"Waters of March" is a Brazilian song composed by Antônio Carlos Jobim (1927–1994) in 1972. Jobim wrote both the Portuguese and English lyrics. The lyrics, originally written in Portuguese, do not tell a story, but rather present a series of images that form a collage; nearly every line starts with "É..." ("It is..."). In 2001, "Águas de março" was named as the all-time best Brazilian song in a poll of more than 200 Brazilian journalists, musicians and other artists conducted by Brazil's leading daily newspaper, Folha de S.Paulo. It was also voted by the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stone as the second greatest Brazilian song. The inspiration for "Águas de março" came from Rio de Janeiro's rainiest month. March is typically marked by sudden storms with heavy rains and strong winds that cause flooding in many places around the city. The lyrics and the music have a constant downward progression much like the water torrent from those rains flowing in the gutters, which typically would carry sticks, stones, bits of glass, and almost everything and anything.

Lyrics

In both the Portuguese and English versions of the lyrics, "it" is a stick, a stone, a sliver of glass, a scratch, a cliff, a knot in the wood, a fish, a pin, the end of the road, and many other things, although some specific references to Brazilian culture (festa da cumeeira, garrafa de cana), flora (peroba do campo), folklore and fauna (Matita Pereira) were intentionally omitted from the English version, perhaps with the goal of providing a more universal perspective. All these details swirling around the central metaphor of the cascading "waters of March" can give the impression of the passing of daily life and its continual, inevitable progression towards death, just as the rains of March mark the end of a Brazilian summer. Both sets of lyrics speak of "the promise of life," perhaps allowing for other, more life-affirming interpretations, and the English contains the additional phrases "the joy in your heart" and the "promise of spring," a seasonal reference that would be more relevant to most of the English-speaking world. When writing the English lyrics, Jobim endeavored to avoid words with Latin roots, which resulted in the English version having more verses than the Portuguese. Nevertheless, the English version still contains some words from Latin origin, such as promise, dismay, plan, pain, mountain, distance and mule. Another way in which the English lyrics differ from the Portuguese is that the English version treats March from the perspective of an observer in the northern hemisphere. In this context, the waters are the "waters of defrost" in contrast to the rains referred to in the original Portuguese, marking the end of summer and the beginning of the colder season in the southern hemisphere. Composer-guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves said that Jobim told him writing in this kind of stream of consciousness was his version of therapy and saved him thousands in psychoanalysis bills.

Versions

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Other uses

The song was adapted for use in a series of advertisements for Coca-Cola. These ended with the then current slogan "Coke Is It". This was also used in a 1994 ad for Ayala Malls in the Philippines.