BOSSA NOVA OVER AND OVER.

• Author: Holston, Mark

As it turns out, "The Girl from Ipanema" truly was just a tease. When the 1963 recording of Antonio Carlos Jobim's song by vocalist Astrud Gilberto, saxophonist Stan Getz, and guitarist Joao Gilberto swam against the tide of rock and roll to become one of the biggest popular music hits of its day, the world at large was afforded a brief but telling insight into a movement that was reshaping Brazil's popular culture.

Bossa nova, the samba-rooted, jazz-influenced style that boasted poetic lyrics and haunting melodies, had become the new music language of Brazil in the late 1950s, a symbol of that nation's artistic prowess and cultural dynamism. And while bossa became an international sensation, the craze that rocketed the style's songs and performers to the front ranks of global popularity proved to be short lived. Within a few years, bossa had retreated from the pop charts to jazz bistros.

Today, bossa is back and stronger than ever, its inherent freshness, musical sophistication and youthful spirit as invigorating today as when it first appeared on a world music stage dominated by the likes of Elvis and the Beatles. Longtime aficionados of the style, frustrated in recent decades by the highly irregular appearance of new bossa recordings and the failure of record companies to reissue historic sessions from the 1960s, have much to celebrate in the current bossa renaissance.

Thanks to the growing worldwide interest in the genre, including dance club disk jockeys in London and other European capitals and a cult of obsessive bossa addicts in Japan, essential recordings that seemed to have been forgotten are now appearing with increasing regularity, and from an astounding variety of sources around the globe. Remarkably, albums that rarely saw the light of day outside Brazil in their initial incarnations, by such fabled bossa artists as the Sambalanco Trio, pianist Tenorio Jr., Quarteto Novo, Carlos Lyra, and Wanda Sa are now available with their striking cover art intact and the benefit of dramatically enhanced CD sound.

Germany's Motor Music, for instance, has reissued some of bossa organist Walter Wanderley's rarest early 1960s recorded-in-Brazil tracks, while the Japanese subsidiary of the PolyGram label has released the late musician's entire discography on the Verve and A&M labels, including such definitive works as Batucada (1967). That ambitious Japanese reissue program has also resulted in the reappearance of such coveted albums as Barra...