Chega de Saudade (No More Blues)

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! Today, I'm playing a bossa nova standard called "Chega de Saudade," or "No More Blues." It was composed by the famous musician Antonio Carlos Jobim, with the lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. Chega de Saudade is often referred to as the first bossa nova song to be recorded. I hope you like listening to it!


Listen to the song here
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Maybe this is the song that I should have posted for Valentine's Day, but it's only been a week since then, so I think I'm close enough. According to the lyrics of this song, the "blues" that have fallen upon the singer are a longing for his lost love. He spends time thinking about the fact that he's now without her. 

He wants to tell her that he can't keep living without her - there's nothing left in his life now but sadness. Remembering happy things that used to be can sometimes help us, but it sometimes only makes us sadder because they are gone. 

I've finally captured a specimen of this rare "blues flower." It has tears all over it, and it makes the background blue when you take a picture of it. Maybe the singer should have given the woman he loved one of these.

Suddenly, the song lets us know that it isn't done yet. It switches from a minor key to a major one, which makes the harmonies "brighter." What would happen if she returned to him? He says that he would give her more hugs and kisses than there are fish in the ocean. He would make sure that he was never, ever separated from her again. But who knows how much hope there is left?

Enough, he says. I don't want this to continue any longer. Why must I spend the rest of my life thinking about her? Why won't she come back to me?

It's possible that if she never returned, he would find himself in that state for a long time. He would have a hard time forming new relationships or even keeping himself alive. What's the point, he might ask, when she's gone?

Eventually, either he would have to let this situation drag him down for the rest of his life, or he would have to push himself past it. That decision would be harder to make the closer he was to her, but he would be forced to make it. He would have to acknowledge that there was nothing he could do to fix the problem, so the only thing he could do was to move on.

He would probably never forget about her, but by forcing himself to not let the memory of her pull him down, he would actually free himself. Meanwhile, by not taking control of the situation, he would leave himself stuck in one state of mind.

No one wants to be in a state like this, but if you are in one, the only way to get out is to make a hard decision. You might need some help to do that, but ultimately, you are freeing yourself. You have to say, like the title of this song... "That's enough."

Keep filling your teacup with music!
~Liya