Rio de Janeiro football clubs anthems

Article written by Boleiro
Posted on May 4, 2007
Filed Under Articles |

A curious story of the Rio de Janeiro football is the fact that the anthems of all main football clubs in Rio de Janeiro were written and composed by the same person, Lamartine Babo.

Born on January 10, 1904, in Rio de Janeiro, Lamartine de Azeredo Babo was a famous Brazilian composer. He lacked formal music education, but that never stop him of be one of the greatest composers of popular music, “marchinhas” and carnival music, several of them popular to this day.

Says the history that in 1949, Lamartine Babo had promised his record label that he would compose songs praising all the great football team in Rio de Janeiro, so the collection of songs could be released in 1950, when the World Cup was scheduled to happen in the country.

However, Babo was behind the schedule on the work. After a lot of procrastination from his part, the managers of the label had an idea. They send to him an invitation for a dancing ball that should be held as an homage to him. When Babo arrived at the place, he did not found a ball, but just a group of angry businessmen, who demanded that he finished the songs immediately.

So, Babo wrote the music and lyrics for the anthems on the spot, and did the last one for América-RJ, of which he was a devoted fan. Some says that is the best one of the bunch, and I do not dispute that, as the final result was not just great anthems, was great music, period — all of them are great songs on their own right.

Below we can have an example. The anthem of América, sang by Brazilian soul music Tim Maia, another great América fan.

Comments

One Response to “Rio de Janeiro football clubs anthems”

  1. David on May 5th, 2007 10:55 am

    fantastic site mate - keep up the good work!!!!

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