Tropicalismo

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"Tropicalia" redirects here. For the Beck song, see Tropicalia (song).

Tropicalismo, also known as Tropicália, is a Brazilian art movement that arose in the late 1960s and encompassed theatre, poetry and music, among other forms. Tropicalia was influenced by poesia concreta, 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. [1]

Music sample:

"A Minha Menina" (1968) (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- Sample of "A Minha Menina" by Os Mutantes, from Os Mutantes.
- Problems listening to the file? See media help.

"Tropicalismo" or "Tropicália" is associated almost exclusively with the movement's musical expression, both in Brazil and internationally; a form of Brazilian music that arose in the late 1960s from a melange of bossa nova, rock and roll, Bahia folk music, African music and Portuguese fado. The 1968 collaboration album Tropicália: ou Panis et Circenses is considered the musical manifesto of the movement. Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil are considered to be the leaders of the movement. Veloso, Gil and other artists commonly associated with the movement, notably Os Mutantes, have experimented with unusual time signatures and other means of unorthodox song structures. A lot of Tropicalismo artists were driven by socially aware lyrics and political activism following the coup of 1964, much like its contemporary Brazilian film movement, Cinema Novo (Brazilian new wave). The movement only lasted consistently for a few years, and, in part, is responsible for what is now known as MPB, Música Popular Brasileira (Brazilian Popular Music). Tropicália as a movement ended in 1969 when its leaders, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, were jailed for about a month and, shortly after their release, exiled by the military government. (They relocated to London until 1972.)

Although it attained little commercial success outside of Brazil, Tropicalismo has a growing popularity [2] [3], and has been cited as an influence by rock musicians such as David Byrne, Beck, Kurt Cobain, Arto Lindsay and Nelly Furtado. In 1998, Beck released Mutations, the title of which is a tribute to Tropicalismo pioneers Os Mutantes. Its hit single, "Tropicalia", went as high as #21 on the Billboard Modern Rock singles chart.

In 2002 Caetano Veloso published an account of the Tropicalia movement, "Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil." The 1999 compilation "Tropicália Essentials," featuring songs by Gil, Veloso, Gal Costa, Tom Zé and Os Mutantes, is an excellent introduction to the style. The 2006 collaboration "Tropicalia: A Brazilian Revolution In Sound" has received nearly universal acclaim[4].

In the beginning Tropicalia was not a music movement only, but also took form in the visual arts scene of 1960s Brazil, by the hands of the artists Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, Rogério Duarte and Antonio Dias. The name "Tropicália" came from an Hélio Oiticica art installation of the same name. It is important to note that one of the themes of devising music for the Tropicalia movement was "anthropophagia" or the cultural and musical cannibalism of all societies, taking in without prejudice all types of genres and concocting something unique.

1 Key musical artists
2 References
3 External links
- 3.1 Video

[edit] Key musical artists

Caetano Veloso
Gilberto Gil
Os Mutantes
Tom Zé
Gal Costa
Maria Bethania (more associated with Bossa Nova and MPB, but is the sister of Veloso)
Jorge Ben Jor (was a famous artist in Brazil outside of Tropicália, but later worked with Gil)

[edit] References

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.
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