Tropicalismo En Brasil

Tropicalism
Tropicalia is the opposite of bossa nova". That’s how singer and songwriter Caetano Veloso defined the movement which, along 1968, revolutionized Brazilian Popular Music’s status quo. The trend, led by the guy from Bahia, attracted composers Gilberto Gil and Tom Zé, poets Torquato Neto and Capinam, maestro Rogério Duprat, the Mutantes, Gal Costa and Nara Leão. Differently from bossanova, which introduced an original style of writing and performing music, Tropicalia did not intend to synthesize a musical style, but to establish a new attitude: its intervention in the culture of Brazil was, above all, through criticism. 

The tropicalists’ intention was not to overcome bossa nova, a style that Veloso, Gil, Zé and Gal admittedly loved. In the beginning of 1967, theseartists felt suffocated by the elitist behavior and nationalist prejudice that ruled over the BPM domain. After many discussions, they decided that, in order to freshen up the music of Brazil, the only way out would be to promote the taste for Brazilian music among the youth, who showed an ever growing interest in pop and rock of the Beatles and Roberto Carlos. Claiming that Brazilian music needed amore universal appeal, Gil and Caetano tried to talk composers like Dori Caymmi, Edu Lobo, Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Paulinho da Viola and Sérgio Ricardo into their ideas. But their reaction made it clear that if the tropicalists resolved to really go on for pop guidelines while trying to break the connection with the political-driven musical production of the period, they would have to do it bythemselves. 

Regarded as the milestones of the new movement, the songsAlegria, Alegria (Caetano) and Domingo no Parque (Gil) were released and promptly stirred polemic discussions in BPM festivals. The electric guitars presented by Argentinean band Beat Boys, who backed up Caetano, and the Mutantes’ rocking attitude as they backed up Gil, were booed intensely by radical students. For thosecollege kids, electric guitars and rock’n’roll were symbols of the North-American imperialism, and therefore, should be banned from BPM. Nevertheless, the jury of the festival and the public in general approved the new trend. Gil’s song was placed second on the fest (the winner was Ponteio, by Edu Lobo and Capinam). And in spite of having been placed fourth, Alegria, Alegria became an instant radiohit, helping sell 100 thousand copies of Caetano’s single. 

Avant-garde arrangements 
The brouhaha caused during the festival stimulated the label Philips to accelerate the production of solo LPs by Caetano and Gil, which became the first tropicalist albums. Gil worked with maestro Rogério Duprat, and three avant-garde maestros worked on Caetano’s album: Júlio Medaglia, Damiano Cozzela andSandino Hohagen. Medaglia wrote the arrangement for the track that Caetano had composed as a manifesto-song for the new movement. 

Influenced by the delirious film Terra em Transe, by Glauber Rocha, and by the play O Rei da Vela, by modernist Oswald de Andrade, Caetano synthesized in that song conversations and aesthetic discussions he had had with Gil, with manager Guilherme Araújo, with singer(and Caetano’s sister) Maria Bethânia, with poet Torquato Neto and with graphic designer Rogério Duarte. The result was a type of poetic collage, which drew a picture of Brazil through its contrasts. The photographer (and later, movie producer) Luís Carlos Barreto suggested the name Tropicalia, when he heard the song, by late 1967, and it reminded him of the homonymous work by artist HelioOticica, which had been exhibited a few months before at the Modern Art Museum (Rio). 

But the movement only started incorporating the name Tropicália in 1968, when Nelson Motta published an article on a local newspaper called "The Tropicalist Crusade". In it, the reporter announced that a group of Brazilian musicians, filmmakers and intellectuals had founded a cultural movement with international...