The Musical Revolution of Caetano Veloso

Research Questions/Intro

-What did Caetano Veloso aim to accomplish in his music?

-How effective was Caetano Veloso in enacting change?

Narrative/Overview

“Joao Goulart”, Store Norske Leksikon, 1961.

On August 25, 1961, after a mere eight months in office, Jânio Quadros, President of Brazil, resigned, leading Vice President João Goulart to assume the presidency (Smith 238; Bethell 158). As opposed to Quadros, Goulart leaned hard to the left politically, so much so that both the right leaning civilian politicians and the Brazilian military completely restructured Brazil’s system of government to a more parliamentary one so that the strength of his political powers were greatly diminished (Bethell 185). Nevertheless, Goulart still managed to enact some basic reforms, including increasing standards of living for urban workers, extended welfare for rural workers, allowing illiterate individuals to vote, and distributing amounts of unproductive land to the general population (Bethell 185). However, the former president’s progressive reign would come to an abrupt end on the first of April 1964 after a military coup, partly sponsored by the United States government, ousted him as president (Meirelles 44-45). He would be swiftly replaced by Marshal Humberto Castelo Branco, a military leader, and would be the first of several militaristic dictators ruling Brazil for the next two decades (Meirelles 44).

In December of 1968, four years after the coup d’état, the Brazilian army imposed strict censorship onto the press, television, and the radio (“ARRESTS BY BRAZIL…” 1). Any outward opposition to the regime could be met with an arrest (“ARRESTS BY BRAZIL…” 1). In certain cases, defiance could be met with torture or even death (De Baets 72). Members of the military regime coined the slogan “Brazil: Love It or Leave It” as a piece of nationalistic propaganda (Rohter 30). Inevitably, this slogan would morph into a strict law. Any person, film, song, article, etc. that explained the dark state Brazil was in during the regime or even attempted to show any part of Brazil that wasn’t overwhelmingly positive would be censored (Rohter 30). This extreme censorship and toxic positivity made several Brazilian musicians furious. Before this strict censorship was enacted, however, some of them would come together to record an entire collaborative album, which would suddenly become the manifesto of an entire musical genre, artistic movement, and political statement. Those musicians were Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Tom Zé, the band Os Mutantes (consisting of brothers Arnoldo and Sérgio Dias Baptista and vocalist Rita Lee), and Rogério Duprat, among others, and the movement of Tropicália was born (Broadus; Dunn 92).

One major theme present in tropicalist works is the concept of “cultural cannibalism”, the idea that one can and should take in influences from all over the globe and make something new out of those aforementioned influences as long as it is done creatively and respectfully (Dunn and Veloso 123). Another theme included the ironic satirizing of Brazil as a “tropical paradise”, hence the name of the movement, in addition to criticism of the imperialistic and forced conservative nationalism that the military dictatorship brought to Brazil (Dunn 73).

“Caetano Veloso, Fundo Correio da Manhã”, Picryl, 1972

Caetano Veloso’s song “Tropicália”, released just a few months before the previously mentioned collaborative record, marked the first time that a tropicalist piece of music would use that word (Dunn 92; Ryan). The track’s title, which would later evolve into the title of the movement as a whole, was taken from an art installation of the same name by Hélio Oiticica, which was comprised of a path that voyaged through sand, wooden structures, and several tropical plants, which eventually lead to a television playing a variety of programs (Veloso 119). The song’s subject matter appears to reflect the artwork’s themes of nature conflicting with modernity by using allegory to subtly criticize the city of Brasilia, whose architecture was intended to be a symbol of progress when it was constructed, yet essentially became the headquarters of the dictatorship (Dunn 88). The song analogizes the city of Brasilia with a “monument made of papier-mâché and silver”, emphasizing the true weakness behind the capital city that planned to be a beacon of progress (Dunn 88).

