The Dance Against Dictatorship



By Andy Beta

Tropicália was a revolution, a movement of subversion and beauty that swept Brazil in the late 1960s. It was a vivid, multi-disciplinary blossom, ranging from poetry to films, theater to visual art. But it was the scene’s bold and adventurous take on música popular brasileira (Brazilian pop music) that made the most noise around the world. Led by future stars Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Gal Costa, as well as irascible talents like Tom Zé and Os Mutantes, Tropicália combined adventurous rock’n’roll and avant-garde sounds with the native rhythms of the country. In the wake of the Summer of Love in 1967, this collective sought to make their country’s pop music as impactful as the sounds emanating from the UK, Europe, and America—though their work almost didn’t make it out of a turbulent Brazil.

In 1964, a CIA-backed military group (a junta) brought down the elected government of President João Goulart, installing the army general Costa e Silva instead. Goulart was elected on an economic nationalist platform that sought to narrow the gap between wealthy and poor, and keep multinational companies from siphoning their profits out of the country, much to the ire of the rich and powerful. By 1968, Silva’s military government cracked down on dissent of all stripes, be they industrial strikes, student protests, or critical songs. And in December of that year, the regime passed their ultimate act of repression with AI-5, a bill that shuttered the National Congress, imposed strict censorship on media, and suspended habeas corpus. In many ways, this was devastating to Brazil; for artists, it led to an era that was deemed the “vazio cultural” (“cultural void”).

Still, in the face of such creative antagonism, the Tropicálistas fought for their creative freedom. Veloso’s debut album, with the song “Tropicália,” kicked it off in earnest, and more artists released their musical manifestos a few months later on the compilation Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis, which juxtaposed their takes on samba with jarring song structures and experimentation. Gil and Costa both snuck references to spilled blood past national censors, while Veloso paid homage to the revolutionary Che Guevara on the bubbly “Soy Loco Por Tí, América” (without mentioning him by name). They used surrealistic wordplay and the thought-breaking approach of concrete poetry to conceal their commentary on the consumerism and violence overtaking their country, mixed with a deceptively bright sound. Veloso called what he and his friends did “cultural cannibalism”—they were eating the likes of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jean-Luc Godard, and more, distilling those elements into the music Brazil already loved: the bossa novas of João Gilberto and Tom Jobim, the batucada that thunders through Carnival.

For this, the Tropicália artists in Rio and São Paulo were perceived as threats by both sides of the political spectrum. The Marxist left considered them apolitical, obsessed with superfluous Western pop music rather than traditional Brazilian sounds. And to the fascist right, the group’s playfulness was seen as anarchistic and threatening to the country’s status quo. Soon after AI-5 was passed, Veloso and Gil woke to the police at their doors. They were arrested without charges, kept in solitary confinement for months, and then exiled to England until the early 1970s.

All the major players had staged a mock funeral for Tropicália in a television performance mere days before their arrest—yet, in the absence of Veloso and Gil, Tropicália did die in Brazil. Many artists went on to pop stardom, though. Os Mutantes moved into heavy rock, while the group’s frontwoman Rita Lee and Costa turned toward mainstream MPB success. Meanwhile, Zé continued to make idiosyncratic albums in greater obscurity. The grip of the junta finally loosened in the early 1980s, allowing for the first direct elections of a president in decades; in 1988, the country returned to a full democracy.

It took decades before the sound of Tropicália began to echo around the world, inspiring new listeners along the way. Zé found a fan in David Byrne, who rereleased the Brazilian iconoclast’s music in the early 1990s. Tortoise were also enchanted by Zé and served as his backing band later that decade. Nirvana pleaded with Os Mutantes to reform so they could perform together, and Beck named his Tropicália-influenced 1998 album Mutations after them. Veloso’s name appeared alongside King Tubby and Black Dice as influences on Panda Bear’s Person Pitch. At home, Tropicália inspired the next generation to use music to push for their freedoms.

Tropicália’s most fruitful period might have lasted less than a year, officially, but its impact lives on. On the 20 albums selected below, presented by year, you can hear how Brazil’s past mingled with its future to create a mutant pop form of música popular brasileira that still resounds today.

But first, let’s talk with one of Tropicália’s greatest stars...

