The Tropicalista Rebellion

Author(s): Caetano Veloso and Christopher Dunn

Source: Transition , 1996, No. 70 (1996), pp. 116-138
Published by: Indiana University Press on behalf of the Hutchins Center for African
and African American Research at Harvard University

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935353

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 (r Conversation

THE TROPICALISTA REBELLION

A conversation with Caetano Veloso

Christopher Dunn
"I cannot negate where I live, nor can eiro,
I and then on to Brazil's industrial
forget what I've read," said Brazilian capital, Sao Paulo. Friends and collabo-
composer-performer Caetano Veloso inrators from the vibrant musical scene
1968. Veloso was living under a repres-connected to the Universidade Federal
sive military regime in an unevenly de-da Bahia-Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze, and
veloped, largely impoverished nation; heGal Costa-as well as the poets Tor-
quato Neto and Jose Carlos Capinam,
was "reading" the Beatles,Jimi Hendrix,
Interview soon followed. In Sao Paulo, they
Bob Dylan, and James Brown, as well as
translated by hooked up (via concrete poet Augusto
Sartre, Godard, the concrete poets of Sao
Andrea
Kouklanakis
Paulo, and the literary provocateur ofde Campos) with erudite composer-
Brazilian modernism, Oswald de An- arranger Rogerio Duprat and the exper-
drade. His declaration sounds almost un- imental rock group Os Mutantes ("The
remarkable today, in an era when cos-Mutants"). The convergence of Bahia's
mopolitan intellectuals and immigrant
vital expressive culture with the avant-
workers alike regularly negotiate myriadgardist energies of Sao Paulo produced
"border crossings," both figurative and
Brazil's most aesthetically innovative ex-
literal. Yet in the Brazil of the I96os, periment in popular music to date.
Veloso's attitude seemed irreverent, if Like other Brazilian musicians of this
not treacherous, to proponents of cul- generation, the Bahian group came to
tural nationalism, who saw in the influx national attention by way of televised
Caetano Veloso,
of imported symbolic goods, particularly music festivals in Sao Paulo and Rio de
Gilberto Gil,
from the United States, the insidious Janeiro, which had turned into contests
and Gal Costa,
machinations of imperial minds. for mass popularity. Veloso and Gil in-
Rio, 1968
In I965, CaetanoVeloso had relocated troduced their new "universal sound" in
Paulo Salomao.

Abrtl Imagens,
from Salvador, Bahia-the center of 1967 at the third Festival de Muisica Pop-
Sao Paulo, Brazil Afro-Brazilian culture-to Rio de Jan- ular da TV Record. By the end of that

116 TRANSITION ISSUE 70

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year, their musical approach, which staged in I967 by the Teatro Oficina, are
combined rock instrumentation with often cited byVeloso as key influences on
Brazilian melodies and rhythms, had his compositions during that period. In
been dubbed tropicalismo in the local that same year, the conceptual artist Helio
press. Oiticica exhibited his cryptic installation,
Tropicalismo is not a musical style like Tropicalia, which provided the namesake
bossa nova, rumba, tango, or rock. It forVeloso's song-manifesto. Many tropi-
connotes, above all, a certain strategy to- calista songs also converged with the
ward cultural production which "canni- work of North American pop artists and
balizes" both local and foreign styles and their Brazilian counterparts such as
technologies in a process of ironic ap- Rubens Gerchman and Antonio Dias.
propriation and recycling. Indeed, one of Veloso's ironic yet affectionate wink to
the key literary texts for the tropicalistas the camp icon Carmen Miranda at the
was Oswald de Andrade's "Manifesto
end of "Tropicalia" is just one of many
parodic references to vulgarized or
Antropofago" ("Cannibalist Manifesto,"
I928), a sort of blueprint for Brazilian
stereotyped emblems of Brazilian culture
cultural production in which European
which the arbiters of "good taste" would
high culture, especially the avant-garde,
have preferred to forget. These ironic dis-
would be critically "devoured" without
locations, akin to the iconoclastic gestures
of Dada, did not seek to annihilate the
effacing local specificity. The manifesto
is dated "year 374 since the deglutition
parodied object, but rather to question its
of Bishop Sardinha." For Oswald desocial
An- place and cultural meaning.Where
is Carmen Miranda "located" in Brazil-
drade, the violent demise of this unfor-
ian culture
tunate Portuguese prelate at the hands of or in the pantheon of Holly-
Brazilian indigenes was the first act ofstars? What does she say about the
wood
anticolonial struggle. The tropicalistas,
flow of cultural products from Brazil to
the United
for their part, digested large helpings of States, and back again?
the North American counterculture of Despite their differences with left-
the I96os, from the hippie movementwing nationalists, the tropicalistas ulti-
and acid rock to black power and soulmately provoked the ire of the authori-
tarian regime. Many of their songs, like
music. With this in mind, we might bet-
ter understand Veloso's remark that Veloso's "Tropicalia," created fragmen-
tropicalismo proposed an "aggressive tary,
na- allegorical montages of Brazil's his-
torical contradictions.While the regime
tionalism" against the "defensive nation-
alism" of his critics. constructed a unitary, conflict-free vision
The tropicalistas shared close affinities of Brazilian society, the tropicalistas con-
with Brazilian artists working in other ducted an archaeological dig into the
fields such as film, theater, visual arts, and "ruins of history," as Benjamin would
experimental fiction. Glauber Rocha's have it. Increasingly, their songs explored
classic film of Cinema Novo, Terra em the quotidian violence of urban life un-
transe ("Land in Anguish," I967), and Os- der the regime and represented marginal
wald de Andrade's play, 0 rei da vela subjectivities not readily subsumed by
("The Candle King," I 9 3 3), which was social class.

