The album cover for Ou Panis Et Circencis. (Photo Credit)
I was first captivated by the Tropicalia movement because of the music. A theatrical collage is what it sounded like to my ears, throwing in elements of bossa nova, roots, samba, and just all out craziness. This was pure fun and I couldn’t believe the music was 40 years old. I started doing a little bit of research on this short lived (what I thought it to be only music) movement and found it was much deeper that what it appeared to be.
The Politics Behind the Tropicalist Movement
The year was 1963 and the authoritarian military dictatorship in Brazil had just come to power. Flash forward five years to December 14, 1968, and the people of Brazil found that their civil liberties had been restricted thanks to the Institutional Act 5 (AI-5). Brazil ended up being the first democracy in Latin America to suffer from the military rule.
Censorship and repression were just a couple of the problems that were a result of the military’s regime and the AI-5. Hundreds of leftists activists, students, professors, artists, musicians, writers and guerrillas were forced to leave, disappeared, tortured, or killed. (LatinAmericanStudies).
In response to the the harassment and violence towards the student left and “middle-class intelligentsia” came a far more powerful “radical left-wing urban guerilla groups” who performed “high profile kidnappings of foreign diplomats” which gave them a notorious reputation. The Brazilian military dictatorship eventually stopped their actions by killing or torturing their members.
The artists of the time could not voice opposition to the state. Even the lyrics of every song had to be submitted to the military and cleared. (Sounds like what is happening in China and the Bjork incident).
Starting the Tropicalist movement under the military dictatorship led to the arrest, deportation, and imprisonment of the movement’s leaders and musicians, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, in 1969. Off to London they went, and did not return until 1971 or 72. (S. Baker)
The Artistic Counter-Culture
Tropicalia started in northeast Brazil, in Bahia and Salvador. The Tropicalists criticized the military dictatorship and the left-wing opposition. The Tropicalists explored questions of identity, mixing psychedelic rock, bossa nova, samba, roots style music to an “anarchic counter-cultural statement encompassing art, music, film and theatre.” They referenced the Beatles, existentialism, western consumerism, Italian neo-realists cinema, and the May 1968 riots in Paris. (S.Baker)
The artistic movement captivated audiences with it’s sensory qualities of touch, taste, sound, and interactive pieces.
The name of the movement, was inspired by the 1967 installation piece of the same name made by Hélio Oiticica. Photo Credit
Bowls full of colored liquid resembling familiar tastes confuse the mind’s association of sight and taste.(Photo Credit by Lygia Pape)
An installation piece by Andrzej Maria Borkowski. (Photo Credit by Lygia Pape)
The Music of Tropicalia
Music was used to question Brazil’s cultural identity. Themes explored were politics, sexuality, drugs, community, race, and spirituality.
In 1968, a phenomenal, conceptual album was produced and Tropicalia expanded. Titled, Ou Panis Et Circencis, Caetano Veloso, Os Mutantes, Tom Ze, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa and others shook the cultural and political world in Brazil. This album led to the full-fledged movement that only lasted a bit more than a year.
Tom Ze was an “avid experimentalist.” His recordings “featured bizarre instrumentation such as blenders, floor polishers, radios and typewriters and mixing concrete poetry with street sambas; these recordings are also perhaps the truest reflection…of the exploratory ideas of Tropicalia.” (S. Baker)
Listen: Quero Que Sambal Meu Bem by Tom Ze
Listen: Gloria by Tom Ze
Listen: Jimmy Renda Se by Tom Ze
Os Mutantes’ music was the first of Tropicalia that I had heard. Like Ze, they experimented with different objects as musical instruments. For example, they used a can of bug spray to replace the hi-hat cymbals on “Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour.” In “Dia 36“, Claudio Cesar “inverted the sound of the wah-wah pedal popularized by Jimi Hendrix to create the bizarre ‘wooh-whoo’ pedal. Sergio’s guitar sounded like ti was going to throw up.” In “Desculpe, Babe,” a rubber hose was attached to a hot chocolate can with a speaker inside to create distorted vocals. Later, this was called the Voice Box. Their music was a mix of Latin rhythms, hallucinigenic elements, homemade and humorous special effects. You can also count Beck and Kurt Cobain to be fans of their music. (C. Calado).
Watch the trailer for the documentary (was supposed to be out a year ago, no word yet) about Os Mutantes, titled “Bread and Cicruses”:
Before Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were arrested and went to London for two years, they had collaborated with Gal Costa and Os Mutantes to produce an invigorating album. Each went in their separate directions as far as their musical careers after 1969 and additionally had to tone down the messages in their work.
Listen: Tropicalia by Caetano Veloso
Listen: Sebastiana by Gal Costa
Listen: Alfomega by Caetano Veloso
Listen: Baiao by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil
Listen: Palco by Gilberto Gil
In 1970, Post-Tropicalia began and reflected the musical and cultural experiences that Veloso and Gil experienced while in London for two years.
References:
Brazil 1968: The Assault on Heaven, The Descent into Hell by Mario Maestri
Brazil Remembers Dark Day in Military Past (Latinamericanstudies.org)
Tropicalia - A Revolution in Brazilian Culture at the Barbican London
Essay by Carlos Calado, author of the book A Divina Comedia Dos Mutantes
Sleeve notes of Brazil 70 - AFTER TROPICALIA New Directions in Brazilian Music in the 1970s by S. Baker
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