him,

waiting for somebody to come and identify him.

As the clairvoyant had said, the boy was underground.

So I told this story to Vinicius and said:

"If you want, I'll call Mrs. Haydée so we can locate Tenório Júnior."

I took the notebook and turned to Mrs. Haydée.

"Mrs. Haydée, it's Ferreira, the Brazilian."

I said, "There's another problem here. A Brazilian pianist has disappeared."

- What is his name? - Tenório Júnior.

Because I had to say the name.

Only after saying the name could she locate the person.

It is mind-to-mind contact.

I said the name, Tenório Júnior.

When I said the name, her voice changed again.

There is a girl by your side who is in love with him.

Tell her to get away from all this, to stay away,

if she doesn't want something irreparable to happen to her.

Really?

Now, I was scared of her knowing

that the girl was there beside me.

Then I said, "Mrs. Haydée, what is it? Where is Tenório?"

Look, I'm unable to connect with him.

I don't want to scare you, but his brain is not working.

He is dead or unconscious.

Right now, that's all I know.

Call me in two or three days.

I didn't wait until the third day.

On the second day, I called Mrs. Haydée.

When I called and she heard my voice,

before I said anything, she yelled in a terrible voice,

"Mr. Ferreira, he was murdered.

He was massacred!"

I went back to Vinicius' house to tell him the news.

When I told him what Mrs. Haydée had told me on the phone,

he remained motionless in the armchair

and the tears started to fall from his eyes.

Then he began to say, "My friend, my friend..."

Vinicius was apprehensive,

worried, and I even suggested,

"Buy a ticket and send this girl back to Rio de Janeiro."

She was really quite scared.

She went there on a pleasant trip

and suddenly she was in a very big mess.

All this difficulty in finding Tenório,

in my memory, is mixed with the coup.

I think that's the reason why nothing was ever known,

because it didn't matter to the Argentinean dictatorship

if it was accused of having murdered a musician,

a pianist, in the most brutal way.

And because when it was time to return the body,

people would see that he had been massacred,

they tried to cover it up.

That night, I went to Susana de Moraes' home to meet Malena.

During dinner,

I inquired why she changed her mind and decided to talk to me.

She answered,

"Because Tenório was an artist and did not deserve to be forgotten."

We were at the beginning of our relationship

when things happened, right?

Nobody knew I was going there.

I couldn't say that I was there in Punta del Este with a married man.

So, we decided to run away.

He had been invited by Vinicius.

Vinicius was doing this tour, a summer tour that he always did.

- ♪ Go, go, go ♪ - ♪ I won't ♪

-♪ Go, go, go ♪ -♪ I won't ♪

-♪ Go, go, go ♪ -♪ I won't ♪

♪ I am no one to go ♪

♪ In conversation of forgetting ♪

♪ The sadness of a love gone by... ♪

There in Punta del Este it was great,

but he didn't have a very good head.

I think it was also because of the situation

that he had to go back and solve a situation that maybe,

unconsciously, he didn't want to solve.

Who are they?

This one is him with Azeitona.

Mutinho, he was the drummer.

They were the people who played with him on Vinicius' tour.

Azeitona died, but Mutinho lives in São Paolo, like Toquinho.

Both of them.

When I arrived in Buenos Aires, I felt an atmosphere of dread.

A completely besieged place, got it?

An emergency situation, like a war.

There were barricades,

machine guns all the time.

It was like that wherever you went, got it?

You couldn't walk two steps without a machine gun above you.

But he liked to play in Buenos Aires.

He knew a lot of people. He knew Piazzola.

We went to meet Piazzola one night in a restaurant.

But Tenório wasn't well.

Because for him, a guy who had,

I think, five children,

a wife,

this gave him a lot of worries in his mind.

We came back from the theater

and we had a dinner that Vinicius was putting together

for the end of the show in a restaurant that he always went to,

because in the morning we would leave for Brazil.

And he says, "I'm not going at all."

Then I said,

"Okay, we're not going. I have a bit of a headache anyway.

Go around the corner."

There was a place that sold sandwiches.

"Bring some and we'll stay here."

It was fine. I was waiting for him.

An hour goes by, two hours...

And nothing.

Tenório went to the corner and didn't come back.

Then I started to feel sick, in a cold sweat.

And the next day...

Well, I didn't sleep all night long. We all started to look for him.

Then Vinicius said, "You're going to board."

"I'm not boarding. I'll stay and he'll show up."

And I stayed there for about three days.

Then Vinicius boarded me on the plane.

"You'll go back and I'll stay here trying to find him."

I went to live in Petrópolis.

My mother had a country house and I stayed there.

I spent eight years there.

I was a little bit in shock for a long time.

I couldn't speak. I didn't speak for many months.

And then little by little,

I started to get back to my life and I started doing botanical drawing,

then working with plants.

Nowadays, I'm a botanical illustrator

and people even know me well for illustrations and everything.

It all happened very quickly.

It was a short time, four months or so.

It was more like a dream that didn't work.

But I loved watching him play.

He sat at the piano

and the world really stopped

and became enchanted when he played, as if it were an enchantment.

His music encompassed everything.

Tenório was special.

Very special.

