Iconic Composer Disappears, Found Washing Cars Years Later

The man and his colors...

Cartola was a founder of the Mangueira Samba School (Mangueira is a favela in Rio; its samba school one of Rio's most storied).  It was he who chose Mangueira's mythic colors -- green and pink -- the colors of dawn viewed from the top of the hill which is Mangueira's setting.  Cartola (the word means "tophat"; as a boy Angenor de Oliveira worked construction, wearing a bowler derby to keep his hair from getting dirty -- for whatever reason his nickname was based on the wrong kind of head covering) composed Mangueira's first samba enredo (marching samba), and he went on to write scores of most-highly-regarded songs (art songs, really), a number of which were recorded by Brazil's best-known recording artists of the time (including Carmen Miranda)...he was also tapped by Villa-Lobos for a recording by Leopold Stokowski, Native Brazilian Music.   The composer never made any money to speak of, and in the 1940's he dropped out of site, most people assuming he was dead.

In 1956 journalist Stanislaw Ponte Preta was having a cafezinho in a bar in Ipanema when a grizzled man with missing teeth walked up to the bar and ordered a cachaça.  Sr. Preta gathered himself up and asked if by any chance he was standing face-to-face with the great composer -- and the reply was in the affirmative.  Cartola had been washing cars nearby and taken a break for fortification.

Cartola & Dona Zica

Cartola's "rediscovery" led to another opening up of his compositions, and in addition to his own recordings of his work he has been recorded by Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Paulinho da Viola, Beth Carvalho, Clara Nunes, Clementina de Jesus, Elis Regina, Marisa Monte, and others.  From 1963 to 1965 Cartola owned and operated a nightclub devoted to samba, Zicartola (the name combining his with that of his wife "Zica", who ran the kitchen).  Forgotten sambistas were brought back to the public and new ones introduced (Paulinho da Viola first performed there).

Cartola died in 1980.

...and as a boy in black & white.