Tropicalismo
Encyclopedia
Tropicália, also known as Tropicalismo, is a Brazilian art movement that arose in the late 1960s and encompassed theatre, poetry, and music, among other forms. Tropicália was influenced by poesia concreta
(concrete poetry), a genre of Brazilian avant-garde
poetry embodied in the works of Augusto de Campos
, Haroldo de Campos
, and Décio Pignatari
, among a few others. However, Tropicália is associated almost exclusively with the musical expression movement, both in Brazil and internationally, which arose from the fusion of several musical genres, like Brazilian
and African rhythms
and rock and roll
.
, Emerson Adriano Catarina, Lygia Clark
, Rogério Duprat
, and Antonio Dias. The name Tropicália came from a Hélio Oiticica art installation of the same name. It is important to note that one of the cultural constructs of the Tropicália movement was antropofagia, or the cultural and musical cannibalism of all societies, taking in influences from all genres and concocting something unique. The concept of antropofagia, as embraced by the Tropicália movement, was created by poet Oswald de Andrade
in his Manifesto Antropófago
(Cannibal Manifesto), published in 1928.
Owing its roots to hippie tolerance and innovation, the arrival of Tropicália on the Brazilian music scene began in the 1960s. The 1968 collaboration album Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis is largely considered the musical manifesto of the movement, initially led by Caetano Veloso
and Gilberto Gil
. The two, along with other artists commonly associated with the movement, experimented with unusual time signature
s and other means of unorthodox song structures. Politically, the album expressed revolt against the coup of 1964. Indeed, politically engaged lyrics and artistic forms of activism drove much of the movement following the coup of 1964, much like its contemporary Brazilian film movement, Cinema Novo
.
Despite its success, the movement lasted few years, its influence on Brazilian music, however, was broad and far-reaching. Its initial leaders, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, were incarcerated by the military government over the political content of their work. After two months, Veloso and Gil were released and exiled to London
by the military government, where they lived until 1972. "Others in the Tropicalismo movement were less fortunate; several underwent torture or were forced into 'psychiatric care'. One tropicalista, the lyricist and poet Torquato Neto
, committed suicide after such treatment". Although Gil and Veloso were exiled from Brazil for four years, they were eventually able to continue their careers in Europe.
Despite being short-lived, the Tropicália movement would be honored later in 1985 when its 20 year legacy and Brazil's return to a democratic government coincided. In 1993, Caetano Veloso
and Gilberto Gil
, released the CD Tropicália 2 for celebrating 25 years of the movement and its importance to the Brazilian history, as sort of nostalgic remembrance of their earlier experiments. Actually, many years since its inception, Tropicália and its pioneers continue to be cited by musicians of the whole world as sources of musical creativity and inspiration.
, Beck
, The Bird and the Bee
, Kurt Cobain
, Arto Lindsay
, Devendra Banhart
, El Guincho
, Of Montreal
and Nelly Furtado
. In 1998, Beck
released Mutations, the title of which is a tribute to one of Tropicalismo pioneers, Os Mutantes
. Its hit single, "Tropicalia", reached number 21 on the Billboard
Modern Rock singles chart.
In 2002 Caetano Veloso published an account of the Tropicália movement, Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil. The 1999 compilation Tropicália Essentials, featuring songs by Gilberto Gil
, Caetano Veloso
, Gal Costa
, Tom Zé
, and Os Mutantes
, is an introduction to the style. Other compilations include Tropicalia: Millennium (1999), Tropicalia: Gold (2002), and Novo Millennium: Tropicalia (2005). Yet another compilation, Tropicalia: A Brazilian Revolution In Sound, was released to acclaim in 2006.
Poesia concreta
Poesia concreta was an avant-garde movement that came on the 1950s in Brazil and Switzerland, initially in music, but later in poetry and plastic arts. The concretism defended rationality and rejected expressionism, perhaps, lyric abstraction and randomness...
(concrete poetry), a genre of Brazilian avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
poetry embodied in the works of Augusto de Campos
Augusto de Campos
Augusto de Campos is a Brazilian writer who was a founder of the Concrete poetry movement in Brazil. He is also a translator, music critic and visual artist....
, Haroldo de Campos
Haroldo de Campos
Haroldo de Campos was a Brazilian poet, critic, and translator. He did his secondary education at the College of St. Benedict, where he learned the first foreign language, like Latin, English, Spanish and French...
, and Décio Pignatari
Décio Pignatari
Décio Pignatari is a Brazilian poet, essayist and translator.Since the 1950s, conducting experiments with poetic language, incorporating visuals elements and the fragmentation of words...