I then asked Malena if anybody who was investigating Tenório's death,

a cop, a reporter, had ever spoken with her.

Never, no one in 30 years. And I'll tell you why.

Never, no one in 30 years.

Hey, buddy. Do you have anything to write with?

Yeah, right here in my hand.

-349... -349...

-315... 966, 6 again, 9... -315... 6669.

It's the pay phone at the village where Carmen lives.

-Okay. -And here's the big news.

João Gilberto has agreed to talk with you tomorrow.

Thirty minutes, but no recording.

Hey, now you owe me two dinners!

-Oh, my gosh, at least that. -Two dinners, mister.

Two dinners!

I got there a half hour early, and I strolled around for a little bit,

not wanting to arrive too early

or be, of course, late for my appointment with João Gilberto,

the man that Miles Davis said could sound good reading a newspaper.

I was 17

when I first heard João Gilberto playing "Chega de Saudade"

in that very particular way.

I thought I had finally comprehended modernity itself

and also the substance of Brazilian popular music story.

It made me read literature differently,

watch movies differently,

feel life in a different way. I mean, it changed everything.

I remembered that Tenório was planning to record

with Caetano when he got back from Buenos Aires.

I always felt very reverent before Tenório

because of his musical ability,

an ear for the gifted harmony that Tenório undoubtedly had.

This made me very reverent to him.

I remember a train trip I took with Tenório from São Paulo to Rio.

We spent the whole night talking in the car without sleeping.

I was playing "She's a Carioca"

and I had some doubts about the harmony

and he taught me, he explained to me,

telling me the chords

and I was amazed by that direct contact with the harmony.

♪ She is from Rio ♪

♪ Just the way she walks ♪

♪ No one has affection to give ♪

After Chico, Gil and Caetano,

only Milton Nascimento was left to complete the four giants of MPB,

Brazilian popular music.

Just as I was waiting for Milton to tell me where he was

when he heard "Chega de Saudade" for the first time,

he surprised me with a story out of nowhere.

I consider myself a child of cinema.

He told me that when he saw Jules and Jim at the movies,

he was overwhelmed with emotion,

that he was unable to fall asleep that night

and wrote three songs which would later appear on his first album.

I think Truffaut changed the lives of many people...

Before leaving, it occurred to me to ask Milton

whether he had known or had had any relationship with Tenório Júnior,

and at the mere mention of his name, he became quite emotional.

He was a great musician.

When we arrived at his house, we ended up being part of the family.

He was a family man with a lot of children,

happy only for the children and that joy in the whole house.

That piano of his fascinated me a lot.

I wouldn't know how to define Tenório.

He had style but the sound was different.

When this record came out and when it arrived at my house,

I couldn't take it off the old record player.

Tenório played on some of the best records of his time

but recorded only one as a bandleader in March of 1964.

He was 23 years old.

A few days later,

a military coup put a halt to the modernization of the country

and set in motion a dictatorship that would last for over 20 years.

Good afternoon! Can I speak to Carmen?

Go find Mrs. Carmen!

Mrs. Carmen, phone!

I guess it should be somewhere around here.

Carmen lived modestly. She made and sold sweets.

No, I am still married today.

To be a widow, there would have to be a body.

Today is like the day after he disappeared.

Nothing was known.

Yeah.

It was my mother who heard on television

that Vinicius' pianist had disappeared

and she came to my house to tell me.

I was expecting my youngest son when Tenório disappeared

and an aunt of Tenório's who was a psychic came to my house

to see the child and she told Tenório's sister,

"I thought the child was very cute,

but the father won't know this child!"

How did you meet?

I had seen Tenório play there at the time of the Little Club.

I used to go there on Sunday afternoons.

I used to go to Beco das Garrafas and listen to Embalo a lot.

And we met on the penultimate day of '66.

When I was introduced to him,

I said, "Oh, you are the famous Tenório."

We met there, we got married and then with my last salary I received,

I resigned to get married and I bought the rings.

And we got married like that,

jumping in the deep end

thinking that everything would work out with God's help.

Then after we got married,

work wasn't something that constant either.

We went through a lot of difficulties.

A lot of difficulties.

He was very radical.

He was not an easy person.

He let people down, he agreed and didn't go,

he stopped in the middle of things and left,

left at break time and disappeared,

stuff like that.

He could be very crazy, but he was an extremely polite person,

a completely sweet person.

The only thing Tenório knew how to do was music.

I studied a photo of Tenório,

one in which he looked a lot like Bill Evans.

I mentioned this to Carmen, and she said yes,

that was one of his favorite musicians.

When Bill Evans was in Brazil,

he did some concerts at the Municipal, we even went.

After, Claudio Piolho took Bill Evans here to the Fisherman's Bar at Barra

and Tenório went too.

He had to go because he loved Bill Evans

and so we went there.

I remember that Bill Evans sat down, Tenório, me...

And Tenório spoke English very well.

Then they started talking and they talked a lot.

...to me, just absolutely classic, beautiful solos, you know.

It doesn't have to be bass fiddle. It could be anything.

It's just somebody expressing themselves in a melodic and beautiful way.

Afterwards, Carmen started to share with me

about the difficulties that she encountered

following the disappearance of Tenório.

I was trying to put myself in her situation.

