Caetano Veloso (Tropicalia) (+CD Bonus)

“The Tropicalia art movement of the late 1960s, with flourishes in visual art, poetry, theatre and music, is one of Brazil’s most adored cultural concoctions. It was a movement which began out of necessity, shortly after a repressive military dictatorship seized power after 20 years of peaceful democracy. The term Tropicalia first came from the mind of Brazilian visual artist Helio Oiticica, whose eponymous piece consisted of a sandy maze bordered by tropical Brazilian flora and, at the end, a television set. Through satirizing symbols of their homeland and rejecting a pre-established national culture, the Tropicalists constructed a new form of ‘aggressive nationalism’ outside of an innately anti-imperialist Left and an unthinkingly patriotic Right. By refusing to accept underdevelopment as their identity and excitedly ‘devouring’ disparate culture (low and high brow, domestic and foreign, etc.), the Tropicalists carved out a unifying creative space, a universal sound, different from the older, bourgeois bossa nova movement and the newer, undiscerning rock movement. Caetano Veloso’s self-titled debut solo album is one of the most important and influential Brazilian (and, dare we say, South American) albums of all time. With the release of this seminal album, Veloso would become the leading voice of Tropicalia. The songs on this album immediately connected with people. Alegria, Algeria was his breakout hit that gained traction as a hymn for liberty advocates, juxtaposing images of Coca Cola, guerrilla groups, bombs and Brigitte Bardot as part of the everyday experience. The album’s first song Tropicalia was an anthem for the whole movement; it’s a fragmented allegory, a structure borrowed from friends in the concrete poetry scene, touching on divergent cultural symbols, events, allusions and idioms, nimbly representing and critiquing the many contradictions in the new Brazilian dictatorship.