In the late 1960s, Brazilian artists forged a watershed cultural
movement known as Tropicalia. Music inspired by that movement is
today enjoying considerable attention at home and abroad. Few new
listeners, however, make the connection between this music and the
circumstances surrounding its creation, the most violent and
repressive days of the military regime that governed Brazil from
1964 to 1985. With key manifestations in theater, cinema, visual
arts, literature, and especially popular music, Tropicalia
dynamically articulated the conflicts and aspirations of a
generation of young, urban Brazilians.
Focusing on a group of musicians from Bahia, an impoverished state
in northeastern Brazil noted for its vibrant Afro-Brazilian
culture, Christopher Dunn reveals how artists including Caetano
Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Tom Ze created this movement
together with the musical and poetic vanguards of Sao Paulo,
Brazil's most modern and industrialized city. He shows how the
tropicalists selectively appropriated and parodied cultural
practices from Brazil and abroad in order to expose the fissure
between their nation's idealized image as a peaceful tropical
"garden" and the daily brutality visited upon its citizens.