118 TRANSITION ISSUE 70

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from "Tropicalia" (1968) translation "Tropicalia"

Caetano Veloso I organize the movement

I direct the carnival
Eu organizo o movimento
I inaugurate the monument
Eu oriento o carnaval
on the central high plains
Eu inauguro o monumento
of the country
No Planalto Central do pais
Long live the bossa
Viva bossa - sa - sa
Long live the straw hut
Viva a palhoca - ca - a - ca - ca
The monument of papier-mache and
O monumento e de papel crepom e
silver
prata
The green eyes of the mulata
Os olhos verdes da mulata
Her long hair hides behind the green
A cabaleira esconde atras da verde mata
forest
O luar do sertao
The moonlight over the plains
O monumento nao tem porta
The monument has no door
A entrada de uma rua antiga estreita e
The entrance is an old street, narrow
torta
and winding
E no joelho uma crianca sorridente feia
On his knees a smiling, ugly dead child
e morta
Extends his hand
Estende a mao
Long live the forest
Viva mata - ta - ta
Long live the mulata
Viva a mulata - ta - ta - ta
The monument is quite modern
O monumento e bom moderno
You said nothing of my fashionable
Nao disse nada do modelo do meu
suit
terno
To hell with everything else
Que tudo mais va pro inferno
My love
Meu bem

Long live the band

Viva banda - da - da
Long live Carmen Miranda
Carmem Miranda - da - da - da - da

Veloso and Gil were particularly savvy

December I968, they parodied the na-
in their use of mass media. Toward the tional anthem (six months before Jimi
end of 1968, the tropicalistas even hosted
Hendrix's famous rendition of "The
a television program called "Divino Star-spangled Banner" at Woodstock), a
Maravilhoso" on the now-defunct TV move which irritated the increasingly
Tupi in Sao Paulo. The program was vigilant censors. Their irreverence seemed
largely without structure: they usually subversive to the defenders of social or-
staged impromptu "happenings" involv- der and propriety.
ing invited guests. On one show in late By that time, "hard-line" forces with-

THE TROPICALISTA REBELLION 119

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Caetano Veloso in the regime had prevailed: there would
and Gal Costa, Rio, be no devolution of power to civilian
1968 authorities in the foreseeable future. In
From CaetanoVeloso response to the escalation of labor ac-
Songbook I, Rio de
tivism, the intensification of civilian
Janeiro: Lumiar Editora
protest, and, finally, the emergence of an
armed resistance movement, the gov-
ernment of Artur de Costa e Silva pro-
mulgated the draconian Fifth Institu-
tional Act on December 13, I968. This
law suspended habeas corpus, instituted
blanket censorship, and proscribed the
political rights of opposition leaders.
Within a couple of weeks, Veloso and
Gil were arrested; they were exiled to
London for two and a half years.
CaetanoVeloso has produced roughly
one new album each year since he began
recording in 1967; three years ago he and
Gil released Tropicalia 2, commemorat-
ing the twenty-fifth anniversary of their
original project. He remains at the fore-
front of Brazilian music, combining pop
sensibility with a penchant for experi-
120 TRANSITION ISSUE 70
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mentalism and innovation. He refers to
himself as "just a radio singer," but reg-
ularly finds himself at the center of na-
tional polemics and intellectual debates
about culture, politics, sexuality, and race
in Brazil. And he continues to call him-
self a tropicalista.
CHRISTOPHER DUNN: How did
your musical career start?
CAETANO VELOSO: I've liked sing
since I was a child, but I really wante
draw, to be a painter and a film dire
I wanted to make movies. Music was al-
ways something that I loved, but I thought
it would be a hobby, not a profession. I
thought of myself as a music lover. But
somehow destiny hooked me to popular
music. I think that the situation in Brazil
lends itself to it; popular music is such a
strong presence here.
When I was a child I used to play the
piano at home in Santo Amaro.When I
was eight, I would stay home listening to
easy songs in order to learn them by ear
and then play them. I also knew how to
sing some old Brazilian songs, which I
learned from my mother-she sings
very well, and knows songs from differ-
ent periods. But I didn't really develop
an ear for harmony. In 1960, when I was
seventeen or eighteen, we moved to Sal-
vador and the piano had to be sold, so I
asked my mother to buy me an acoustic
guitar. I found it very different, and I
thought I might never be able to learn
how to play it. Then one day I met
Gilberto Gil, and I learned a little bit
from him. The little I do know about
playing guitar comes from those days. I
don't know how to read music, I didn't
study with any teacher.
CD: School was listening to Joao because we showed interest in what I call
Gilberto ... British neo-rock 'n' roll, what was hap-
pening in the sixties-the Beatles, the
Rolling Stones, the Who, etc. Rock 'n'
CV: Oh yes, Joao Gilberto was a men-
roll was an American thing from the
tor for me. I was listening to bossa nova
in I959, and I was crazy about it. I950os, and what happened in England
was a revisitation of that music by groups
CD: I once sawJoao Gilberto play in who
the were more or less conscious of
what they were doing. I like to call what
amphitheater in Salvador. I arrived late
was done in England "neo" rock 'n' roll
and sat on the ground in front of the
stage, and soon afterwards you and because
Gil it was a commentary, not as fierce
came and sat right next to me. But it as
waswhat we did in Brazil, but nevertheless
a commentary on the original rock 'n'
the most interesting thing, because you
roll.We were interested in that phenom-
looked like his students-singing along
with him. enon.We were also interested in the kind
of Brazilian popular music that most
CV: It's true, we really are. I remember people considered to be of lesser qual-
that day very well. ity-in the Argentine tango, in Cuban
music and Mexican boleros.We did some-
CD: It's now almost thirty years since thing similar to what the pop artists in
the tropicalist movement first appeared, the U.S.A. were doing in the visual arts:
and I wanted to start with the most gen- we took what was kitsch-what was
eral question. What was tropicalismo? considered bad taste-and we placed it
in a more sophisticated repertoire. And
CV: It was a total confusion .... that jolted the musical establishment.
But these more or less ironic dis-
[Laughs.] It was, in a nutshell, a reaction
against what was happening to bossa
placements were happening all over the
world;
nova in its second phase.We were all this
dis-dislocation was a vital and
ciples of bossa nova. Bossa nova had characteristic practice of the I96os. And
considerable artistic, musical, and social for Brazil that dislocation was full of im-

value. But by the late I96os there was a plications. By using electric guitar in
certain code of "good musical behavior." melodic compositions with elements of
The new artists had added political slo- Argentine tango and African things from
gans to what was more or less a diluted Bahia, we assumed an immediate posture
version of what bossa nova had achieved of "being-in-the-world"-we rejected
in harmony and rhythm. We believedthe role of a Third World country liv-
that bossa nova represented a much ing in the shadow of more developed
more powerful and profound force in countries. Through our art we wanted
the history of Brazilian popular music. to put forward a vision of the world at
We wanted to be better disciples than that time, from our own perspective as
those who were merely imitating it or Brazilians.
perpetuating it. This triggered a strong reaction
We ended up causing a great scandal, against us in Brazil. First from leftist stu-