The opening lines of the song itself references a letter written by Pero Vaz de Caminha, a Portuguese resident who came to Brazil in 1500, written to the King of Portugal at the time, about how fertile the land of Brazil was (Dunn 88). Veloso starts to sing soon afterwards, as he sings lyrics portraying himself as an explorer. Rather than portraying Brazil as a land of bountiful and beautiful plants and nature, Veloso instead paints a picture of a modern cubist landscape full of planes, trains, and trucks, demonstrating how things in Brazil have changed for the worst. “Above my head the soaring planes, / Below my feet the trucks and trains”. The chorus opens with the lyrics “Viva a bossa-sa-sa / Viva a palhoça- ça- ça- ça- ça”. This line references the musical genre of bossa nova, a popular, modern, and sophisticated genre of music from Brazil that is similar to samba, and “palhoça”, a Brazilian mud hut (Veloso 22; Dunn 89). These lyrics harken back to the theme of modernity’s relation to tradition and nature. Two later lines, “in (the) right hand there is a rose bush… / authenticating eternal spring”, appears to foreshadow the right-wing government’s future censorship to present Brazil as an “eternal paradise” (Dunn 89). Veloso also presents an allegory for the left-wing public being unable to fight against the right’s regime with the lines “On the left wrist / Running through the veins” (Dunn 89). Despite Veloso’s initial description of the left wing, later lines of the stanza demonstrates that the Brazilian left has one strength: music. “Very little blood / But the heart / Beats a tambourine samba / Emits dissonant chords / Through five thousand loud-speakers”. With these lines, music is heavily suggested to represent a sort of light in the face of darkness for the Brazilian people. The song ends with a brief reference to Carmen Miranda, a Portuguese Hollywood movie star that many Brazilians believe to be a “grotesque representation” of Brazilian culture and a “culturally repulsive object” who molded the public’s views of the country into the stereotypical tropical paradise image the right-wing government wanted the outside world to imagine (Dunn and Veloso 132). However, Veloso states that he merely wanted to present Miranda in a neutral light, free from any biases to recognize the humanity in her (Dunn 92). Overall, the song paints a picture of Brasilia as a capital city at odds with a variety of opposing factors: the left and right, tradition and the future, culture and destruction. This song has been considered by many to be a manifesto of the tropicalist movement, but an album Veloso and a few fellow Bahian musicians would release just a few months afterwards would soon flesh out and define the movement even more.

That record, Tropicália, ou panis et circenis, would be released four months after Veloso’s album with the aforementioned “Tropicália”. The album was recorded, performed, composed, and created by a supergroup of Brazilian and Bahian musicians consisting of Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Tom Ze, Os Mutantes, and others (Broadus; Dunn 92). The title of the album translated into English is “Tropicália, of bread and circus”, which is a reference to a poem by Juvenal about the sedation of the Roman public with food and entertainment (Dunn 93). A track on the album, fittingly titled “Panis et Circenses”, is written in the perspective of someone attempting to perform songs in order to get a presumably wealthy family out of a hypnotic state. “I tried to sing… / But the people in the dining room are too busy being born and dying”. This song is essentially acting as a thesis statement to the record and the movement.

The album itself, on a purely musical level, is a perfect example of the “cultural cannibalism” ideology at work, as the record takes in influences from several musical genres, including bossa nova, samba, rock, tango, pop, bolero, and avant-garde, just to name a few, as well as artists from across the globe, such as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Joao Gilberto, and especially The Beatles. (Dunn 93; Veloso 164-169). Other tracks and their subject matter include “Three Caravels”, a song about the Portuguese explorer Christopher Columbus done in a sarcastic manner, “General Jelly”, which challenges the idea of Brazil and hybrid culture, and “Industrial Park”, which criticizes industrialization and Brazilian nationalism (Dunn 93; Gil).

“Caetano Veloso no III Festival da Música Popular”, Picryl, 21 Oct. 1967.

On September 15, 1968, Caetano Veloso and Os Mutantes played live at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro in front of a group of primarily Marxist and left-wing students (Hess 253; Langland 61). What would be expected to be well liked performance due to the many leftist themes present in Veloso’s work was instead met with an overwhelming amount of boos from the crowd (Hess 253). The negative reaction from the crowd stemmed from a variety of factors, including the Marxist students’ distaste for Veloso’s western influences, the parodies of Brazilian cultural commercialization, the avant-garde nature of some of the songs, Veloso’s strange outfit and sexually suggestive dance moves, among many others (Langland 62-63). The crowd’s oxymoronic leftist yet nationalistic tendencies angered Veloso to the point of loudly arguing with the crowd before angrily storming off stage (Langland 64-65).

On December 27, 1968, very shortly after the enactment of strict censorship of the press and media, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were arrested and exiled to Europe (Novitski 1). They were likely targeted due to their outward opposition to the military regime. After this incident, the genre lost its mainstream status, effectively killing the genre (Cruz 9).

Despite the genre’s short lifespan and heavy misunderstanding from the general public during its lifetime, its influence is still felt to this day. Caetano Veloso still records and releases music to this day, even putting out an album as recently as 2021 (Bustios). Plenty of other musicians have been inspired by the Tropicália movement as well, including Beck, Nelly Furtado, David Byrne, and a wide variety of Brazilian musicians (Beta).

