Dorival Caymmi , born April 30, 1914 in Salvador de Bahia and died on August 16, 2008 (at age 94) in Rio de Janeiro>, is a Brazilian singer and songwriter, considered one of the greatest songwriters of Brazilian popular music. He had a personal and recognizable style, and composed many songs that became classics. Sambas such as Samba Da Minha Terra, Saudade Bahia, Doralice and Morena Rosa have become standards of Brazilian popular music. He also wrote ballads dedicated to the intrepid fishermen of Bahia, among them Promessa de Pescador and O Vento.
Dorival Caymmi is the son of an Italian immigrant and a Bahian woman. Although his songs celebrate the people of Bahia and he himself was celebrated in the Brazilian popular imagination as the archetype of the Bahian, he went to meet the glory in Rio de Janeiro in the 1930s and never returned to Bahia .
He became a contemporary and sometimes a rival of the composer Ary Barroso and enjoyed all his life friendship with the writer Jorge Amado. Dorival Caymmi first met with success in the late 1930s with singer Carmen Miranda, for whom he composed O Que é que a Baiana Tem? . He recorded for five decades, sometimes singing alone accompanied on the guitar, sometimes surrounded by brass bands and orchestras. In the 1960s, many of his songs were performed by the bossa nova pioneer João Gilberto (who considered him his idol), and he collaborated with Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Among the many musicians strongly influenced by Dorival Caymmi, we can find Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