THE TROPICALISTA REBELLION 121

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 I

Caetano Veloso

and Gilberto Gil in

London, 1969

From CaetanoVeloso
Songbook I, Rio de
Janeiro: Lumiar Editora

right-represented by the military dic-

dents, and then from the left in general,
which considered us antinationalist for tatorship-which sent Gil and me to
accepting American rock 'n' roll, and prison: two months in prison, then four
anti-Marxist or antisocialist, because wemonths in confinement in Salvador un-
had an anarchic attitude toward the til we were finally exiled and spent two
world and toward society itself. Weand
leta half years as exiles in London.
our hair grow long, and did the sort of
things people were doing in the I96osCD:
all I want to talk about a very impor-
over the world. But tropicalismo was a moment for tropicalismo: the elim-
tant
very ambitious project; we took in inatory
the rounds of the I968 Festival In-
ternacionale da Cancao (International
hippie movement, pop music, the British
Festival of Song), when you sang "E
invasion, student movements in the U.S.
and France-we had all this material to proibido proibir" [It's forbidden to for-
discuss and reflect upon. Although our
bid], and the uproar it caused. Why did
first critics were on the left, it was the
the public react against this song?

122 TRANSITION ISSUE 70

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CV: It was not so much the song itself. stand, and what we were doing shocked
People already disliked us for our musi- them. For them, letting our hair grow
cal and personal attitudes. And people was already a sign that we accepted the
took the festival very seriously. It had hippie movement, that we were "Amer-
cultural and political value for Brazilian icanized." We liked Jimi Hendrix, the
students-and for us-because popular Beatles, James Brown, and the Rolling
music in Brazil has a very strong tradi- Stones, and this was seen as a sellout.
tion. The students who went to these They thought we should defend Brazil-
festivals favored nationalism and a kind ian music from all foreign influence.
of a socialist populism. This festival was
started after the military coup in I964,We assumed an immediate posture of
but in the beginning that government
didn't prevent left-wing cultural mani- "being-in-the-world"-we rejected the
festations. The students reacted against role of a Third World country living in the
what we were doing-it wasn't how
a leftist songwriter was supposed to shadow of more developed countries
behave.
But bossa nova, too, had affirmed
CD: Was tropicalismo a criticism against
Brazilian culture precisely because it had
an essentialist vision of Brazilian culture? no qualms about assimilating the best of
American music. Bossa nova was con-

CV: It was a criticism of that type of na-sidered a strange phenomenon when it

tionalism, a nationalism that seemed appeared on the music scene; Joao
naive and defensive.We were ambitious: Gilberto was a cultural scandal when he

we believed that, at least with popular

appeared on the scene. People thought
music, we should and could be aggres-
he was weird: they would say, "This guy
has no voice, he sings out of tune." His
sive, that we could have a more engaged
kind of nationalism. We took the exam- songs had dissonant harmonies and ex-
otic or modern melodies that departed
ple of "cultural anthropophagy," or cul-
from traditional music. A famous critic
tural cannibalism, a notion put forward
by the modernist movement in the in Brazil, Jose Ramos Tinhorao, who's a
I920s, especially by the poet Oswald de nationalist and a leftist, waged a holy war
Andrade. You take in anything and against bossa nova in the press, which he
everything, coming from anywhere andcontinues to this day. He considers it un-
everywhere, and then you do whateverintelligible, and a mere imitation of
you like with it, you digest it as you American music. He thought the songs
wish: you eat everything there is and were elitist and that people would never
then produce something new. understand them.

We thought we could have a critical With tropicalismo we wanted to re-

attitude from a cultural perspective, anmind people that bossa nova had done a
aggressive attitude, not a passive and de-certain kind of cultural violence in or-
fensive nationalism. It was very difficultder to revitalize popular music. But
at the time for the students to under- memory is short for such things, and

THE TROPICALISTA REBELLION 123

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From "Manifesto Antropofago" [Cannibalist Manifesto, 1928]

Oswald de Andrade, translated by Leslie Bary

in Latin American Literary Review 19:38 (July-December 1991)

Cannibalism alone unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically.

Tupi or not tupi, that is the question.

What clashed with the truth was clothing, that raincoat placed between the inner
and outer worlds. The reaction against the dressed man. American movies will
inform us.

Down with all the importers of canned consciousness.

We want the Carib Revolution. Greater than the French Revolution. The
unification of all productive revolts for the progress of humanity. Without us,
Europe wouldn't even have its meager declaration of the rights of man.

The Golden Age heralded by America. The Golden Age. And all the girls.

We were never catechized. What we really made was Carnival. The Indian dressed
as senator of the Empire.

We already had Communism.We already had Surrealist language. The Golden

Age.

But those who came here weren't crusaders. They were fugitives from a
civilization we are eating, because we are strong and vindictive.

Before the Portuguese discovered Brazil, Brazil had happiness.

We are concretists. Ideas take charge, and burn people in public squares. Let's get
rid of ideas and other paralyses. Believe in signs; believe in sextants and stars.

Absorption of the sacred enemy. To transform him into a totem ...

Down with the dressed and oppressive social reality registered by Freud-reality
without complexes, without madness, without prostitutions and without
penitentiaries, in the matriarchy of Pindorama.