I mean, simultaneously finding out that Tenório had disappeared

but also that he wasn't alone when it occurred.

Geez, I thought they'd never had the chance to argue

or fight or separate or make up.

Before I left, Tenório's sons came by the house.

I remember his voice clearly,

playing piano when there was a birthday.

This thing she talked about, playing the piano on birthdays,

I remember and this memory came to me.

But I don't have any memory like that. I don't remember.

I remember the movement of the house more than him specifically.

The movement of the house, the people, I remember.

I remember the instruments, the big basses...

The house was always full. There were always people.

They were always playing in the little room.

I remember the exact day Roberto went to the airport

to pick him up from his trip.

It was Elisa's birthday.

That day, I remember the house all tidied up.

For a long time, when the bell rang, we expected it to be him.

From about ten to 12 years old, we kept waiting.

After that, we had no hope in that sense.

There's no way.

Elisa wrote a letter to the president.

I don't even remember writing this.

What would it be like if he hadn't disappeared,

if I had my father alive to this day?

How would my relationship with him,

his relationship with his granddaughters be?

How would it be to have a father?

And I had a strange feeling at one point,

'cause I was watching their kids playing nearby

and I thought, "Oh, my gosh,

these are Tenório's grandchildren, of course, that he'd never meet."

Tenório's story started to interfere with my work

to the point of making me forget about the book that I was writing.

Luckily, João has taken it upon himself to remind me.

What time is it?

It's the chance of a lifetime, man.

Paulo Moura and João Donato, Brazil's two greatest musicians

- recording together. - Yeah!

It's something we doesn't see every day, man.

Especially for a gringo like you.

Hey.

When there are no witnesses, I'm going to kiss you.

- I won't do it in front of this guy. - Did you understand?

Hi.

Oh, it's beautiful.

Throughout the lunch, these two masters recalled so many stories

about bossa nova's golden age

and when Donato and João Gilberto, still teenagers, arrived in Rio.

I recalled that Paulo Moura played on Tenório's record,

and I inquired about that.

With Tenório, I learned a lot of things.

He was the best pianist in the city.

It was a period in which Tenório was

one of the important musicians of bossa nova.

I miss him a lot.

It would be so good if he were still alive today.

And he was a great loss for our music.

His musical touch hasn't left my ear either.

It was a very sensitive touch.

I spent a week doing interviews for my book.

They stopped a golden age right in its tracks.

You know, the best music in the world was getting made in Brazil

and from one day to the next, they just ended it.

Dictatorship and big business, no room for new music.

They only wanted three-minute songs.

Tenório's death was a kind of parallel metaphor, I think,

for the death of all of Brazilian music.

And besides that, he was the victim of two dictatorships,

in Brazil and in Argentina.

Who rose to power through military coups backed by your country's government.

-That's it. -Mmm.

The day before I left, I went to talk to a musician,

a friend of Tenório whom Carmen had told me about,

and he had spent, uh, years supposedly compiling many of Tenório's compositions

for a songbook.

Tenório, he was a gentleman.

He was very shy, spoke low.

He appeared like a lightning bolt in Brazilian music here in Rio.

He went to Beco das Garrafas. He played once and it was a commotion.

He was phenomenal. To this day, he remains phenomenal.

If he didn't like something...

...he would disappear.

He thus gained a reputation at the professional level

of being a guy who disappears.

This hindered him professionally.

And then at one point, I was just shocked,

because all this music was on the floor.

It was Tenório's, and we were trampling on his compositions.

Oh, my gosh!

This here... it's Tenório's?

Yes, they're all his. I don't compose.

(Recording) SAUDADE - 17th December 67

Uh, thank you.

Thank you.

Hey, Jeff. It's Jessica. How are you?

I hope you had a great trip. And I am dying to read something.

Do you have any idea when that'll be?

Oh, listen, by the way, if you're not too jet-lagged,

there is the most amazing Cuban pianist playing at the Village Vanguard tonight.

-But if you're too tired, don't worry... -I'm gonna be there.

...because I can always invite someone

who's a lot sexier and better-looking than you are. Bye.

Sexier than me? What's she talking about?

Jessica was quite anxious to receive an update on our book,

but at that point, I couldn't stop talking about Tenório,

his life and his music, and his absurdly tragic end.

I just couldn't stop talking about him.

I've had enough!

Jeff, if you keep this up,

you're going to have trouble finding your way home, baby.

Yeah, don't worry. I was already pretty wasted when I arrived.

Hey, good stuff! Excellent!

Fantastic!

-Hang on, Jessica, I'll be right back. -Just-- Oh, gosh, where are you going?

You gonna play the piano now?

Hello, maestro.

Hello, how are you?

Can you play this?

Yes, whatever you'd like.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, thank you.

Well, let's see if you like it.

Oh, amazing.

Okay, sleepyhead, time to get up!

-Here you go. -Hi.

Breakfast of champions.

Oh, look how sweet you are. What is that? Oh, I like you.

Listen, if last night is a complete blank, don't worry!

There's absolutely nothing to remember.

You spent the whole night--

Mmm, God, this is good.

--talking about a murdered piano player.

-What was his name? -Who?

Oh-- Who? Oh, right. Tenório?

Tenório, that's right.

