Bola Sete, Acclaimed Jazz and Classical Guitarist, Dies at 63

Bola Sete, Brazilian-born jazz, bossa nova and classical guitarist, died Saturday at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, where he was being treated for lung cancer and pneumonia. He was 63.

For more than 25 years, Sete had drawn high praise from jazz fans and critics. He was described in The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Seventies, by Times jazz critic Leonard Feather, as “one of the most innovative and eclectic guitarists in jazz history.”

Sete, who studied classical guitar in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, was a popular performer in Brazil for 13 years before he moved to the United States in 1959.

Named Djalma de Andrade, he adopted his Brazilian nickname of “Bola Sete,” Portuguese for “seven ball.” He got the name, he said, because he was as black as the seven ball in a variety of billiards his friends played.

Playing in San Francisco, he found he could not make a living with classical works alone and added jazz and Brazilian works to his repertoire. He attracted the backing of famed cellist Pablo Casals in classical circles and of Dizzy Gillespie in jazz circles. The latter gave Sete’s career a boost by arranging to have him play at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival.

When the bossa nova sound became popular in the early 1960s, he was the first native Brazilian player on the American scene to capitalize on it, becoming a popular performer in New York.

When enthusiasm waned, he fell back on his virtuosity as a jazz and classical guitarist. He traveled and played with Gillespie, with Vince Guaraldi and with his own trio from 1963 to 1969, making many albums on various labels.

He wrote a score for a movie, “The Monster Buoy,” which won the International Independent Film Makers award in 1966.

He retired for two years and returned in 1971, often playing a 13-stringed instrument of his own design, a combination of lute and guitar he called a lutar.

Among his recent albums are “Ocean 1” and “Jungle Suite.”

A memorial concert is planned, said his widow, An Sete.