During the week of November 6th, Alexandra Fries traveled to São Paulo, Brazil to support our Belmont Forum colleagues while most of the rest of Integration and Application Network traveled to Rhode Island for the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation Conference (CERF). In preparation for her trip, we wrote a song that she could use at the Belmont Forum workshop.

Since the Belmont Forum workshop took place in Brazil, the song that came to mind was “The Girl from Ipanema,” a classic Bossa Nova song. Bossa Nova is a jazz form that originated in Rio de Janeiro, and is one of the two types of music recognized internationally as originating from Rio (samba was the original Brazilian music). “The Girl from Ipanema” was originally written in 1962 by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinícius de Moraes, who wrote the music and lyrics respectively, and Norman Gimbel, who translated them into English. The young girl that they wrote the song about, Helô Pinheiro, later became a celebrity and still lives today. This song is one of the most recorded pop songs in history and it won a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1964.

Kat Parsons recorded the song with her lovely voice and James Currie worked his video magic to develop a karaoke version, complete with a bouncing ball to help demonstrate the lyrics. James used photos that Alex took at the conference and images from the printed materials from the Belmont Forum booklets that IAN developed previously in order to create the video slideshow.

The music video can be found on the IAN Moving Image Library. The lyrics are as follows:

The Forum from Belmont

New and fun and fresh and groovy
The Belmont Forum goes to São Paulo
And when we gather, each time we gather, it’s yeah

When we talk, we’re like a think tank
With ideas so cool and thoughts so subtle that
When we gather, each time we gather, it’s yeah

Ohhhhh the challenge, it’s massive
Howwwwww can we meet it, I ask you?
Yes we use the Belmont Forum.

So each day, when we meet in Brazil
We look straight ahead, not behind

New and fun and fresh and groovy
The Belmont Forum goes to São Paulo
When we gather, we tackle tough issues, really tough issues

Yes, we share our thinking gladly
But each day, when we work together
We co-produce, not too shabby

New and fun and fresh and groovy
The Belmont Forum goes to São Paulo
And when we gather, we tackle tough issues, really tough issues.