Primary Sources Annotated Bibliography

Sources are in MLA format

“ARRESTS BY BRAZIL IN POLITICAL CRISIS PUT IN HUNDREDS.” New York Times, 16 Dec. 1968, pp. 1-15. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/arrests-brazil-political-crisis-put-hundreds/docview/118331123/se-2. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

                        This primary source is a newspaper article from the New York Times, published three days after Institutional Act Number Five officially enforced the strict censorship in Brazilian press, etc. The New York Times is highly regarded as a reputable source.

Bustios, Pamela. “Caetano Veloso Tells the Story of How His New ‘Meu Coco’ Album ‘Just Happened’.” Billboard, 22 Oct. 2021, https://www.billboard.com/music/latin/caetano-veloso-interview-meu-coco-album-9649909/. Accessed 15 Dec. 2022.

                        This primary source is an interview with Caetano Veloso.

Dunn, Christopher, and Caetano Veloso. “The Tropicalista Rebellion: A Conversation with Caetano Veloso.” Transition, no. 70, 1996, pp. 123-132.

This primary source is an interview between the previously mentioned Christopher Dunn, and Caetano Veloso, one of the key figures of the Tropicalist movement.

Gil, Gilberto. “Parque Industrial.” Genius, 2022, https://genius.com/Gilberto-gil-parque-industrial-lyrics. Accessed 15 Dec. 2022.

                        This primary source is lyrics from the song “Parque Industrial” by Gilberto Gil.

Novitski, Joseph. “Composer, Forced Into Exile, Sings His Farewell To Brazil.” New York Times, 29 July 1969, pp 1. Brown University Library, https://library.brown.edu/create/wecannotremainsilent/wp-content/uploads/sites/43/2013/03/gil-4-merged.pdf. Accessed 15 Dec. 2022.

                 This primary source is a newspaper article from the New York Times, offering an unbiased look into Caetano’s exile.

Veloso, Caetano. Tropical Truth: A Story of Music & Revolution in Brazil. Da Capo Press, 2003.

                 This primary source is a memoir by Caetano Veloso, a key figure of the tropicalist movement.

Secondary Sources Annotated Bibliography

Sources are in MLA format

Beta, Andy. “God is on the Loose! How the Tropicalia Movement Provided Hope During Brazil’s Darkest Years.” Pitchfork, 17 Nov. 2016, https://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/9978-god-is-on-the-loose-how-the-tropicalia-movement-provided-hope-during-brazils-darkest-years/. Accessed 15 Dec. 2022.

This secondary source was written by Andy Beta, a writer specializing in music who has been writing for Pitchfork for 20 years.

Bethell, Leslie. Brazil: Essays on History and Politics, University of London Press, 2018, pp. 158-185. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv51309x.9. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

This secondary source was written by Leslie Bethell, an Emeritis Professor of Latin American History at the University of London. His studies focus primarily on Brazil in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. He has been creating works focused on the history of Latin America since at least 1970, and this book from 2018 offers a detailed history of Brazil’s history from the early 1800’s as well as the military dictatorship of 1964, a key topic brought up in this research kit.

Broadus, Victoria. “Panis et Circenses.” Lyrical Brazil, 9 Jan. 2012, https://lyricalbrazil.com/2012/01/09/panis-et-circenses/. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

This secondary source provides an English translation as well as a detailed interpretation of a Tropicália song. Its author, Victoria Broadus, speaks Portuguese, Spanish, and English, and has translated several academic articles. Broadus lived in Brazil for six years, where she studied the music of Brazil in addition to its culture. She has a master’s degree in Arts from Georgetown University and has taught courses centered around Latin American history there as well.

Cruz, Max Jorge Hinderer. “TROPICAMP: PRE- and POST-TROPICÁLIA at Once: Some Contextual Notes on Hélio Oiticica’s 1971 Text.” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, no. 28, 2011, pp. 9. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/662966. Accessed 15 Dec. 2022.

This secondary source was written by Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, A Bolivian-German author and art critic who specializes in Latin American studies and materialist aesthetics.

De Baets, Antoon. The Brazilian Truth Commission: Local, National, and Global Perspectives, edited by Nina Schneider, 1^st ed., vol. 4, Berghahn Books, 2019, pp. 72. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv287scwx.8. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

This secondary source, specifically the chapter this kit pulls from, is concerned with the censorship of Brazilian press. It was written by Dr. Antoon De Baets, a professor of history, ethics, and human rights at the University of Groningen.