I wanted you to tell me about our book,

and you wouldn't stop talking about what's-his-name.

Tenório. It's Tenório Júnior.

-Yeah, so nothing happened. -Did I try to kiss you?

Listen, it's impossible to seduce someone

who thinks he's a know-it-all Henry Kissinger.

What?

Basically, you told me we were to blame

for all the military coups that took place in the '60s.

When I tried to defend myself,

saying I had nothing to do with them, you refused to listen.

So, I had no other recourse but to put you to sleep on the couch.

Oh. Oh, I see.

-You know what? -What?

I think that's the book you should write.

What? No, I'm halfway through the other one.

Okay, but your whole mind and interests are centered on the story of that man.

I mean, you're-- you're possessed.

Listen to me. That is the book that you absolutely have to write.

Hmm.

You're gonna love meeting John.

He used to write for The Washington Post.

We published his book last year, and it's absolutely his seminal work.

What you're telling me about this piano player

isn't in the least bit surprising.

Hundreds of thousands were murdered during those years in many countries.

As you can imagine,

the vast majority were innocent people who weren't in any way political,

let alone subversive.

In 1954, General Stroessner launched a coup in Paraguay.

That same year, there was another coup in Guatemala,

where 60,000 people disappeared

during the 36 years that the war lasted there.

Four hundred and forty native villages were erased from the map

and more than 200,000 people died.

In El Salvador and Nicaragua,

war and dictatorships left over 150,000 dead.

Ten years later, a military coup put an end to democracy in Brazil.

In 1971, it was Bolivia's turn.

Two years after that, in 1973,

Pinochet's coup ended Salvador Allende's rule in Chile.

That same year, another coup ended a long period of democracy in Uruguay.

In 1976, after a military overthrow in Argentina,

30,000 people were never seen again.

Too many atrocities.

Your piano player was just one of many who died during Operation Condor.

Back then, none of this was known.

It was all very hush-hush. Top secret.

The governments of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile,

Bolivia and Uruguay held a summit

to collaborate and fight any elements considered subversive.

They could be exiles, dissidents, politicians, military officials,

union or student leaders.

Even the press, clergy and children.

Nobody understood why someone who had fled their country could be killed

or disappear in another.

Since Latin America was a melting pot of dictators,

no one investigated.

Only years later did Operation Condor come to light.

When? How?

The Curia in São Paolo tried to help the families of those who had disappeared,

and founded an office called Clamor.

One of the cases they encountered was that of a Uruguayan woman.

Her son and his wife had taken exile in Buenos Aires.

They were arrested, tortured and murdered.

They had two young children who disappeared.

Geez.

The grandmother wanted to know something about them,

if there was any way to find them.

One day, they received a phone call from Caracas.

A woman claimed to have seen the children in the photo...

...in a square in Valparaiso.

At first, the whole thing didn't seem plausible,

two children from Uruguay, missing in Argentina,

spotted by a Venezuelan woman in a Chilean square.

Even so, they decided to follow up the lead.

VALPARAISO HIGH SCHOOL

Two days later, the Clamor worker went back to the school,

this time with the grandmother of the two children.

My babies, my babies!

God, I can't believe it.

Ugh, that's horrible. Pure evil.

That was the first case

that implicated three of the countries involved in Operation Condor.

Since then, there's been an endless stream of similar cases.

There are still people trying to find--

Or at least find out something about their parents or their children.

All of this was done with the blessings of the CIA and American government.

-Yeah. -Don't get depressed.

-There have been exceptions too. -Really?

There was an idealistic young man who,

fed up with our tendency to defend only democracy for our country

and dictatorships everywhere else,

marched off to Cuba to fight with the revolutionary rebels.

The young man was William Morgan, who fought in the hills with the rebels

and became a commandant and hero of the revolution.

So, what happened to him?

Castro had him executed by a firing squad two years after the revolution succeeded.

Mmm.

A week later, I was back in Rio and I was working on the book,

except that now the book was about Tenório.

I made arrangements to meet my friend João for dinner.

He wanted to show me an historic site.

Here is where everything started one afternoon in April 1956.

Jobim was working as an arranger near here, at the Continental.

After getting off work, he used to drop in here for a beer.

He was seated over there at that table.

Vinicius was having a drink with a friend

who knew he was looking for a composer for his new play,

and he insisted he should meet this kid named Jobim.

Vinicius told him that he had written a version of the Greek myth Orpheus,

set in a favela in Rio,

and was looking for someone that could write the music.

Hey, do you have any money?

How can you say that to a poet?

You don't say that to a poet.

With the salary he was making,

Jobim could barely make it to the end of the month, so he accepted.

A few days later,

Vinicius went to Jobim's apartment

to listen to some of the early music he had written.

And that is how the happiest marriage there has ever been in Brazilian music

was born.

Vinicius-- Gee.

I'd just give anything to be able to talk to him.

I have so many questions.

Oh, um, by the way...

I have to tell you something about the book.

Mmm. Yeah?

My relationship with Tenório Júnior started on the beach.

He was a personality...

but he was really a very special person.

Tenório was a clean person, you know?

He was an outstanding person.

If it were in medieval times, he would be a saint.

He was very "white" as a jazzman.

