Quote from Vinícius de Moraes

1968

I could talk here of Joyce the brunette, a neat kid from Copacabana, with green eyes, a somewhat sad smile, and the mouth of a sullen girl. A modern and considerate girl with the little face of a new moon in an afternoon sky, all curved. An up-front person, as they like to say now, and practically falling over with bossa.

 

But I prefer to talk of another Joyce, who has nothing to do with the one who will graduate this year from PUC's journalism school and who, one night two years ago, came to me just like that, at a show at the Arena theatre in which I participated, and said: "Hey, man, I want to do an interview with you." And she did.

 

I prefer to talk of a Joyce who at the age of eleven had a crush on Tom and pasted up his pictures, and who had been listening to  "Urubu Malandro" uninterruptedly from the age of three; the one who had known Menescal since she was a tike and who every now and then recorded jingles with him just for a lark; one who before she had turned twenty had already made dozens of good sambas, both music and lyrics, who sings with a beautiful and attuned voice, accompanying herself on guitar with great harmonic sense and exemplary rhythm; one who reached the finals of the Second International Song Festival and who is now teaming up with my excellent and great Macalé: another one who, when he "explodes," will be heard in Indochina.

 

This Joyce, when she picks up the guitar and sings (and she could easily have made a career for herself just by singing) says simple and beautiful things, as in her "Cantiga de Procura":

 

I want to find a friend

Who'll talk of life with me

I want a faded afternoon

So that he can find me hidden

Like any sweetheart

Who waits adorned at the door

Who keeps in her bosom

The same borne sadness

 

It's of this Joyce that I like to talk, for this is the Joyce who will give people a reason to talk: the Joyce who is all musicality, who appreciates the meaning of words to a high degree and knows the mystery of their marriage to musical notes.

 

The Joyce who is here in this LP with her first anxieties, messages, and frustrations in love and who enters modern Brazilian popular song with the right foot. And besides, with those green eyes and all that grace… Darn, it's not fair...

Quote from Ruy Castro

2002

"A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOYCE FOREVER"

D'après Keats

 

Artists spend their lives in the pursuit of mastering their instruments. Joyce has certainly mastered hers-and contrary to what one might think, it's not just her voice and guitar.

 

Joyce's instrument is the woman she is. A string instrument, each of whose chords is extended to exact tension: sensivity, courage, competence, humor, and the indispensabel talent. Coherence is the middle string-Joyce was not the only born a woman but chose to be one. Everything that she has sung, composed, and lived has been marked by this stance, wich she was the first to assume in Brazilian music, and in the first person.

 

As singer, guitarist, composer, lyricist, writer (author of a delicious book, Fotografei Você na Minha Rolleyflex), and human being, her material is the feminine universe-wich by definition is of great interest to the best men.

 

Joyce is not an artist who sits on a cloud, talking abstractions. She's a woman who talks in universal terms "with respect and debauchery,"as she would say. And so universal that, without ceasing to be utterly Brazilian and carioca (with corresponding knack, flair and savoir-faire), she won her market in Japan, Europe, and the United States.

 

Daughter and granddaughter of the Bossa Nova, Joyce appears to have lived trough all the Golden Ages of razilian Music. Her music echoes the salons of the Belle Époque, the dives of the morros, the cabarets of Lapa, the gafieiras of Praça Tiradentes, the sands of Copacabana and Ipanema, the festivals of Maracanãzinho, and-literally-her long road trough life-the road that also leads to the future. She is a woman walking trough a men's world, with a guitar over her shoulder and with five senses grounded in beauty.

 

 

Quote from Claus Ogerman

2002

"Brazilian composer, guitarist and singer Joyce is a young lady who can only be described

as a genius."

 

Quote from João Donato

2009

Joyce is the greatest Brazilian singer, and her guitar playing

matches my piano perfectly.

 

 

Quote from Caetano Veloso

2011

I met Joyce in 1967, when I lived in the old Solar da Fossa [apartment hotel in Rio]. She visited me with her boyfriend, and we talked. When I came out of prison [in 1969], she came to Bahia to see me, and this visit showed me, through its sincere and discreet tone, the meaning of true solidarity. She was a pretty and sweet girl. Her musical capacity surprised me when, years later, she reemerged playing guitar like the best (in the land of João Gilberto, Dori [Caymmi], [Gilberto] Gil, and João Bosco, this is not a bagatelle), her singing precisely tuned, writing songs with original harmonic and melodic imagination. Every time I hear the song that she composed as a tribute to Elis [Regina], I consider that the tribute has reciprocal merit: Elis is the most musician-like singer who reached stardom in Brazil, and Joyce is the best musician among the women singers who came after.

 

CAETANO VELOSO

O Globo, 30 January2011