Oswald de Andrade

In Piratininga, in the 374th Year of the Swallowing of the Bishop Sardinha.

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 li? PLf~

people thought that bossa nova was very CV: It was amazing. I wore a plastic Gal Costa,

good, but whatever we were doing was outfit, and I had on a necklace made out Caetano Veloso,

the opposite of bossa nova. Even the of electrical cords, iron chains-it was Gilberto Gil, and

Os Mutantes on
bossa nova artists didn't like what we something! The audience's reaction was
the Divino
were doing. Only Joao Gilberto, who's
brutal, they hated me.You know, there
Maravilhoso TV
the most radical of the bossa nova gen-
was a guy there named John, an Ameri-
program, October
eration-the most profound, the truecan. He was over six feet tall, and because
1968
inventor and creator of bossa nova- of some problem he had lost all his hair,
Paulo Salomao,
understood our position. He got it. even his eyebrows. He was very pale Abril Imagens,
So when I enrolled "E proibido pro-
white, super tall, a little crazy, and with no Sao Paulo, Brazil

hair. I signaled to the American guy to

ibir" in the festival, I knew it was going
to cause a scandal. I went up on stage
come up on stage and he started scream-
with a Brazilian rock band from Sao ing, while the audience kept shouting
Paulo called Os Mutantes. Their very
"You are Americanized!" And in the
middle of it was this guy-so weird-
presence was already offensive to the au-
dience-they started booing even be-and yelling "AAAHH!"just likeYoko Ono.
The students were infuriated and started
fore we started playing. The song opened
with more than a minute of atonal mu- jeering horribly.
sic composed by Os Mutantes. This This had been the first presentation of
caused complete hysteria among the the song, and when I returned to sing it
students. They already hated us. To tell a week later for the second round, the
you the truth, I deliberately provoked audience was ready. They staged a
them. It was a happening. protest: when I came on stage, they all
turned their backs to me-the entire
CD: It was very punk. audience turned their backs. It was a cu-

THE TROPICALISTA REBELLION 125

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Brasilia, Brazil

AP/WIDE WORLD

rious thing ... they too staged proibir"

a hap- was a phrase that French stu-
dents had
pening, a protest-that whole theater, all written on walls around Paris.
with their backs to me. So I sang
And the
in the middle of it all, Os Mutantes
song, and I was moving my hips
andback
my big hair-I looked like a mu-
latto,
and forth, dressed in that shining because I'm kind of mulatto-all
black
and green plastic outfit, with my long clothing and cords and recit-
my plastic
hair and a lot of electrical cords around ing: "Wait, I have fallen in the sand
my neck. dunes and in such adverse times ..."

During an interlude in the song, I re- It was crazy. So they booed me a lot.
cited a poem by Fernando Pessoa, a Por- And then I started to talk, although I
tuguese poet from the beginning of the didn't know what I was going to say.
century, who is, in my opinion, one of And when I started talking they turned
the greatest poets of modern times. It to face the stage-they wanted to see
was a mystical poem about a king in and hear what I was saying-but they
were throwing whatever they could find
In cultural cannibalism, you eat at me. They were screaming and throw-
ing things. I had Gil come up on stage
everything there is and then produce
and stand next to me, at which point
something new someone threw a piece of wood, which
hit Gil in the leg. And then I started
Portugal, Don Sebastiao, who died when yelling: "Is this the youth of Brazil, is this
he was very young in a desert battle the youth that wants to have power and
against the Arabs in Alcazarquivir. This do something good for the country?" I
was all still part of the show. It was a very thought they were so prejudiced and I
strange mixture of rock 'n' roll and wanted to tell them so. I was angry.
French student politics-"E proibido

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CD: Let's go back to Oswald de An- they maintain this vision today; they fol- Carmen Mirana

drade, to this notion of "poetry for ex-low the events of the world with a cos- UPI/Corbis-Bettmann

port" he outlines in his "Manifesto da mopolitan view. The concretes looked

poesia pau-Brasil" [Manifesto of Brazil- to tropicalismo because they found in us
wood Poetry]. Did you intend to make an identification with this Oswaldian at-
music to be exported? What did that titude, this idea of "poetry for export,"
mean to you? which was formally a very aggressive,
worldly kind of poetry.
CV: The basic idea of exportation in In truth, at that point I did not even
Oswald's mind is not that you are readythink that the records I was making were
to sell anywhere, but that you do some- "exportable," even though bossa nova
thing that you know is international- had been recognized worldwide as a
something that is an intervention at an very sophisticated and high-quality mu-
international level. The Brazilian con- sic, coming from a poor country. Bossa
crete poets were very interesting in nova
this had influenced good American and
European musicians. So this idea of ex-
respect. In the fifties they created visual
poetry, which they called "concrete" porting
po- Brazilian music had a precedent,
etry-an expression that became inter-
but we didn't really believe that the kind
national. Their attitude had an aesthetic of "product" we were making at that
boldness at an international level, and time would make it over.

THE TROPICALISTA REBELLION 127

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"Chiclete corn banana" ready been explored before in popular
[Chewing gum with banana, 1958] music, because foreign influences have
always resulted in something very orig-
Gordurinha and Almira Castilho,
inal. American music from the I940s-
translated by Christopher Dunn
the period when American music be-
I'll mix bebop into my samba came a massive presence in Brazil
When Uncle Sam picks up the hand drum -influenced a lot of artists, ever since
When he picks up the tambourine and the bass
Jackson do Pandeiro. The American
drum spirit in Jackson is very pronounced, but
When he finally understands that samba is not
what he did to American music was
rumba new, it was uniquely Jackson do Pan-
Only then I'll mix Miami with Copacabana deiro. It was music from the north of
Chewing gum I'll mix with banana Brazil, and it had a special spontaneity.
And my samba will come out like this
I want to see the great confusion CD: "Chiclete com banana" [Chewing-
It's the samba rock my brother gum with banana, I958] ...
On the other hand I want to see

