“Júlia, he came to my room today. He knows. He didn’t shout. He just placed a photograph of my mother on the table and said, ‘You have until Sunday to disappear. Or she disappears.’ I am not afraid for myself. But I am a coward when it comes to the people I love. That is why I am leaving you. Not because I don’t love you. Because loving you is a death sentence for everyone else. I will burn my name. But I cannot burn these songs. They are the only proof that you were happy, even for a little while. – O Amante.”
On the back of the photograph, written in faded blue ink: "Para Júlia. O tempo não apaga o som do seu nome." (For Júlia. Time does not erase the sound of your name.) o amante de julia
For the past three months, this archive has turned the small world of retro-samba and bossa nova collectors upside down. It has given a name, a face, and a tragic voice to the mythical figure known only as O Amante de Júlia . To understand the discovery, we must go back to 1972. In a dusty record fair in the Madureira neighborhood of Rio, a collector named Otávio Mendez found a single promotional 45 RPM record with a plain white label. Handwritten on the label was the title: "Samblues para Júlia" / "O Beijo na Escuridão." The artist was listed only as "Amante." “Júlia, he came to my room today
“I paid two cruzeiros for it,” Otávio, now 78, recalls in his small apartment surrounded by vinyl. “The record was warped. I almost threw it away. But when I put the needle down… meu Deus. It was like hearing someone sing from the bottom of a well.” He just placed a photograph of my mother
Just like the one he never got to give her.