The Copacabana neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950's developed a middle class with a taste for imports like American jazz and French film. Local nightclub performers included Baden Powell, Sérgio Mendes, and Durval Ferreira. Antonio Carlos Jobim began his career among them, having already studied composition with an advocate of Schoenberg's modern tonalities and discovered the culture-blending innovations of Villa-Lobos. His more immediate models for composition were Pixinguinha and Ary Barroso, and his sense of Brasilian rhythm overshadowed classical and modernist models of music. With a friend, Newton Mendonça, he began songwriting. It was in this early period that he first met guitarist João Gilberto who would soon forge a new rhythmic playing style.

An example of bossa without João is the soundtrack to Orfeu Negro in 1959, which introduced the sound to many international audiences. The rhythm of the samba is present when the bateria of percussionists plays into the mix but Luiz Bonfá's guitar is not so distinguishable from Dorival Caymmi's of a decade earlier. The culmination of bossa nova, or "new touch", sprang from the combination of João's rhythm and Tom's compositions. What was the rhythm? It was samba stripped down to its essentials. And the combination saw the light of day with Gilberto's recording of "Chega de Saudade." The initial single received very little praise, but with the worldwide success of Bonfá's joyous composition, "Manhã de Carnaval," ears very quickly began to open.