the boogie-woogie with tambourine and guitar CV: "Chiclete com banana" is a mani-
I want to see Uncle Sam beating on the frying pan
festo of this new style. In our case, with
In a Brazilian jam session tropicalismo, we made a sort of mixed
salad, a hybrid style. It was invigorating
for popular music: strange, interesting,
Still, the spirit of it, the impulse was
and vital. This had consequences even for
there. Milton Nascimento, for example, Brazilian rock bands of the I98os and
has a considerable amount of influence
into the present day-it gave them a
on some important musicians around kind of freedom, put them at ease to en-
the world. As do Djavan, Hermeto Pas-
joy the Beatles and music from Spanish
coal, Egberto Gismonti, Gil, Jorge Ben,
America. Tropicalismo paved the road
Antonio Carlos Jobim. And even today, for this freedom; we didn't feel humili-
my records come out in the U.S. and ated by the presence of cultural in-
Europe, they're reviewed in newspapers
fluences from richer countries.We didn't
and magazines abroad. And I thoughtfeel intellectually or artistically inferior or
that my music would not be easy to ex-
offended. I think that it is this sentiment
port because one would have to knowthat made Joao Gilberto an artistic ge-
Portuguese. nius, and the same is true for Antonio
Carlos Jobim: they weren't humiliated,
CD: Yes, your music is very lyric-cen-they were stimulated.We, too, were stim-
tered. Do you think that Brazilian cul-
ulated by all kinds of references.
ture has always had the anthropophagic
We used to listen to Jimi Hendrix and
capacity it had in the sixties?
be fascinated by his inventiveness,James
Brown and all that wonderful energy,
CV: I think so. The kinds of things Os-
the Beatles and their creativity,joy, light-
wald was talking about in I922 had al-

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ness.We were happy that all of these ex- maybe eighty thousand copies, while
isted. We were alive and young, we Brazilian musicians are selling a million,
wanted to do things-and we thought eight hundred thousand copies. There
that Brazil should affirm itself in this has never been any foreign artist who's
sold half, or even a third of what
way, that the Brazilian political system
should be this way. Roberto Carlos sells.

I still think so today. Brazil has never The problem is, for the multinational
managed to realize its full potential, tocorporations that own the record labels
in Brazil, it's much more expensive to
achieve stability, wealth, some clarity in
produce a Brazilian record-they would
its public relations. It's a frustrated coun-
try, especially economically. We need toactually have to produce it here. But if a
tape comes ready-made from Los Ange-
improve our standard of living, to have
les, or London, they only have to copy
a better distribution of wealth, to pre-
vent people from starving, to preventit and to put it out to the radio stations.
kids from having to live on the streets.For them it's better to sell something all
And we need to have originality. I thinkover the world, so it's much easier to
Brazil should be more independent in itshave a new release from MichaelJackson
political decisions and in its ideas, as itor Madonna and instantly have it sold in
has been able to be in its music. Argentina, in Senegal, in Italy all at the
same time. There's a pyramid effect. No
CD: One problem now is this trend of one spends anything, they just reap the
cultural importation, what Oswald de profits. So for them it's great.
Andrade called the importation of "can- But in Brazil, what sells is Brazilian
ned consciousness." American pop gets music, despite everything. Do you think
here and gets played on the radio more Madonna, Prince, or Michael Jackson
than music by Brazilians. sell more than Brazilian music? No way.
I travel all over the world and every-
CV:Yes, that's true, but it's a little strange where I go I see the same thing: the mu-
to see the discrepancy between the air- sic is American, or the television pro-
play and the sales.When a foreign record grams are dubbed. When I go to Italy,
sells as much as Brazilians it makes news, France, Portugal, Argentina, or Japan, I
precisely because it is not the rule. They don't see a local, natural response to
never sell as much as the Brazilian ones. popular music as strong as I see it in
You cannot compare. Brazil. A resistance ...

A natural resistance. I am only inter-

CD: So Brazilian records still sell more? ested in the kind of resistance that's nat-
ural, not a programmed one. The defen-
CV: But of course. It's incomparable. sive, nationalist kind of reaction tends to
This is a myth which serves to corrobo-be suspicious, because it carries within it
rate an unjust kind of domination, be-a notion of cultural isolation, which is
no good. It becomes provincial and
cause you turn on the radio and hear an
incredible amount of American music, breeds a feeling of resentment; it does
and these records are selling thirty, forty,not have a power of its own, but it lives

THE TROPICALISTA REBELLION 129

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Hello Eichbauer's

stage set for -

the Teatro Oficina's .

1967 Siao Paolo '

production

of 0 rei da vela

("The Candle ||
King"), by Oswald | L| i
de Andrade. ! U nk

' -:!!',.Li. . : -'' '"! -'!-.:.....

".' ........ ; ; .
-iF?2~i'~.~ ]~!'i~;'i * ~d!!ii.,,jJk'"~. ., j;-ii]!!jj!j1jijji....,...i...j..'. .. .. .....:..
* ... ....s .; ..-. N i ... .... .. ..'! 1.

out of a negative force-the reaction reference to a structure, a monument.

against someone else's power. But the What is this monument?
influence that Americans have in terms
of international commerce is a given. CV: I'm not sure, because in a strange
You simply encounter it, it's there, it's anway, that song is made up of images, and
American conquest. And so it's up to to a certain extent the song itself is a
you to conquer things in your own way, structure, isn't it? But you feel that there
working with what you have. Brazilianis a reference to the creation of Brasilia,
popular musicians have always known and the whole irony of building a mon-
how to produce attractive music, and itument when there was nothing to be
has dominated the market here without commemorated: a poor country, under a
a period of discontinuity. Ever. This is military dictatorship, a dark, terrible
something that the international public monument. It was an image of great
should know. irony, a more or less unconscious ex-
pression what it was like to be in Brazil
CD: "Tropicalia," a song you wrote in and to be Brazilian at that time: you'd
I968, became a manifesto. In it you makethink of Brasilia, of the Planalto Cen-