, among a few others. However, Tropicália is associated almost exclusively with the musical expression movement, both in Brazil and internationally, which arose from the fusion of several musical genres, like Brazilian
Music of Brazil
The music of Brazil encompasses various regional music styles influenced by African, European and Amerindian forms. After 500 years of history, Brazilian music developed some unique and original styles such as samba, zouk-lambada, lambada, choro, bossa nova, frevo, maracatu, MPB, sertanejo,...
and African rhythms
Music of Africa
Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a different history from sub-Saharan African music traditions....
and rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
.
History
Tropicália was not only a hippie movement at its inception. It also took form in the visual arts scene of 1960s Brazil, by the hands of the artists Hélio OiticicaHélio Oiticica
Hélio Oiticica was a Brazilian visual artist, best known for his participation in the Neo-Concrete group, for his innovative use of color, and for what he later termed "environmental art", which included Parangolés and Penetrables, like the famous Tropicália.- Early work :Oiticica's early works,...
, Emerson Adriano Catarina, Lygia Clark
Lygia Clark
Lygia Clark was a Brazilian artist best known for her painting and installation work. She was often associated with the Brazilian Constructivist movements of the mid-20th century and the Tropicalia movement...
, Rogério Duprat
Rogerio Duprat
Rogério Duprat was a Brazilian composer and musician.-Biography:Born in Rio de Janeiro, Duprat spent much of his life in São Paulo, where he died...
, and Antonio Dias. The name Tropicália came from a Hélio Oiticica art installation of the same name. It is important to note that one of the cultural constructs of the Tropicália movement was antropofagia, or the cultural and musical cannibalism of all societies, taking in influences from all genres and concocting something unique. The concept of antropofagia, as embraced by the Tropicália movement, was created by poet Oswald de Andrade
Oswald de Andrade
José Oswald de Andrade Souza was a Brazilian poet and polemicist. He was born and spent most of his life in São Paulo....
in his Manifesto Antropófago
Manifesto Antropófago
The Manifesto Antropófago was published in 1928 by the Brazilian poet and polemicist Oswald de Andrade. The essay was translated to English in 1991 by Leslie Bary....
(Cannibal Manifesto), published in 1928.
Owing its roots to hippie tolerance and innovation, the arrival of Tropicália on the Brazilian music scene began in the 1960s. The 1968 collaboration album Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis is largely considered the musical manifesto of the movement, initially led by Caetano Veloso
Caetano Veloso
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso , better known as Caetano Veloso, is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s,...
and Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira , better known as Gilberto Gil or , is a Brazilian singer, guitarist, and songwriter, known for both his musical innovation and political commitment...
. The two, along with other artists commonly associated with the movement, experimented with unusual time signature
Time signature
The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....
s and other means of unorthodox song structures. Politically, the album expressed revolt against the coup of 1964. Indeed, politically engaged lyrics and artistic forms of activism drove much of the movement following the coup of 1964, much like its contemporary Brazilian film movement, Cinema Novo
Cinema Novo
Cinema Novo was practised by Brazilian filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s. In Portugal, Novo Cinema flourished after the 1960s, where it lasted, inspired by Italian Neo-Realism and the French movement of the New wave, the direct cinema techniques, and by the ideals the Carnation Revolution up to...
.
Despite its success, the movement lasted few years, its influence on Brazilian music, however, was broad and far-reaching. Its initial leaders, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, were incarcerated by the military government over the political content of their work. After two months, Veloso and Gil were released and exiled to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
by the military government, where they lived until 1972. "Others in the Tropicalismo movement were less fortunate; several underwent torture or were forced into 'psychiatric care'. One tropicalista, the lyricist and poet Torquato Neto
Torquato Neto
Torquato Pereira de Araújo Neto was a Brazilian journalist and poet. He is perhaps best known as a lyricist for the Tropicalismo counterculture movement, which later expanded its influence to Música Popular Brasileira. He worked with Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Edu Lobo, and Waly Salomão...
, committed suicide after such treatment". Although Gil and Veloso were exiled from Brazil for four years, they were eventually able to continue their careers in Europe.
Despite being short-lived, the Tropicália movement would be honored later in 1985 when its 20 year legacy and Brazil's return to a democratic government coincided. In 1993, Caetano Veloso
Caetano Veloso
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso , better known as Caetano Veloso, is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s,...
and Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira , better known as Gilberto Gil or , is a Brazilian singer, guitarist, and songwriter, known for both his musical innovation and political commitment...
, released the CD Tropicália 2 for celebrating 25 years of the movement and its importance to the Brazilian history, as sort of nostalgic remembrance of their earlier experiments. Actually, many years since its inception, Tropicália and its pioneers continue to be cited by musicians of the whole world as sources of musical creativity and inspiration.
