They Shot the Piano Player in Buenos Aires, Brazilian modern music dies 

On the night of March 18, 1976, at Hotel Normandie in Buenos Aires, Brazilian jazz piano maestro Francisco Tenório Júnior left his hotel to buy cigarettes and disappeared from then on. He never returned. His girlfriend who was waiting in their hotel room, Bossa Nova poet Vinicius De Moraes and composer Toquinho, who were touring with him, as well as their friends and families in Rio de Janeiro never saw the brilliant musician again.

Judging from where (Argentina) and when (1976) he went missing, those with a bit of familiarity with contemporary Latin American history would know that shortly after leaving his hotel, Tenório Junior was apprehended by secret police officers deployed nationwide by the military dictatorship that came to power. It's been said that he might have been mistaken for someone else due to his similar appearance. He was taken to the notorious detention center known as the Naval Mechanics School (ESMA) and shortly thereafter summarily executed. The exact time of his death is unknown, and his body was never seen. Consequently, for a long period, he was counted among the 30,000 disappeared individuals during the "Dirty War" from 1976 to 1983.

Curiosity may prompt the following questions: since Tenório Junior was just a somewhat famous musician, wouldn't the military government release him upon realizing they had the wrong person? Didn't the Brazilian Embassy in Buenos Aires receive reports from his family? Did the government simply ignore its own citizens? Allow me to recount the story as told in the animated documentary film "They Shot the Piano Player," co-directed by the renowned Spanish filmmakers Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal.

The film begins with a scene in a bookstore in New York, where a book sharing event is hosted by music journalist Jeff Goldblum. The book being shared is titled "They Shot the Piano Player," focusing on Goldblum's quest to uncover the secrets behind the disappearance of Tenório Júnior. Throughout the process of investigating and writing, he makes three trips to Rio. Following his footsteps during these visits, the directors passionately express their love for Brazilian popular music which is represented by Bossa Nova through intricate animated sequences. Therefore, one could also view this film as a documentary about Brazilian pop music, featuring numerous interviews with musicians and historical materials, all of which are animated alongside the rest of the story.

Trueba had already expressed his love for Latin jazz beautifully in his 2000 film "Calle 54." So why did he and Mariscal choose to use animation to present this new film that is also about genre music? Apart from having previously collaborated with Mariscal, a renowned Spanish illustrator, on another music animation film, "Chico & Rita," there's another reason: Goldblum, who is central to the story in this film, is a fictional character! This has led to criticism of Trueba's approach, with some arguing that it was unnecessary. The tragic disappearance of Tenório Júnior deserves a serious pursuit of justice without unnecessary embellishments. Using traditional documentary-style narration with a third-person perspective would have sufficed. The protagonist of the tragic military dictatorship era in Argentina is Tenório Júnior, not the fictional journalist Goldblum. Even the famous documentary "Searching for Sugar Man," which corresponds to a similar theme, doesn't introduce a fictional searcher or even the director himself.

Of course, "They Shot the Piano Player" provides a relatively clear, comprehensive, and concise exposition of Brazil's important Tropicália Movement through the investigations by Goldblum. From samba jazz to Bossa Nova, it also shows a pantheon of musicians from the past. Although the large number of musicians who appears in the film is overwhelming for the audience, some of whom are unrelated to Tenório Júnior's disappearance, enthusiasts of world music can at least follow along with the interviewees in the film to compile a playlist of absolutely representative contemporary Brazilian music.

The significant "Chega de Saudade" was recorded in 1957 and marks a pivotal moment in Brazilian music history. This song brought together the "Holy Trinity" of the singer João Gilberto, the composer and arranger Antônio Carlos Jobim, and the lyricist De Moraes. De Moraes, arguably the greatest Brazilian poet of that dictatorship era, was the headliner during Tenório Júnior's tour in Argentina at the time of his disappearance. Four years after the pianist's murder, De Moraes also passed away due to health problems. These musicians began their careers and formed friendships in Beco das Garrafas (Bottles Alley) in Copacabana, Rio. Copacabana is a vibrant center of samba. Four clubs are crammed into the narrow alley, gathering young Brazilian talents deeply influenced by American jazz. Due to the clubs' habit of blasting music late into the night, disrupting peace, bottles are frequently thrown down from the upper floors, earning it the name "Bottles Alley." The liveliest club there even changed its name to "Bottle." It has an indoor capacity of only 60 people, while crowds of nearly a thousand gather outside, a third of whom are musicians. Even the "First Lady of Jazz" Ella Fitzgerald, who flew from New York to perform in Rio's large concert halls, would make arrangements to visit Bottles Alley to spend additional hours "studying" Brazilian music after her performances.

In the film "They Shot the Piano Player," renowned artists including Caetano Veloso, deeply reminisce about the post-mambo and pre-Bossa Nova era. They state that firstly, the music style, guitar tuning method, and lyrics are all new; secondly, samba jazz and French New Wave cinema have changed the world of art; and thirdly, Brazilian music, nourished by American jazz, in turn influences jazz on the West Coast of the United States. After hearing "Chega de Saudade" at the age of 17, Veloso gained confidence in understanding modernity, leading him to read literature, appreciate movies, and experience life in different ways. Later, he also witnessed Tenório Júnior's performance in Bottles Alley and had the opportunity to explore chord progressions and play music together with him on the train from São Paulo to Rio.