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tral [central high plains] and you'd ex- make of it-they didn't know whether
pect to derive a certain feeling of pride it was a political movement or not-but
from the architecture, and yet it was not they saw it as anarchic, and they feared it.
at all like that. The feeling was more like: There were some intellectuals in the

"What a monstrosity!" And this is be- military, who had some understanding of
cause Brasilia was built and soon after what we were doing-they were the
the dictatorship came, and so Brasilia ones
re- who recommended that we be im-
mained there as a center of this dicta- prisoned. They thought we represented
torship. But in the song, the monumentdissension and danger. People had to
is described as a combination of diverse take a stand, and we were raising ques-
Brazilian cultural elements, of a culturetions, giving interviews, and saying the
shared by all: papier-mache and the kinds of things I've been telling you
green eyes of the mulatto woman.... here, these things were coming to
fruition in our minds-a vision of

CD: But in the song those elements are Brazil in which there was freedom,
always in opposition. strength. Obviously, we were enemies of
the military regime, we hated it, and we
CV: And some of the oppositions are thought that this regime was a source of
quite scary. shame for us. However, we did not take
part in any political group.We were not
CD: On the one hand the song men- communists, or members of any left-
tions "bossa," which is a symbol of so- wing party. I had never even participated
phistication. in the academic student council. I was

never interested in politics proper. So

CV: And on the other, the "palhoca" there was no political affiliation, but they
(thatched hut). The song shows how were suspicious and preferred to arrest us
these oppositions point to enormous because they did not know what to do,
distances: the gap between the country's or where the thing could end up.
intellectual and artistic development on
the one hand, and the backwardness of a CD: To return to the song "Tropicalia,"
great part of the population due to you mention Carmen Miranda in it. Re-
poverty, on the other. These contradic- cently you compared putting Carmen
tions could be used to shock Brazilian Miranda in the song to Andy Warhol
painting a can of Campbell's soup....
audiences. That song made a lot of peo-
ple think: it generated articles, books,
conversations, discussion. And in the end
CV: That's right.
we were arrested....

CD: What does Carmen Miranda repre-

CD: Why were you arrested? sent to Brazil and Brazilian culture?

CV: Because what we were doing was

CV: Well, after tropicalismo Carmen
new. Tropicalismo lasted for a year only,
Miranda came to be admired once again,
and the military didn't know what to
and was recognized as a positive cultural

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 symbol. But until tropicalismo, most impressed because it confirmed a trend
people considered Carmen Miranda to we were exploring in tropicalismo: that
be a kind of grotesque representation of is, to take an object-a vulgar, even a
Brazil, something to be ashamed of. culturally repulsive object-and remove
There were a lot of people who revered it from its context, displace it. For ex-
her, who remembered her- old people ample, you want to bring in an object
from the time when she was marvelous. that's culturally repulsive, so you go em-
But even those who loved her felt sorry brace it and then you dislocate it. Then
for what she'd suffered in Hollywood. you start to realize why you chose that
Those who'd been born afterwards only particular object, you begin to under-
knew her as that woman we used to see stand it, and you realize the beauty in the
in films, who made us slightly ashamed.
object, and the tragedy involved in its re-
Those Hollywood films presented alationship with humanity-humanity's
distorted image of Brazil, because they
tragedy for creating that object and that
mixed in whatever "Latin" references kind of relationship-and finally you
would work well for them. That meant start to love it. And if there really is
Cuban, Mexican, Argentine elements-something lovable about it, you begin to
all of this was ascribed to Carmen Mi- respect it.
randa, and she became a sort of ... she But before that, there's a moment
was a bit like the monument in "Trop- when you arrive at that neutral point,
icalia," she was a bit of a monster. Before when you become uncritical in relation
tropicalismo we could only feel ashamed to that object. This was the case with
of her. The tropicalist attitude freed us Andy Warhol, who I think stayed at that
point right to the end of his life: you

With tropicalismo we wanted to cannot think that he is saying: "Look

how this is tacky, kitsch, horrible, we
remind people that bossa nova had should transcend it." Not at all; he's at

done a certain kind of cultural violence that neutral point when the object is just
the object: Bang! It's in your face and it
in order to revitalize popular music has nothing to say about itself. So Car-
men Miranda, at the time that I wrote
from this shame, and for me to include "Tropicalia," had reached that point of
her name . . . well, that name had a neutrality for me. She was no longer a
shocking effect. Her whole act had all
grotesque thing, unpleasant, but was
the characteristics of the ridiculous, something that began to fascinate me,
didn't it? And yet at the same time withsomething I wanted to play with: it had
the tropicalist movement we rediscov-already become lovable for me in many
ered Carmen Miranda. respects. She had been recovered: a kind
When we started tropicalismo I did
of salvation.

not know about American pop art. But

CD: Parody has something of love, par-
then during the I967 Sao Paulo Bien-
nial, there was an exhibition of their ody is not mere scorn.
work and someone took me there. I was

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CV: Exactly.
CD: It's an ironic displacement, but at
the same time you have a certain affinity
with it ... you have love.
CV: Love.We have to return to Oswald
outside Brazil without thinking of Car-
men Miranda, because Carmen Miranda
was the first sign-the first Brazilian
musical production outside of Brazil
which had any international repercus-
sions. There was a day-I wrote about
it once for the New York Times-when Andy Warhol

de Andrade, who says all this in one Tom Jobim was going to play at Car- (American, 1930-1987),
Campbell's Soup I:
poem. The poem is called "Amor," and negie Hall. Sting had invited us to sing
Black Bean. 1968.

the text of the poem is simply "Humor." at Carnegie Hall-Tom Jobim, myself,One from portfolio of
ten screenprints on white
and Elton John. Since Tom Jobim was paper, 35 x 23 in.

CD: It's a way to recover something going to sing "The Girl from Ipanema,"
© Andy Warhol
Foundation for the
from the past, to recover it, assimilate it, EltonJohn had brought along a Carmen
Visual Arts/ARS,
try to understand it, not with scorn, but Miranda hat, and he had the idea to New York

as something that is part of the culture.

CV: Yes. _.... ...... ...

_X^ ' -^^

CD: It's beautiful.