He passed very quickly and had too early an end.

He deserved to still be alive there with us.

The greatest jazz pianist that Brazil has had

without a shadow of a doubt was Tenório.

And the last time...

I was with Tenório

was exactly in my studio

and he told me he was going to play a gig

in Buenos Aires with Toquinho and Vinicius.

I remember talking to him about the situation in Argentina,

which was complicated.

I said, "Oh, my God, it's complicated. Tenório, you have to be careful."

He was wearing black pants, a black shirt, that big black beard,

and he said, "No, it's okay, we're with Vinicius, let's do the show."

He wasn't worried at all.

After Tenório disappeared,

someone from Argentina called me and said,

"Roberto, I came from Buenos Aires.

I was arrested there and we met there.

He was there."

I said, "Why were you arrested?" He said, "I don't know.

They caught me in the middle of the street

and they interrogated me several times and I don't know.

I don't know what I'm doing here."

Tenório played that wave very well.

And he called my attention

for the assertive approach he gave

to Brazilian music,

using the type of sound that Bill Evans played,

and he was an excellent pianist.

Tenório's hand was a beautiful thing playing the piano,

his hand in the right place.

And he played very well.

I miss him.

Look, can I confess something?

We all miss him, I miss him.

He is right here.

Who I really needed to talk to were two survivors

from the group that left for Uruguay and Argentina,

Toquinho and Mutinho, but they were touring outside Brazil.

Tenório's last concert before returning was in Buenos Aires,

so instead of waiting for them to return,

I decided to meet them at the scene where the events took place.

I took advantage of my time in Buenos Aires

to find some friends of Vinicius and Tenório.

He was young with long hair and a beard.

Being young was already a sin.

Vinicius' pianist disappeared.

I asked myself, "How did he disappear?"

You know? We still didn't understand why,

because this was just getting started.

You must have seen the footage where Videla says...

He is disappeared. He has no entity.

He's neither dead nor alive. He is disappeared.

He's not here.

He's neither alive nor dead. He is disappeared.

He's not here.

That's the tremendous thing about state terrorism.

No one can imagine it if they didn't experience it.

The state protecting you is the one that kills, kidnaps,

the one that makes you disappear

and the one that steals.

That's why I say that state terrorism is more frustrating than war.

In the middle of the night, you could hear,

"They snatched up so-and-so."

That's the term used, snatched.

Those monsters break in.

They all have black glasses...

...and dark suits

and they destroy a politician's home.

They came looking for Melinda.

They go to the kitchen

and there's a three-year-old little girl in a high chair

eating with her babysitter.

- That was Melinda. - No.

Astiz, the demon, the famous blond angel,

Captain Astiz of the navy,

he's seen kneeling on the ground...

...and shooting the girl in the back...

... as she runs because they mistake her for someone else.

Was Vinicius mixed up in politics?

No. We know which side Vinicius' heart was on,

but Vinicius had no connection with any political group.

Vinicius was a poet, an artist.

He focused on his music,

his bottle of whiskey and his love of people.

When Vinicius comes with his music,

it's to do something artistic in a city that loves it.

I don't think there's any way Vinicius would have come

with his group to play in Buenos Aires

if he had known what lay ahead.

No connection to anything...

In Buenos Aires,

I interviewed Vinicius' next-to-last wife, Marta.

Vinicius was a man without any type of militancy.

He believed in humanistic socialism.

That's who he was.

Vinicius would have never disappeared.

It's like Vinicius was somehow untouchable, you know?

He seemed like a very nice, calm guy

who was on a walk with his girlfriend, like a honeymoon,

like two lovebirds.

A tall, skinny guy with long hair.

His appearance was everything it shouldn't be at that time.

Vinicius always remembered Tenório

with the helplessness of not having been able to do anything.

It was something that loomed over him for a long time.

There have been many people who were kidnapped and murdered

that had no political activity.

In the months before the coup, and in the months after.

To go out to buy a sandwich at 2:00 a.m. in those days,

you had to be a foreigner.

An Argentinean would have thought more carefully before doing that.

I was just a few blocks away

from the places that Tenório had been to the night that he disappeared.

The police station was just minutes from the hotel,

and that's where Tenório had spent the first two nights

of his interrogation and torture,

before being relocated to ESMA,

FEDERAL POLICE

the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy.

ESMA is...

the most important clandestine detention center in Argentina.

It's our Auschwitz

and about 5,000 passed through there.

As far as survivors,

-what is it, about 200? - Yes.

From the early days of ESMA,

there are almost no survivors.

Thanks to the assistance

of the Secretariat of Human Rights for Argentina,

I was able to visit the sadly notorious ESMA.

This was where Tenório spent the final days of his life.

SCHOOL OF MECHANICS OF THE NAVY

It operated during the entire period of the dictatorship

from 1976 to 1983.

The first place he was taken was the basement,

where they did what they called interrogations,

which was actually torture.

-Oh! -Watch your head.

-Here too. -Wow, almost hit my--

Everyone remembers being forced to crouch

or purposely be hit in the head with that beam you see here.

-Oh, shit. -They were hooded most of the time.

The main purpose of the basement

was the place where the "interrogations" were conducted,

but it was really for torture.

There were benches here

where they were seated waiting to be tortured.