Including Tenório Júnior and Veloso, the artists featured in "They Shot the Piano Player" belong to the next generation of musicians which emerged in the 1960s. In the film, Goldblum manages to gather the real "Big Four" of the MPB (Música popular brasileira) – consisting of Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, and Milton Nascimento – through interviews. We know that later, Gil, who served as Brazil's Minister of Culture, along with his close friend Veloso, were arrested by the Brazilian military regime in 1969 and later deported after nine months of imprisonment. However, in this animated documentary about Tenório Júnior, these living musical legends reminisce about how the pianist participated in recording many great albums of that era. However, as a band leader, he only had one solo album, "Embalo," released in March 1964 when he was 23 years old. Shortly after leaving the recording studio, the military coup occurred, altering the country's modernization process. However, despite Brazil's military dictatorship lasting for 21 years, it was relatively milder compared to other Latin American countries.

While presenting the pantheon of Brazilian music through interviews, this film certainly doesn't forget the tragic story of Tenório Júnior.

His wife, Carmen Cerqueira Magalhaes, now lives in a remote countryside far from Rio. She intentionally avoids the use of a mobile phone and relies on the public telephone at the village entrance to receive calls. During the time of her husband's disappearance, she was pregnant with their fifth child. She doesn't consider herself a widow, stating, "To become a widow, you need to have a corpse, right?" Perhaps because Tenório Júnior only disappeared and there was no confirmed death, as a victim of the military dictatorship, his family never received any compensation.

However, during the time when Tenório Júnior was touring Argentina with De Moraes, he also had a secret girlfriend, who is also being interviewed in the animated documentary. Contrary to the information provided by Wikipedia that he went out to buy cigarettes on the night of his disappearance, his girlfriend stated that the pianist went out to buy medicine for her upset stomach. Earlier, they had declined De Moraes' invitation to celebrate the end of the tour with dinner, intending to rest adequately and quickly leave the tense atmosphere in Buenos Aires to fly back to Rio.

Even though his body was not found, Tenório Júnior's arrest and murder were subsequently confirmed. About a week after his disappearance, De Moraes had already learned through a powerful psychic in Buenos Aires that the pianist had been brutally killed. Those who held out hope couldn't accept such "superstition," and those American musicians who had collaborated with Tenório Júnior couldn't fathom how the Brazilian Embassy could allow one of its citizens to vanish out of nowhere in Argentina.

The documentary then interviews an American professor well-versed in Latin American dictatorship history. The professor calmly remarks that Tenório Júnior's disappearance is not surprising. He added that there were numerous cases of enforced disappearances of citizens in Paraguay, Guatemala, and Nicaragua before the 1964 Brazilian military coup, as well as in Bolivia, Chile, and Uruguay after 1964, reaching a peak in Argentina with the CIA-funded "Operation Condor" in 1976. Among the 30,000 disappeared in Argentina, the vast majority had no political affiliation. There was once an elderly Uruguayan lady who, through a charitable organization in São Paulo, sought her two missing grandsons in Argentina. One day, she received a call from Caracas saying someone had seen the children, whose photos were placed on the missing person notices in Valparaíso. It sounded entirely implausible— how could two Uruguayan children who went missing in Argentina be spotted by a Venezuelan resident in a Chilean square? However, these were typical cases dealt in the multi-country Operation Condor. These military dictatorships, funded by the United States, organized joint summits to collaboratively suppress anything they deemed potentially subversive. They would rather kill a thousand mistakenly than let one slip through. Sadly, Tenório Júnior was a victim of this multinational collaboration.

On March 18, 1986, exactly ten years after the pianist's disappearance, the first eyewitness finally came forward. Claudio Vallejos, a former intelligence officer of Argentine’s Naval Intelligence Service, traveled to Brazil to give an interview to a magazine and record a video, informing the media that Tenório Júnior was arrested and swiftly taken to ESMA, before being shot to death in the head after being detained for nine days. The executioner was likely the "Blond Angel of Death" Alfredo Astiz, who was suspected of murdering dozens of people. Even though the military dictatorships in Argentina and Brazil had ended by 1986, Vallejos' revelations did not ensure his safety. After the interview was published, Paulo Brossard, who was the Brazilian Minister of Justice at the time, decided to arrest him. During his imprisonment, federal police officers warned him not to mention the involvement of Brazilian agents and the negligence of the Brazilian Embassy in Tenório Júnior's murder case.

On the day following the publication of the news revealing Tenório Júnior's disappearance in March 1986, the pianist's elderly father passed away, followed by his mother the next day.

In "They Shot the Piano Player," Goldblum discovers a newspaper from the day after Tenório Júnior's disappearance in the Buenos Aires archives. The entertainment section's headline reads: "Vinicius's Perfect Performance in the City.” The article mentions musicians, including the pianist, and praises them for representing the most authentic expression of modern Brazilian music. However, Tenório Júnior never had the chance to read the compliments.

Concluding the film, Goldblum says that Tenório Júnior's death has become a metaphor and at that moment, modern Brazilian music died as well.