CV: At that particular moment it's beau-

tiful, at the moment of movement. The
consequences are many ... but one can-
not judge art by thinking of the result. To-
day people's responses to art are informed
by fear-"Oh, we have lost all perspective
to judge what is good and what is bad"-
everyone wants to return to the avant-
garde movements from the beginning of
the century. I think this kind of attitude
is a betrayal of all great art. I'm just a ra-
dio singer, but that's my opinion.

CD: You once said that in any musician

who goes and does anything in Amer-
ica-whether it's the Afro-Brazilian pop
group Olodum singing on Paul Simon's
album or you or Milton Nascimento
_~~~~~~~.. .. - ,
playing a concert there-there's some-
thing of Carmen Miranda.Why?

CV: I think it's impossible for us to fol-

low what happens to Brazilian music

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 nothing to do with bossa nova or mod-
ern jazz-he's someone out of English
rock 'n' roll-one day by chance meets
Tom Jobim in Carnegie Hall and would
have perhaps dared to come on stage
dressed like Carmen Miranda at the mo-
ment when Tom was going to sing "The
Girl from Ipanema" as his last number.
... It's all rather suggestive....

CD: Right, because the gesture is a tacit

comparison, a suggestion that all Brazil-
ian music is the same, whether it's Car-
men Miranda or bossa nova. Of course
this is not a very sophisticated vision, and
with an American audience, perhaps
Tom didn't want to ...

CV: That's right.

CD: But in Brazil maybe it would be

OK, because people understand the dif-
ference better.
Caetano Veloso, come dancing in with the hat when the
1993 CV: Yes, Brazilians would understand
song started. But Tom Jobim was very
Livio Campos serious, he's an older man, and so Elton
the difference better-and the identity.
Because on the one hand Carmen Mi-
John ended up not doing it. But the sim-
ple fact that it had been suggested ... randa
you and Tom Jobim are different and
feel that that suggestion is always there.
on the other they're really the same. Car-
Bossa nova is, in its presentation, the men
op- Miranda is really an important part,
posite of Carmen Miranda. Bossa nova
an integral, and shaping part of some-
musicians are serious, they are respect-
thing which is altogether good, which
is Brazilian popular music. Her experi-
able people. Tom Jobim is a great com-
ence in the United States was not nec-
poser, he comes on stage and plays the
piano beautifully ... but suddenly you
essarily negative in this respect, not even
see it, Carmen Miranda is there. from a musical point of view. It's a very
"The Girl from Ipanema" was sung complex
by thing, you know.
Joao Gilberto's wife, Astrud, who at theBut the public must be sophisticated
time was not a singer, but she sang it enough
be- to see the value of their being
cause she knew English. In the end it one
was thing-Tom Jobim and Carmen
the one bossa nova record that had the
Miranda.What happens is that the naive
most success. And so now Elton John,American audience still does not know
who's from another generation and hasthe difference, the small but significant

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difference between them. So obviously From "0 Estrangeiro"
it is preferable, from Tom Jobim's point [The Foreigner, 1989]

of view, that the differences still be high-

Caetano Veloso,
lighted for the American audience, be-
translated by Arto Lindsay
cause they are not mature enough to
recognize the identity. The painter Paul Gaugin loved the lights of
Guanabara Bay
CD: Now I'd like to talk a little bit about The songwriter Cole Porter loved the lights of her night
your more recent work. I wanted to ask Guanabara Bay
about the importance of the "concrete The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss detested
poets," Augusto and Haroldo de Campos Guanabara Bay
and Decio Pignatari in the tropicalist It looked to him like a toothless mouth.

movement.When, on the album Circulado

And I, if I knew her less, would I love her more?
you recorded "Circulado de Fulo" from
I'm blind from seeing her so often, from holding her up
Haroldo de Campos's collection Galdxias,
like a star
were you revisiting tropicalismo?
Oh what is a beautiful thing?

CV: I had that precise feeling when I

recorded Estrangeiro [Foreigner]. On the Gauguin said that it is more beautiful
cover of that album is the scenery from than Tahiti. He starts Noa Noa saying this
Rei da Vela [The candle king], a play by about Tahiti: "It's not as beautiful as the
Oswald de Andrade produced by the bay in Rio de Janeiro...."
theater group Oficina in I967, one of Cole Porter also found it beautiful....
the great happenings of tropicalismo. The first time I sang in New York was
That scenery, which we used when we at the Public Theater and I sang Cole
toured Brazil, is like the vision of Brazil Porter's "It's Delovely." The audience
which appears at the beginning of the thought I was kidding when I said: "I am
song "Estrangeiro"-Brazil seen from going to sing it in bossa nova style, be-
the outside. Carmen Miranda herself is cause Cole Porter made this song for
just that: Brazil as viewed by foreigners.Rio." I was speaking in English and the
In the opening of "Estrangeiro," Americans were laughing, thinking I was
there's Cole Porter, Levi-Strauss and joking. But I kept saying: "I'm telling
Gauguin looking at Rio's Guanabara you and you don't believe it?" He was
Bay. All those things I say in the song are sailing on a yacht with some friends, and
true, those are the impressions they had they stopped here, they dropped anchor
and wrote down. Levi-Strauss found in Guanabara Bay. As night fell and they
Rio very ugly. In Tristes Tropiques heall the lights, they said those things,
saw
says, "Rio is known for being beautiful,
that list of adjectives. Someone said, "It's
and Sao Paulo for being ugly, but I, to be
delightful," and someone else said, "It's
honest, do not like Rio at all.When delicious,"
you and he was left with nothing
arrive at Guanabara Bay it is ugly.toItsay, and so he joked: "It's delovely," he
looks like a toothless mouth, a big just thought it up. In a biography there's
mouth with just a tooth here and there."
a photograph of the bay at night with all

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"Circulad6 de Fulo6,"
the lights and the notes he wrote on the
from Galaxias, 1984 yacht: "the beauty of the lights in Rio