The marines called it "Avenue of Happiness."

- Oy. - The transfer door

to take people for the flights of death,

where they were thrown into the sea.

"Transfer" was the word the marines used

for a permanent disappearance.

-Mmm. -Jesus, Jesus.

This is what they called the "hood."

Hood?

This is where the detainees were concentrated with the characteristic

that they had hoods on,

hence the name.

All these rooms are mainly known as the pregnant rooms,

being a clandestine maternity ward.

The pregnant women remained hooded, like most detainees,

until the seventh month

and then they were cared for a bit more

and brought to these rooms

where they had a bit better well-being, let's say.

Mothers went missing and their kids were appropriated.

That was so much the case that the Navy had a list of people

who signed up because they couldn't have children,

so they were hoping to receive a child born here at ESMA.

My God. That's horrible.

NEW SHOW SUNDAY DECEMBER 4TH 8 PM - COLISEUM

Yay! Bravo!

Tenório was a great accompanist

and an excellent soloist.

He was very critical, with fantastic humor.

We were leaving a paradise, Punta del Este.

We stayed there for a month.

During that month, he was safe with the distance from Brazil.

He was going through a personal crisis,

the holidays were ending,

he had to go back to his reality

and this crisis didn't exist a single day in Punta del Este.

The atmosphere was very tense in Buenos Aires.

There were tanks in the streets.

It was a bomb that was going to explode at any time.

But we had no idea before going there.

The police sometimes came in and searched the rooms,

twice in the hotel we were staying at.

We're going to search.

Tenório was wonderful. He was a wonderful person.

Very chivalrous, very intelligent, but also very childish.

There was something very, very pure.

He was so funny.

We laughed a lot when we played.

It was wonderful.

He brought someone else, Malena, with him.

And we knew that Carmen existed.

He must have been happy with both.

He was playing well. He was happy, he wasn't sad.

I went to meet a friend I met in Punta del Este

and we ate and drank wine.

Then when I was coming back,

I got a little scared.

I saw a lot of movement and I was afraid of the police,

like everyone else.

Then I arrived at the hotel

and it was a tremendous relief.

At 3:00 or 3:30 in the morning,

Malena calls me like, "You didn't run into Tenório?

You didn't see Tenório?" I say, "No, no."

Then she said, "Because he left and didn't come back.

He went to buy me a sandwich and he hasn't come back yet."

Then at 4:30, Azeitona arrived.

At six o'clock in the morning, more or less,

everyone was in the hall of the Hotel Normandie.

Everybody was worried, scared.

This friend of mine, Malena and I,

the three of us took a car...

FORENSIC MEDICAL CORPS JUDICIAL MORGUE

...and went to the morgue, to the hospital and everything.

We asked questions and found nothing.

We returned very discouraged,

very discouraged,

and we returned to Brazil.

For a long time afterward, I dreamed of Tenório.

When you see a person,

a relative, a friend who dies,

you see them, you go and take the friend.

Now when he disappears,

you never forget, you don't forget anymore.

Yeah, right.

I started to write a melody, a song.

It's a beautiful song, but the melody was written...

-Mutinho, I found the lyrics. -Ah!

I looked it up on the Internet.

The melody was written by Mutinho and I wrote the lyrics.

♪ Pedro continued on his path ♪

♪ Chico asked to stay ♪

♪ Tenório went out alone one night ♪

♪ He disappeared No one could explain it ♪

♪ Other friends have gone ♪

♪ Maintaining their ideals ♪

♪ Between the truth and delusions ♪

♪ Some sowed nostalgia in exile ♪

♪ Others will never return ♪

- We found the lyrics. - What a beautiful thing.

This song is beautiful. I miss this song.

Asking around here and there,

I managed to locate two friends of Tenório...

BOOKS OLD AND NEW

...who had arranged to meet him the night of the concert.

But when they arrived, Tenório had already gone out, never to return.

He was a great guy. He was a pure guy.

He looked like a porteño. He spoke Spanish very well.

He imitated me, "What barbarity!" And he laughed afterwards.

He tells me, "Look, you go to the hotel

and I will be there later, because I have to..."

We arrived at the Normandie, we went inside and waited.

Some coffee, yes. Tenório will be here soon.

And I never saw him again.

I went to all the hospitals.

That night, I went to the morgue and he wasn't there.

The headquarters for the search for Tenório was Vinicius' house.

We went to the hospitals and the morgue many times,

for a whole week, because I thought, "How is it possible he isn't here?"

I kept looking for Tenório. "He must be somewhere."

I kept thinking that I could see him at any moment.

Because I realized that he had died.

I started crying in a corner of the house.

We talked on the phone to arrange to meet after such a long time,

because we had each finished working in different places.

We arranged to meet at the hotel where he was staying.

That would be at 2:00 in the morning, something like that.

He arrived before me

and he went to a pharmacy two blocks from the hotel.

I arrived at the hotel

and a friend named Nano Herrera was waiting there.

It was 4:00 in the morning.

At half past 6:00, 7:00 in the morning,

we went to the places he was supposed to have gone.

Nobody knew anything.

If someone saw him, they didn't say anything.

Remember that there was also a lot of fear.

- Yeah, yeah. Right. - We never heard from him again.