Today
Tropicalismo and its associated artists have a growing popularity, and has been cited as an influence by rock musicians such as David ByrneDavid Byrne (musician)
David Byrne is a musician and artist, best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography,...
, Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
, The Bird and the Bee
The Bird and the Bee
The Bird and the Bee is an American indie pop musical duo from Los Angeles, California, consisting of musicians Inara George and Greg Kurstin...
, Kurt Cobain
Kurt Cobain
Kurt Donald Cobain was an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana...
, Arto Lindsay
Arto Lindsay
Arthur Morgan Lindsay is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He is a 1974 graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida....
, Devendra Banhart
Devendra Banhart
Devendra Obi Banhart is a singer-songwriter and visual artist. Banhart was born in Houston, Texas and was raised by his mother in Venezuela, until he moved to California as a teenager. He began to study at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1998, but dropped out to perform music in Europe, San...
, El Guincho
El Guincho
El Guincho is the recording alias of Spanish musician Pablo Díaz-Reixa. Also a member of Coconot, Díaz-Reixa rose to prominence with his 2008 album, Alegranza!. His musical style relies heavily on the use of sampling and incorporates elements of Afrobeat, dub, Tropicália and rock and roll...
, Of Montreal
Of Montreal
Of Montreal is an American rock band from Athens, Georgia. It was founded by frontman Kevin Barnes in 1996, named after a failed romance with a woman "of Montreal." The band is one of the bands of the Elephant 6 collective...
and Nelly Furtado
Nelly Furtado
Nelly Kim Furtado is a Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer and actress. Furtado grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.Furtado first gained fame with her debut album, Whoa, Nelly!, and its single "I'm Like a Bird", which won a 2001 Juno Award for Single of the Year and a 2002 Grammy...
. In 1998, Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
released Mutations, the title of which is a tribute to one of Tropicalismo pioneers, Os Mutantes
Os Mutantes
Os Mutantes ) are an influential Brazilian psychedelic rock band that were linked with the Tropicália movement of the late 1960s. It was formed by two brothers and a vocalist, but has gone through numerous personnel changes throughout its existence...
. Its hit single, "Tropicalia", reached number 21 on the Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
Modern Rock singles chart.
In 2002 Caetano Veloso published an account of the Tropicália movement, Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil. The 1999 compilation Tropicália Essentials, featuring songs by Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira , better known as Gilberto Gil or , is a Brazilian singer, guitarist, and songwriter, known for both his musical innovation and political commitment...
, Caetano Veloso
Caetano Veloso
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso , better known as Caetano Veloso, is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s,...
, Gal Costa
Gal Costa
Gal Costa is a Brazilian singer of popular music.-Early life:...
, Tom Zé
Tom Zé
Tom Zé is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer who was influential in the Tropicália movement of 1960s Brazil. After the peak of the Tropicália period, Zé went into relative obscurity: it was only in the 1990s, when the musician and label head David Byrne discovered an album recorded...
, and Os Mutantes
Os Mutantes
Os Mutantes ) are an influential Brazilian psychedelic rock band that were linked with the Tropicália movement of the late 1960s. It was formed by two brothers and a vocalist, but has gone through numerous personnel changes throughout its existence...
, is an introduction to the style. Other compilations include Tropicalia: Millennium (1999), Tropicalia: Gold (2002), and Novo Millennium: Tropicalia (2005). Yet another compilation, Tropicalia: A Brazilian Revolution In Sound, was released to acclaim in 2006.
Further reading
- Paula, José Agrippino. "PanAmérica". 2001. Papagaio.
- McGowan, Chris and Pessanha, Ricardo. "The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova and the Popular Music of Brazil." Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998 ISBN 1-56639-545-3
- Dunn, Christopher. "Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture." Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8078-4976-6 Mei, Giancarlo. Canto Latino: Origine, Evoluzione e Protagonisti della Musica Popolare del Brasile. 2004. Stampa Alternativa-Nuovi Equilibri. Preface by Sergio Bardotti and postface by Milton Nascimento.
External links
- Article from PBS NewsHour on the impact of Tropicalismo and Caetano Veloso
- Perrone, Charles: From Noigandres to "Milagre da Alegria": The Concrete Poets and Contemporary Brazilian Popular Music, Latin American Music Review, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring - Summer, 1985), pp. 58–79. (clic on "Request Ticket" and then on "download").
- The Best Tropicalia Albums
- "Brazil, The Tropicalist Revolution" 2001 Documentary 52'
- OBJETO SEMI-IDENTIFICADO NO PAIS DO FUTURO: Tropicália and post-tropicalismo in Brasil (1967-1976) at Ràdio Web MACBA
- Leila Miccolis Brazilian Alternative Press Collection at the Special Collections Division at The University of Miami