Haroldo de Campos,
With the next record, Circulado, I
translated by Arto Lindsay
didn't think much about tropicalismo,
circulator of flowers to the god to the demon but
be I am a tropicalist, so it just turned out
given may god guide you that way. And the song "Circulado de
because I cannot and hail those who gave Fulo" from that album is based on a
themselves to me circulator poem from the sixties by Haroldo de
of flowers and those who did not Campos; the poem is contemporary with
ringing like a shamisen put together with a wire tropicalismo. It's a very swiftly moving
stretched tight, a cable and an old can at the end text, with a regional accent and a lot of
of a party market at the regional idioms and on top of that writ-
apex of the sun at its apex but for others that ten by an avant-garde poet, with no
music didn't exist punctuation; he writes like that. Haroldo
it could not because it could not popular be thatread the poem to me when I was exiled
music if you can't sing it isn't popular it can't be in London. I was enchanted by it. The
tuned poem interested me then because it is a
it doesn't tintinabulate it doesn't tarantina but reflection on Brazilian popular music: it
besides it's unwound from the guts of misery makes reference to a man Haroldo had
from the tense guts of the most shrewlike seen, a terribly poor man from the
physical misery and aching aching north, a beggar, who was making music
like a nail in the flattened out palm of the hand awith a berimbau made out of a tin can.
rustiness blind nail Then he sang that refrain, "circulado de
in the flattened out palm of the hand heart fulo," and asked for money. Haroldo was
exposed like a nerve impressed by it and wrote about it, ex-
tense held back a black denial blind nail abidingpressing the idea that invention happens
in the palm in the direst of circumstances-that the
pulp of the hand in the sun direst circumstances can create some-
the people are language inventors in the cunning thing new, something modern.
of mastery in the shrewd shrubbery This is why Haroldo says in the poem
of the marvelous in the sights of the unexpected that "the people are language inventors."
groping over the crossing Haroldo also predicts in the poem what
courting the axis of the sun the most reactionary populist from the
left would say about the "Circulado": if
it's strange, or experimental, somehow it
cannot be popular. But nevertheless this
man asking for money in a street mar-
ket in the north is creating experimen-
tal music: the sound was incredible and
even more so the text he recited as he

asked for money: "Circulado de Fulo ao

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deus ao demo-dara" [Circulator of flow-
ers, to the god to the demon be given].
It's an odd phrase, isn't it? The guy cre-
ated both a sound and a text, he was an
inventor, and this is what Haroldo un-
derlined. This is what I take as a para-
digm of our attitude to popular music.
Olodum, for example, from Salvador,
States, and here too, people talk about
both artistic relationships as if they were
the same thing. I'm not denigrating Paul
Simon's importance, but David Byrne's
attitude is radically different. For David
Byrne to have released that record by
Tom Ze-Massive Hits: The Best of Tom
Ze-in the U.S. is wonderful. It is the

is not some primitive, traditional phe-
nomenon. But it is very likely that a
great part of the international audience
thinks that Paul Simon, a modern Amer-
ican singer, invited these primitive black
percussionists from Bahia-a poor state
in a poor country-to play with him
and then he added some modern flavor
to it. No: Paul Simon, the old song-
writer, who's been producing good
opposite of what Paul Simon did with
Olodum, because with Paul Simon you
Until tropicalismo, most people
considered Carmen Miranda to be a kind
of grotesque representation of Brazil,
something to be ashamed of. She was a
bit of a monster

melodies and well-written lyrics since

the sixties, invited the super-new and in- discovered Olodum, but you didn't find
novative group Olodum to play with out what Olodum is. He didn't inform
him. Olodum is a modern group; it was you about their creative inventiveness.
influenced by things that came long af- Because Olodum is the "Circulado de
ter Paul Simon, especially by Bob Mar- Fulo," you understand? Olodum is that
ley. Olodum's percussion added reggae thing which Haroldo said about the
to samba and invented something that poor man who invents something with
didn't exist in Brazil before, or anywhere minimum resources-he creates some-
else in the world for that matter. There thing modern, new, provocative, differ-
is nothing "traditional" about that. That ent. That's what Olodum is.
is modern pop invented in the seventies
and eighties. This is all new, a lot newer CD: I always wanted to know about
and more modern than Paul Simon something that I find fascinating in your
himself. So Olodum is a product for ex-
compositions and in MPB (Muisica Pop-
port. And because it appears primitive,
ular Brasileira) in general. The artists are
it becomes an export in two senses,always
since complimenting each other, pay-
ing by
the primitive is naturally imported homage, as it were. You talk about
Gil,
rich countries as something exotic, Maria Bethania....
dif-
ferent, interesting, and all that.
CV: Djavan talks about me....
I do think, however, that David Byrne's
relationship to Brazilian music is more
interesting than Paul Simon's. It amazes
CD: Yes, Djavan talks about you, he in-
me that when I am interviewed in the vented the verb caetanear [to caetano]. It's

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Caetano Veloso a very curious thing, something you
in banana ouffit, don't see very much in the U.S. Most of

April 1968, the American artists have big egos.

on Chacrinha TV

program CV: It's more competition than collab-

From Jornal A Tarde
oration.

CD: I feel that MPB in the last twenty

or thirty years has been something done
in collaboration, as you say.

CV: Tropicalismo contributed to that,

because it celebrated this idea that there
is room for a lot of people doing differ-
ent things. There was a period in Brazil
when people were afraid that the market
couldn't accommodate us all. There was

always one big composer at the top. First

it was Edu Lobo, then came Chico
Buarque-and Edu Lobo disappeared.
Then when I appeared it looked as
though Chico Buarque would have to
fade. Everyone thought so, as if it were
a fight where one had to decide between
Chico and Caetano. But from the be-
ginning Gil and I appeared on the scene
together, and we never supported such a
notion. There was always collaboration
and friendship. Maybe because the
country is so poor and because it's so
difficult to get things to work in Brazil,
and because popular music works so
well, we instinctively prefer to help each
other rather than get in each other's way.
I don't know, it's a mystery. But I at-
tribute it to the fact that we actually re-
ally like each other.

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