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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Ihaveavaguesensethattheremoteoriginsofthisbookcanbetracedtoamoment in 1985, when I was visiting the home of Peter Blasenheim, my professor of Latin American history at The Colorado College. We spent an evening listening to his favorite Brazilian songs collected during several extended research trips, including João Gilberto’s sublime distillations of bossa nova, Elis Regina’s jazz-bossa hits, Chico Buarque’s plaintive sambas, Roberto Carlos ’s romantic ballads, and several protest anthems from the 1960s. At the time, I was barely conversant in Spanish, much less Portuguese, the wonderfully sonorous language I first heard on those albums in Colorado Springs. I was captivated by the sound of the language combined with the music and fascinated with his explanations of each song. At one point, Peter pulled out a copy of Tropicália, ou panis et circencis, a strange ‘‘concept album’’ from 1968, during which time Brazil was entering the most repressive phase of military rule.While most of the otheralbums he played that evening seemed relatively comprehensible given my limited knowledge of Brazil, this one seemed ambiguous and utterly confusing to me. Was it a patriotic celebration of life in the tropics? Or was it a wicked satire? Was it an apology for modernization under military rule? Or was it a protest album? I later found out that the album I heard that evening was the ‘‘albummanifesto ’’ofamovementknownas‘‘Tropicália’’or‘‘Tropicalismo.’’In1992, I had the opportunity to interview key participants in this movement, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Tom Zé, for a National Public Radio program dedicated to the twenty-fifth anniversaryof Tropicália produced by Sean Barlow and Ned Sublette for Afropop Worldwide. At the time, I was pursuing a graduate degree in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University and I realized that Tropicália was a compelling topic for further study. With help from a Fulbright student grant, I was able to return to Brazil and carry out the research for my Ph.D. dissertation, ‘‘The Relics of Brazil: Modernity and Nationality in the Tropicalista Movement,’’ which provided the basis for this book. I will forever be indebted to Nelson Vieira, Luiz Valente, and Thomas Skidmore, who formed my dissertation committee. Each of them contributed in distinct ways to my understanding of Tropicália within the context of modern Brazil. I also wish to thank Anani Dzidzienyo, Onésimo Almeida, and Neil Lazarus, who greatly enriched my intellectual experience at Brown University. I would like to express my profound gratitude to all of the Brazilian artists who generously shared their insights with me, including Caetano Veloso , Gilberto Gil, José Celso Martinez Corrêa, Augusto de Campos, Rogério Duarte, Gilberto Mendes, Júlio Medaglia, and Waly Salomão. My deepest thanks are forTom Zé and Neusa Martins,who have been particularly helpful and generous. In Brazil I was very fortunate to meet with scholars whose work has enriched my understanding of Tropicália. I would like to thank Carlos Calado, Celso Favaretto, Carla Gallo, Marcelo Ridenti, Hermano Vianna, Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Jr., Roberto Schwarz, Heloísa Buarque de Hollanda, Silviano Santiago, Sérgio Miceli, Renato Ortiz, Evelina Hoisel, and Liv Sovik. I would also like to send aquele abraço to my friends in Brazil who helped me in different ways before and during the development of this project: Pedro and Roberto Amaral, Adilea, Helena, and Susana de Castro, Denise Cavalcanti , Fernando Velloso, Edgard Magalhães, Eliana Stefani, Fátima and João Farkis, Teresa and Dan Nakagawa, Eulália dos Santos, Ceres Santos, Cícero Antônio, Silvio Humberto, and Ismael Mazza. I am especially grateful for the friendship and hospitality of Vitória Aranha and Paul Healey. I wish to thank several scholars of Brazilian culture in the United States, including Leslie Bary, Barbara Browning, Leslie Damasceno, David George, Randal Johnson, Emanuelle Oliveira, and Robert Stam,who have contributed in different ways to the development of this book. I am especially indebted to Charles A. Perrone, a leading authority on Brazilian popular music, who has been a great friend and an insightful critic of my work. J. Lorand Matory read an early draft of the manuscript and has been a great source of encouragement and inspiration since I first entered graduate school. Special thanks to friends Nick Nesbitt, Richard Schuler, Robert Arellano, and T. R. Johnson, who have, at one stage oranother, shared their thoughts onTropicália, popular music, and the 1960s with me.These friends and colleagues deserve credit for the strengths of...

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