He was a fantastic musician, fantastic.

For me, the best there was in Brazil.

If he had lived,

Brazilian music would have been different.

Because he was a very, very special guy.

As if he were chosen to do certain things.

RESTLESSNESS IN BUENOS AIRES

FUELED BY ACCOUNTS OF FEDERAL INTERVENTION

TODAY AND TOMORROW 10:30 PM TICKETS ON SALE

NOW THE BEST OF JAZZ RETURN

"The show revealed a surprise for many spectators,

Tenório Júnior's brilliant performance."

VINICIUS IN BUENOS AIRES

"The pianist executed an inspired composition...

THE PIANIST TENÓRIO JR. SURPRISES THE AUDIENCE

...that denoted the most authentic expression of modern Brazilian music."

Tenório never got to read this review.

Back in Rio, I hunted down relatives of Tenório

who could tell me about his childhood and youth.

We had a neighbor

who played in the Brazilian Symphonic Orchestra

and he was his teacher.

He had this musical gift since he was a small kid.

He respected his father a lot,

but I think he was very attached to his mother.

When this happened to him,

she was shaken and had a stroke and got sick.

He really pursued it,

even through Interpol, and nothing, nothing, nothing.

Until this Argentinean gave an interview with Senhor magazine

and had a meeting with him where he declared

that Tenório was actually killed inside the cell by a shot to the head.

And in the end, they made it seem like a pact,

one died one day and two days later it was the other.

I often went out with him.

He would play some place,

I think Beco das Garrafas in Copacabana,

at Bottle's.

He was a person completely disconnected from everyday life,

very disconnected from material things,

traveling in his music.

He said, "I know how to play the piano, I don't know how to make money."

He had a way of being very Zen,

very Buddhist, without being Buddhist,

the side of a person committed to good things, things in nature.

With a very simple life, almost Franciscan.

He did not participate in politics. He used to say,

"My big thrill is playing the piano, it's not doing politics."

Tenório and his cousin, Luiz Roberto, were very close.

They studied medicine together

until Tenório decided to quit and dedicate himself to music.

His father, in a loving way,

despite being upset that he left medicine,

because his father was proud of him becoming a doctor,

gave him a piano.

Carmen was the strong person in the couple.

They were experiencing great financial difficulties,

but they overcame them in a very good mood.

So, being completely broke, he said,

"I would like you to help Carmen in her pregnancy."

And for Carmen's last two children, I was the one who delivered them.

For me, it was very sad

because the last one I delivered for her after he disappeared.

One day, I was here at home when they called

saying that there was an Argentinean corporal,

Vallejos, in the newsroom of Istoé Senhor.

Mauricio Diaz asked me to go there.

When he was reporting this, that's when the Brazilian police arrived

saying that they had surrounded the building.

And then they came and said, "Don't worry, nothing will happen to you,

but let's take the Argentinean here.

Why? Because he's talking too much."

What are you accusing me of? I did not commit any crime!

My brother didn't have furniture in the house,

so he made cardboard furniture.

Then he wrote once saying that he had renovated the furniture,

he had painted the furniture black to change the environment a little.

He was very fond of yoga.

He was very fond of Hindu philosophy.

He really liked meditation and practiced it a lot.

He played for himself. He played very well.

Whether he had people listening or not, he played.

There was a piano here and the drums by my bedroom door.

So, I slept to the sound of drums,

so much so that I can sleep with any noise.

I heard about the case on television.

On Sunday's Fantástico program,

they broke the news that he had disappeared.

And I was very worried about my parents,

and my father didn't go right away,

because my mother had an embolism.

She was hospitalized, she got sick.

So, my father waited for her to get better

so he could go there.

He went to Interpol,

he went to the police and such, but they didn't know anything.

The year my father died,

he was called by TV Manchete saying that there was an Argentinean,

Vallejos, who wanted to speak.

It went like this, this and this.

The only option left was his death.

I always went with my dad to these interviews,

but this time he decided not to tell me and went alone.

Mom fell at their house

and she was hospitalized

and Dad wouldn't stay there without her.

Then she started having a series of things.

He died on Thursday and she died on Saturday.

When I checked the dates,

I discovered that Tenório's parents had died

right around the tenth anniversary of their son's murder.

I worked for a network, an entity called Clamor.

That's where the first information came about a Brazilian,

a pianist of Vinicius de Moraes, that was kidnapped in Argentina.

Then I went to Argentina to place a paid advertisement

in the newspaper La Nación and then went to the hotel bar.

I went with a picture of him.

The corner was full of glass windows.

There was a restaurant,

a coffee shop and the newspaper kiosk next door.

I went with a picture of him and asked the man.

He remembered the fact, "The Brazilian! That's the Brazilian!"

And the man tells me that he was taken away by a Ford Falcon.

In Argentina,

kidnappings were usually carried out in Ford Falcons.

I confirmed that he was kidnapped.

Do you think he was kidnapped by mistake?

No. It is possible that he had been mistaken for someone else,

but he was arrested by the Argentinean political police.

It was a political kidnapping.

Ten years later, a guy named Vallejos explained that, in fact,

Tenório had been arrested

and murdered at the Navy Mechanics' School

by Captain Astiz, "the Angel of Death."

