Black Orpheus Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis | Niels Dalgaard
← Jazz standards
Black Orpheus
Standards Progressions Guitar voicings Guitar scales Arpeggios Triad pairs Harmony Analyzer
EN ES

Luiz Bonfá · 1959 · A minor · AABA, 32 bars

Black Orpheus — Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

A minor ii-V-i in the first two bars and a major ii-V-I to the relative in the fifth. The tune keeps swapping between a minor key and its relative major without ever announcing which one it prefers.

ii-V-I

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt Valid harmonic variant

Section: A · Bars 1–7

Am | Bm7b5 E7 | Am | Bm7b5 E7 | Am | Dm7 G7 | Cmaj7

Charts differ over the tonic bars: many print Am6 rather than Am, and some fill bar 4 with the tonic instead of repeating the minor ii–V.

This is a short excerpt quoted for analysis, not the full chart, and this composition is very likely still in copyright. Published versions and recordings disagree with each other about the rest of the tune, and often about these bars too.

The books behind this page

Every one of these tunes is assembled out of the same handful of harmonic resources. Jazz Harmony is those resources, explained in the order in which they build on each other.

Start here Project 03 · Harmony

Jazz Harmony

From tradition to the expectation framework · For any instrument Project 05 · Harmony

Harmonic Narrative

A practical method for creating and understanding harmonic progressions through expectation Project 04 · Jazz guitar

Jazz Guitar Comping

Creating direction through harmony, rhythm and the expectation framework

Harmonic analysis

Key
A minor
Tonal center
A
Confidence
Medium
Chords analysed
10
ChordRoman numeralFunctionWhat it is doingConfidence
AmiTonicAm is the tonic of Am. It is where the progression is at rest.High
Bm7b5iiøPredominantBm7b5 is the iiø7 of Am: the predominant of a minor key.High
E7V7DominantE7 is the dominant of Am. In a minor key it borrows its major third from harmonic minor — that raised note is the leading tone.High
AmiTonicAm is the tonic of Am. It is where the progression is at rest.High
Bm7b5iiøPredominantBm7b5 is the iiø7 of Am: the predominant of a minor key.High
E7V7DominantE7 is the dominant of Am. In a minor key it borrows its major third from harmonic minor — that raised note is the leading tone.High
AmiTonicAm is the tonic of Am. It is where the progression is at rest.High
Dm7iiPredominantDm7 is the ii chord of C: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.High
G7V7DominantG7 is the dominant of C. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.High
Cmaj7ITonicCmaj7 is the tonic of C. It is where the progression is at rest.High

What the analyzer found in it

Relative keyC major

Bars 6-7 are in C major, the relative key. The notes are the same; the center is not.

iiø - V7 - iBm7b5 - E7 - Am

A complete minor ii-V-i in Am, with the half-diminished ii and a dominant that borrows its leading tone from harmonic minor.

iiø - V7 - iBm7b5 - E7 - Am

A complete minor ii-V-i in Am, with the half-diminished ii and a dominant that borrows its leading tone from harmonic minor.

ii - V7 - IDm7 - G7 - Cmaj7

A complete ii-V-I in C. Predominant, dominant, tonic: the sentence jazz harmony is built out of.

High, medium and low next to each numeral are judgements about musical context, not probabilities. A low rating marks a bar that can honestly be read more than one way. How the ratings are decided →

Why this example matters

In A minor the excerpt reads i – iiø – V7 – ii – I. Inside those 10 chords there is a complete ii-V-I. Play it slowly with only two voices — the third and seventh of each chord. In E7 those are Ab and D, and watching where that pair goes next tells you more about the progression than the root movement does. The same device turns up in Autumn Leaves, All The Things You Are and Tune Up, in other keys and at other tempos.

How the rest of Black Orpheus goes

A minor tune whose harmony is a long descending sequence of ii-V pairs, each landing a step below the last, so the whole form is one continuous fall broken only by the return to the tonic. It is longer than most bossas and the melody is correspondingly more sustained. Because the sequence is so regular, it is one of the best pieces for practising a single melodic idea transposed repeatedly, which is precisely the skill the descending chain demands.

Black Orpheus on record

Luiz Bonfá wrote it in 1959 for the film Orfeu Negro, with a lyric by Vinícius de Moraes; in Portuguese it is “Manhã de Carnaval”, and it circulates in English under at least three titles, which regularly causes confusion when it is called. The film won the Palme d’Or and the Academy Award for best foreign film, and the soundtrack did as much as any single record to carry bossa nova beyond Brazil.

Analyze this progression

Take these bars into the analyzer and interfere with them. The fastest way to learn what a chord was doing is to remove it and read what the analysis says instead.

Open in Jazz Harmony Analyzer →

Related

ii-V-I

What this device is, and the other standards in the library that use it.

Read →

Autumn Leaves

Joseph Kosma · 1945 · B♭ major / G minor

Chord progression →

All The Things You Are

Jerome Kern · 1939 · A♭ major

Chord progression →

Tune Up

Miles Davis · 1953 · D major

Chord progression →

Jazz chord progressions

The families every standard is assembled from, with examples from the library.

Read →

← All 100 standards