Noel

After chasing Chico’s coattails and Carmen’s high heels, it was high time I went to worship at the altar of one of my other gods. Or at least shuffle along behind him, that is. One blazing day a few weeks ago found me, accompanied by another adventurous intercambista, trekking up through Centro to visit the São Bento monastery and attached school.

Noel Rosa always had a special charm for me. Brief explanatory digression: as I will say for the hundred and eleventh time, my family has no connection with Brazil. Until recently I was the only person in my immediate family – and extended, for that matter – who spoke Spanish, let alone Portuguese. (I’ve taught my baby sisters to say “Por favor, você pode ler este livro para mim?”, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count as fluency.) Sure, my grandfather went to school abroad, but that was to learn classical violin in Germany. The novelty of my Latin American adventures aside, everyone has been very supportive. After the confusion of “now, why are you learning Portuguese, again?”, my musicologist dad bought me a four-CD anthology of Brazilian music. That was a tipping point. Within a week of listening to it, I’d decided that “O orvalho vem caindo” was my new favorite song, and whoever this Noel Rosa person was, he was a genius.

But if he was a genius, Noel was no saint. As João Máximo and Carlos Didier’s stunning biography recounts, Noel was an absolute terror in school at São Bento. He mocked the teachers to their faces, cheated brazenly, played elaborate pranks, was held back several years in a row, and, as if that weren’t enough, ran a bawdy underground magazine for a few years which was full of devastating parodies, jokes, and caricatures. At a tender age he began corrupting his classmates with stories of the whorehouses he frequented. (Yeah, you heard that right. The 1920s were a simpler time.)

So when I walked into the gorgeous baroque sanctuary at São Bento, my first instinct wasn’t to gawk at the gilded flocks of angels, but rather to snicker. I found it impossible to take the place seriously knowing that Noel had wrought havoc during mass and made the teachers at the monastery tear their tonsured hair. A stream of sass and back-talk started flowing in my head, and I couldn’t turn it off; while the other student wandered around the altar, I sat in a pew and cued up my 200-song Noel Rosa playlist. “Até amanhã.” Noel’s tenor rang out in my headphones, back to disturb the monastic calm of the place.

As we were walking out, I went up to one of the security guards and asked if the monastery had some memorial to Noel Rosa. Would a 16th-century institution have seen fit to remember one of its most beloved alumni? The security guard didn’t know, and he sent me around the corner to a visitor’s desk. “Is there some tribute to Noel Rosa around here?” I asked. The guy behind the desk cracked a bitter smile. Channeling the indignation of an entire generation of São Bento teachers, he responded with a curt and knowing “Não.”

Leia também:

Uma flor para Chico

Searching for Carmen

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux

É escritora, tradutora, brasilianista e diretora de pesquisa na Rádio Novelo