“Avarandado” (Caetano, João Gilberto, Gal & Rodrigo)

Source: Secretaría de Cultura Ciudad de México from México, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The summery song “Avarandado” was written by Caetano Veloso and released on his first album “Domingo” (“Sunday”) which he released with Gal Costa in 1967. The song has been recorded by many Brazilian icons, including João Gilberto, and was re-released by Gal, this time with Rodrigo Amarante, late last year. Varanda means “porch” in Portuguese (there’s obviously a cognate in the English “verandah”) and one could imagine a verb “to porch” which would be something like avarandar and then with a little more imagination, one can imagine being avarandado (“porched”). The word really does have a “legitimate” usage to mean “terraced” or sometimes “balconied” but here it seems much more about porches in the summer…

Listen to Gal and Rodrigo.
Listen to João Gilberto.
Listen to Gal and Caetano.

“Porched”
Every palm tree on the road
Has a girl leaning on it
One is my girlfriend
And this road goes to the sea

Every moonlit palm tree
Has to be quiet, still
Any song, almost nothing
Will make the sun rise
Will make the day break

Flirting with the dawn
Me and my girlfriend
We go walking on the road
Which will go to the porches of the dawn
Which will end up porched at dawn

Porched at dawn