Dunn, Christopher. Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture, University of North Carolina Press, 2001, pp. 73-92. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469615707_dunn.9. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

This secondary source on Tropicália was written by Christopher Dunn, who obtained a Ph.D. in Luso-Brazilian Studies from Brown University. His works and studies have a heavy focus in the art and media of Brazil created during the militaristic period of 1964-1985.

Hess, Carol. Experiencing Latin American Music, 1^st ed., University of California Press, 2018, pp. 253. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv3znxn1.12. Accessed 15 Dec. 2022.

This secondary source was written by Carol Hess, a professor of musicology from the University of California. She specializes in writing about the music of Spain and the Americas. She has won several awards for her works.

Langland, Victoria. “Il est Interdit d’Interdire: The Transnational Experience of 1968 in Brazil”, E.I.A.L., Vol 17, No 1, 2006, pp. 61-65. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwia6Yngif37AhV9FVkFHVgfAD4QFnoECAkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdialnet.unirioja.es%2Fdescarga%2Farticulo%2F4004274.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2iPC4srJHnu9Zkb7GezjwA. Accessed 15 Dec. 2022.

This peer-reviewed secondary source was written by Victoria Langland, who is currently the director of the center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Brazil Initiative at the University of Michigan. She specializes in 20^th century Brazilian history.

Meirelles, Renata. State Violence, Torture, and Political Prisoners: on the Role Played by Amnesty International in Brazil during the Dictatorship (1964-1985). Routledge, 2020. Kortext, https://read.kortext.com/reader/pdf/553343/. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

This secondary source was written by Renata Meirelles, a Brazilian historian who currently teaches in the Department of History at Universidade Federal Fluminense.

Rohter, Larry. Brazil on the Rise: The Story of a Country Transformed. St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 28 Feb. 2012, pp. 30. Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=L1FIqWU4JusC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=brazil+love+it+or+leave+it&source=bl&ots=7pCneFHpbZ&sig=ACfU3U2GuNL0moArTd1hVeKUzDtrJiK1qA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjI2oXs9tH7AhU6MlkFHW-TC64Q6AF6BAgoEAM#v=onepage&q=brazil%20love%20it%20or%20leave%20it&f=false. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

This secondary source was written by Larry Rohter, who was a Caribbean and Latin American correspondent from 1994 to 1999 and a South American bureau chief for the New York Times between 1999 and 2007.

Ryan, Matt. “Caetano Veloso – Caetano Veloso (Tropicália) (1968).” Review of Caetano Veloso by Caetano Veloso. Strange Currencies Music, 23 Aug. 2021, http://strangecurrenciesmusic.com/caetano-veloso-caetano-veloso-tropicalia-1968/. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

This secondary source is a review of the self-titled debut record by Caetano Veloso. It was written by Matt Ryan, editor-in-chief for Strange Currencies Music. He is an ardent collector of vinyl records with an interest in popular music of the 1960s. This source is only used for the exact release date of the record, as very few academic sources mention much about the date besides the year it was released.

Smith, Bruce L. R. Lincoln Gordon: Architect of Cold War Foreign Policy, University Press of Kentucky, 2015, pp. 238. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14jxwtg.18. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

This secondary source was written by Bruce L. R. Smith, a currently retired political science professor at Colombia University.

Glossary

Avant-garde – The advance group in any field, especially in the visual, literary, or musical arts, whose works are characterized chiefly by unorthodox and experimental methods (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/avant-garde).

Bolero – A Spanish dance characterized by sharp turns, stamping of the feet, and sudden pauses in a position with one arm arched over the head. Also : music in ³/₄ time for a bolero (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bolero).

Bossa nova – Popular music of Brazilian origin that rhythmically related to the samba but with complex harmonies and improvised jazzlike passages (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bossa%20nova).

Caetano Veloso – Brazilian songwriter and musician who emerged in the 1960s as a leading figure in Brazil’s Tropicália movement (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Caetano-Veloso).

João Goulart – Popular leftist Brazilian president before being overthrown in a coup by the military (https://biography.yourdictionary.com/joao-goulart).

Samba – A Brazilian dance of African origin with a basic pattern of step-close-step-close and characterized by a dip and spring upward at each beat of the music. Also : the music for this dance (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/samba).

Tropicália – Brazilian counterculture art movement started in 1967 blending Psychedelic Rock, Psychedelic Pop, and Experimental production with contemporary Brazilian pop, with the lyrics being left wing-tinted abstract poetry (https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/tropicalia/).