Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture

CHAPTER 5 Tropicália, Counterculture, and Afro-Diasporic Connections

66666666666666 5 TROPICÁLIA, COUNTERCULTURE, & AFRO-DIASPORIC CONNECTIONS A sacollectiveproject,TropicáliaendedinDecember1968, yet it inspired emerging artists and groups loosely identi fied with a ‘‘post-tropicalist’’ current in mpb. For the original Bahian group and their allies in Rio and São Paulo, the tropicalist experience continued to orient their work in a diffuse and nonprogrammatic fashion. With the Fifth Institutional Act and the hardening of military rule, the cultural and political context had been radically changed. Despite the context of repression and censorship, Brazilian popular music was arguably the most resilient area of cultural production. Artists identified with the second wave of bossa nova, many of whom gained national recognition in the televised music festivals of the 1960s, achieved artistic maturity, producing in some cases the best work of their careers. Elis Regina, Maria Bethânia, and Gal Costa were consecrated as the leading divas of mpb. Milton Nascimento and his ‘‘Corner Club’’ produced astonishing fusions of contemporary jazz, rock,samba,LatinAmericannuevacanción,andtraditionalmusicalstylesfrom Minas Gerais. A new generation of ‘‘university singers,’’ such as Ivan Lins, Luiz Gonzaga Jr., and João Bosco, came into the national spotlight on the TV Globo program ‘‘Som Livre Exportação.’’ Female artists such as Joyce, Sueli Costa, and Marlui Miranda garnered critical acclaim not just as singers but also as composers.1 After returning from exile in 1972, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso consolidated their positions as popular artists and public intellectuals .Tom Zé, whose post-tropicalist work will be discussed in Chapter 6, continued to compose and record but remained on the margins of mainstream mpb. Throughout the 1970s, the tropicalist movement continued to influence cultural production in Brazil, especially in the area of popular music. Artists who had previously criticized the cultural strategies and aesthetic innovations of the tropicalist group began to dialogue with the movement and its legacy. For the most part, the nationalist anxieties that informed debates surrounding the ‘‘direction of popular music’’ subsided as artists engaged a diverse range of musical and cultural information from local and international sources. Conflicts and rivalries of the 1960s receded, making possible collaborations that were previously unthinkable. In 1970, for example, the mpb singer Elis Regina recorded a duo with soul singer Tim Maia, who was formerly allied with the Jovem Guarda. The use of electric instruments and rock-informedmusicalarrangementsnolongergeneratedmuchcontroversy. The field of mpb became simultaneously less contentious and more heterogeneous as artists pursued individual projects with less anxiety over issues of cultural nationalism. In the early 1970s, the tropicalist experience was also the primary reference point for urban middle-class youths identified with an incipient Brazilian counterculture. Although criticized for not articulating collective opposition to military rule, countercultural artists and adherents proposed new discourses and practices that attempted to resist authoritarian social control. Later in the decade, countercultural practices in Brazil took other forms, converging in some instances with new social and cultural movements. Gil and Veloso maintained a particularly fruitful dialogue with urban Afro-Brazilian musical countercultures, which became their primary source of cultural and political inspiration in the years following the tropicalist experience.2 666 FRESTAS: CONTESTING THE REGIME With the establishment of blanket censorship and the ascension of military hard-liners,thelivelyculturalcontextofthe1960sgavewaytowhatsomecritics described as a vazio cultural (cultural void) in the early 1970s. After the promulgation of the ai-5 in December 1968, the military regime intensified its efforts to silence the opposition and to closely monitor cultural production. More than thirty films and nearly a hundred plays were prohibited from exhibition between 1969 and 1971. Popular music was also a target for censors, who interdicted hundreds of songs annually during the early 1970s.3 Before tropicália, counterculture, & afro-diasporic connections 161 recording a song, artists were obliged to submit their compositions to the Serviço de Censura Federal (Federal Censorship Service) forapproval. Censorship obviously intervened in the creative process of some composers, forcing lyricists to craft ever more subtle and ambiguous poetic commentaries on daily life under military rule. As José Miguel Wisnik has argued, popular music developed into a ‘‘network of messages’’ that circulated among artists and their audiences, often under the radar of censors.4 TheundisputedmasterofpoliticalcritiqueanddoubleentendrewasChico Buarque,theerstwhilefestivalstarofthemid-1960s.Asidefromabriefperiod of self-exile in 1969–70, Buarque remained in Brazil and quickly established himselfasaleadingvoiceofprotestinBrazilianpopularmusic.Givenhisstature as a critically acclaimed and commercially successful singer-songwriter, he became the target for censors. In one 1971 interview, he complained...