Utopian Songwriting: Music, Modernity, Nation and Politics in 1960s Brazil.

A CHI Global Utopias Special Event at the Iron Post, Urbana, April 8, 2016
From opening comments (after greetings and thanks) by Mark Steinberg and
Marc Hertzman:
Mark Steinberg:
But what do we mean by utopia? The Global Utopias project of the
Center for Historical Interpretation has done a lot of things: one has been to
bring people together to ask that question. So, very briefly, consider some
leitmotifs from our conversations:
First, worth saying that utopia has to be more than what we usually think:
the impossible dream / the never to be / the good place thats no place,
which as the pun in the original coining of the word utopia 500 years ago
this very year.
Instead, think of these definitions (mostly newer: mostly 20th and 21st
century). Mostly quotations; but perhaps they are lyrics?
- Utopia is the determined negation of that which merely is in the name of
what should be. (Thats Theodor Adorno in the 1960s). Also: the negation
of the negative, so a method more than a goal. (Ruth Levitas)
- Utopia is our human impulse to venture beyond the limits and
inadequacies of the world as it actually is, beyond the darkness of the now,
to recognize that there is something missing in the world as it is, to look for
the emerging not-yet. (Ernst Bloch)
- Utopia is not the impossible but a rejection of what is impossible to
accept including what we think to be impossible. (Mostly some Russians
I write about).
- Or, from a recent book called Cruising Utopia by an LGBT performance
scholar (Jos Muoz): Utopia is queer time not straight time. Straight
time says: there is no future but the here and now of our everyday life.
Queer time says: open this future to deviations, disruptions, and the
altogether different, to utopian desiring that allows us to see and feelthat
this world is not enough, and so dare to disrupt the tyranny of the now.
We will see if any of this speaks to the music tonightit certainly speaks to
music itself and performance (which many of these writers thought
embodied the utopian):

- It has been said that music (especially performed) embodies freedom and
community.
-That music ventures beyond the darkness of now / deviates into the
openness of possibility / allows us to feel what is missing in this world /
disrupts tyranny.
- Or as Bloch himself wrote (in 1918, in a book called the Spirit of Utopia,
which often talks about music): Utopia means to build into the blue, build
ourselves into the blue, and seek there the true, the real, where the merely
factual disappears. And there is a lot of blue is art (blue stained glass, Blue
Mosques, Krishna, Blue Rider) and music, especially jazz.
So lets venture into that blue. But first: a few words from Marc Hertzman -so you will have a better of idea of where we are going and where this music
comes from.
Mark Hertzman:
The artists who wrote and first played the songs that youll hear tonight
came of age during the 1960s and 70s, a time when Brazil was controlled
by a military dictatorship.
The military seized power in 1964, squeezed tighter with a series of
repressive acts in 1968, and held on all the way until 1985. That history now
hangs like a knife over the present day.
.
Like musical cultures across the world, Brazils was inventive, explosive, and
controversial during the 60s and 70s.
The repertoire that youre going to hear tonight combines all of those things
and more, including something that approaches that last definition Mark
gave us: [a place to] seek the true, the real, where the merely factual
disappears.
This idea is poignant given the context:
1) We can say that under authoritarian rule the factual often disappeared,
but not into utopia and instead into an Orwellian world of truthspeak, where
the state could kill and torture, and then deny knowledge, let alone admit
guilt.
2) On the flip side, music can take us to a different, much better place kind of
place that exists beyond fact Echoing Bloch in a way, Cornel West once
said:

Profound music leads usbeyond languageto the dark roots of our scream
and the celestial heights of our silence.. . .
The musicians represented here today aimed, in different ways, to do just
that.
What we might have referred to here in the US in the 1960s as laying it
between the lines Brazilians call, a bit more artfully, driblando a censura, or
literally dribbling, as in on the soccer field, around the censor.
Sometimes did this through in the lyrics, as in Geraldo Vandrs famous Pra
no dizer que no falei das flores (So they dont they that I never spoke of
flowers), which became the veritable sound track for the student movement
in 1968.
Vandr, whose work youre about to hear, was, in decidedly blunt in his
lyrics, at least on this occasion, singing of the military, In the barracks they
are taught an old lesson/To die for the fatherland and live without reason,
and, in a distinctly utopian move, exhorting his listeners: In the schools,
streets, fields, buildings,/Walking and singing and following the song.//Come,
lets go, waiting is not knowing/Those who know make history, they dont
wait for it to happen.
Vandr, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, and some of the others whose music
well hear also dribbled around the dictatorship and towards a utopian future
not just with language but also by seeking that place beyond language
through imaginative musical machinations that combined their own riffs on
samba, bossa nova, the Beatles, and sounds from Northeastern Brazil.
Youre now about to hear that seemingly impossible combination of rhythms
and traditions made even more complex and rich through the interpretations
of these five artists.
And so with utopia and an ethereal place beyond language in mind, lets
hear some music!