Greenhalgh told me that a young Brazilian filmmaker

had filmed an interview with Vallejos years ago

while making a short documentary about Tenório.

The process of getting testimonials

from both the father and Carmen took a long time.

I had to gain their trust to be able to make the film.

The first contact was a difficult one because he didn't want to talk.

It was a time when his wife was still alive, she was sick.

She was in the next room and he was extremely attentive to her.

He seemed to be a very strong person,

but this story seems to me that it left him very broken.

As a man who served the State,

when he needed the State to help locate his son,

it wouldn't help him.

Filming.

We didn't have any money.

It took us, I think, something like three months

to get him to be willing to record his interview.

Ten years later,

I decided to do a session at the Museum of Image and Sound

in Rio de Janeiro to remember Tenório's disappearance.

They told me that there was a person,

a foreigner calling looking for me.

That person was Vallejos.

Then a very curious process began.

He hung up the phone.

"I'll call you in half an hour."

He left where he was and changed phones.

I'm taking these precautions to avoid running risks.

Rogério told Vallejos

that he was interested in filming an interview

and Vallejos agreed.

But then, at the very last minute, Vallejos showed up asking for money.

He wanted two thousand dollars for the interview at the time.

I then said to him, "Well, I left here, I got into debt,

I spent money that I did not have."

And I said, "Look, I would never pay for your interview.

You have to do this interview anyway."

I directly participated in the arrest.

At the time, we were running an operational group in the area,

specifically Callao and Corrientes Avenues,

half a block away from where Hotel Normandie is located.

16 PEOPLE MURDERED

When we would go out to identify subversive elements,

we first sent them to the police station and then selected them.

Captain Acosta, commander of the operation,

ordered that Tenório, along with other people,

be taken to the Navy Mechanics' School for questioning,

convinced that he would have communist tendencies

based on his appearance

and because he had a musician's union card on him.

He was put in a special cell for foreign political prisoners,

separate from the Argentinean prisoners.

After two days at the Navy Mechanics' School,

it was reported to the Brazilian Embassy.

And we learned from the reports the Brazilian SNI gave us

that Tenório had no political activity,

the only thing was that he was suspected of having communist tendencies

since he had, um, uh,

some artist and musician friends.

I was in contact with Vallejos,

and Mauricio Diaz, from Senhor magazine,

called me a day or two later.

He had decided to do the story

and wrote a ten-page story plus the cover.

The Brazilian government didn't want us to release him

because he would jeopardize the ambassador and many other people.

If he was released, he'd speak publicly to the international press.

He'd say it had been like this,

this and this.

So, the only option left was his death.

How did he die?

He was shot in the head.

Who fired the shot?

Lieutenant Astiz.

While in the cell?

While in the cell, with a hood on.

-Did you witness it? -Yes, I witnessed it.

Later, two others and I picked up his body and put it in a black bag,

the kind used in the war to store the dead and move them.

Hello!

All this time,

there was one person that I would've given anything to talk to

and though he was dead for 30 years, it was as if he had something to say.

I-- I-- I haven't seen it yet...

...but it seems the interview at Vinicius' apartment did take place

-on the morning of the coup. -Yep.

-That's why it was never broadcast. -Yeah. Okay.

-It's in 16 mm and only one copy exists. -Good.

From his residence in Buenos Aires,

we are going to interview

the famous Brazilian music composer and author Vinicius de Moraes.

Well, Vinicius, the reason for our visit

is because we understand that the pianist in your band,

named Tenório, has disappeared.

What can you tell us about this?

Well, we are all suffering great anxiety

because it is really such a mysterious disappearance.

We left the theater

and then I suppose that, as he commonly did,

he went out for something to eat,

a sandwich, and he didn't come back.

How long has Tenório been missing?

Tomorrow night will be a week.

Do you know if he had any political inclinations?

Nothing at all. He was really apolitical.

He was a musician. He was only concerned with music.

He lived a musician's life.

For me, it's a very painful moment not only because he was my friend,

but also because he was an extraordinary instrumentalist,

a human being of the best quality,

an incredibly sweet man with great serenity,

incapable of harming anyone.

And for all those reasons,

I think his mysterious disappearance

leaves us in a state of great anguish.

We are all on alert for any phone call.

I have practically not left the house because of this.

We are sorry to film this story, which is quite sad,

but in any case, we hope that you will be lucky

and see your dear friend Mr. Tenório again.

All that was left of Tenório were dispersed fragments

in the memories of a handful of people.

I'll never know if he went out for a sandwich,

medicine or cigarettes when he disappeared.

But when people spoke of him, there was a virtually unanimous recall

that was repeated time and time again,

he was funny, intelligent,

pure, shy, ironic.

Here.

Among Tenório's papers, I had found a piece of sheet music

dedicated to his favorite Brazilian pianist.

It's, um-- It's called "Viva Donato."

Uh, that-- that sounds like you.

There's only one Donato.

After so many atrocities, I had almost forgotten

that Tenório was first and foremost a fabulous piano player.

And I think a friend,

but one whom I'd never meet or discuss music with over a beer.

No one can do him justice.

I hope this book will rescue him, at least momentarily,

from falling into oblivion.

Thank you.