Tom Zé

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Tom Zé (born Antônio José Santana Martins, 1936 in Bahia, Brazil) is a Brazilian songwriter and composer. "Tom Zé" is a faithful informalization of his given names, literally meaning "Tony Joe".

Ze grew up in the small town of Irara, Bahia in the northeastern Sertão. He would later claim that his hometown was "pre-Gutenbergian", as information was primarily transferred through oral communication. After pursuing an advanced degree in music in Salvador, Ze moved to São Paulo and began his career in popular music. Much of his early work involved his wry impressions of the massive metropolitan area, coming from a small town in the relatively poor northeast.

Influential in the Tropicalia movement, Ze contributed, along with Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Nara Leão, to the watershed tropicalia album/manifesto Tropicália: ou Panis et Circenses. While the other major figures of tropicalia would go on to great commercial and critical success in later decades, Ze slipped into obscurity in the 1970s and 1980s.

Remaining true to the experimental and dada impulses of tropicalia, Ze has been noted for both his unorthodox approach to melody and instrumentation, employing unique instruments such as a typewriter. He has collaborated with many of the concrete poets of São Paulo, including Augusto de Campos, and employed concrete techniques in his lyrics. Musically, his work appropriates samba, bossa nova, Brazilian folk music, forró, and American rock and roll, among others. He has been praised by avante-garde composers for his use of dissonance, polytonality, and unusual time signatures.

In the early 1990s, Ze's work experienced a revival when American musician David Byrne discovered one of his albums, Estudando o Samba (1975), on a visit to Rio de Janeiro. Byrne went on to release several compilations of Ze's material on his Luaka Bop label. A guitar riff from Ze is sampled on R&B singer Amerie's song Take Control.

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