Brasiliana: Journal for Brazilian studiesis a dynamic academic forum where scholars from diverse disciplines in humanities and social sciences publish their research, establish academic discussion, exchange ideas, and draw on each others’ research within the field of Brazilian studies.
Brazil is currently establishing itself as an economic and political power within a global context, and the interdisciplinary study of Brazil is emerging at a high academic level. Several universities worldwide are offering programs under the term Brazilian studies, an area that differs from the more common Latin American studies. Academic communities of Brazilianists exchange ideas across universities and collaborate on research projects inside and outside Brazil. This is an academic journal absolutely dedicated to Brazilian studies.
When tropicalismo erupted on the horizon of Brazilian popular music in the late 1960s, the Brazilian military dictatorship was in full swing. Not surprisingly, resistance, irreverence, and political confrontation became defining features of the movement, which in turn led the military government to pay very close attention to tropicalismo’s protagonists.
Gal Costa’s career unfolded in this highly charged context. She was the only female performer who was associated with tropicalismo from the very beginning and throughout the movement’s traumatic developments, and therefore became the muse-in-residence for all the tropicalists, and the most revered interpreter of their works.
Costa had an enormous impact on the reception of tropicalismo and its aesthetics, especially through her irreverent stage presence and performing style. She took to heart the confrontational aspects of tropicalismo and embodied them in her stage persona, which was constructed from a combination of musical, visual, and theatrical elements.
One of the most distinct aspects of her performances was the intense sexuality and eroticism that emanated from her onstage. She was a very accomplished guitarist, and for most of her early career she would accompany herself on the guitar, playing the instrument as she sat with her legs widespread and animated by a sensual, provocative movement that made many conservative spectators a bit uncomfortable. Her mass of unruly hair added an animalistic intensity that was made all the more vivid through her wild and aggressive vocalizations.
Costa gave voice to several of the iconic songs of tropicalismo, many of which were composed specifically with her vocal qualities in mind. In her first live album, Fa-tal: Gal a todo vapor (1971), she crystallized all the defining elements of her style. The album became a classic in the history of Brazilian popular music, and was ranked the 20th greatest Brazilian album of all time by Rolling Stone Brasil.
The huge national prominence of popular music and soap operas in Brazil places both entertainment products as fundamental vectors of the social sharing of codes, values, lifestyles, and behavior.
For example, the interconnection between the song Você não vale nada mas eu gosto de você (You are worthless, but I like you) and the character Norminha in the soap opera Caminho das Índias (above) amplified a deep media debate about morality and sexuality, tempered with doses of humor and sympathy.
Through the plot and the soundtrack, a significant segment of Brazilian society interacted with strategies of sexual behavior as juxtaposed in the narrative with the vibrant sounds of electronic forró.
The journal encourages the submission of works from research areas including composition, computer music, musicology, theory, music education, and ethnomusicology. Vórtex accepts the submission of articles, translations, interviews, and scores in Portuguese, English, or Spanish. Concert, festival, CD, DVD, and book reviews are also accepted.
During the military dictatorship in Brazil, which reached a high pitch of political and social repression between 1965 and 1980, the songs of Chico Buarque became vehicles for a strong, albeit veiled, political activism.
Endowed with a phenomenal lyric gift and an ability to penetrate the psyche of the most diverse human beings, Buarque was also skilled in the use of metaphor, the double entendre, the between-the-lines song text. As a consequence, he was able to say a great deal in his songs, without seemingly spelling out anything.
The military censors kept a close eye on him, leading him to complain that, out of every three songs that he wrote, two would be censored. It is all the more surprising, then, that the censors allowed the release of the song Apesar de você (In spite of you, 1970), a very obvious diatribe against the military regime and, more specifically, against the then president Emílio Garrastazu Médici.
Buarque was interrogated several times and asked to explain who was the “you” to which the song consistently refers. According to one of the versions of the interview, he said that the “you” was a very authoritative and bossy wife, and the song was the rant of her unhappy husband. Needless to say, the censors did not buy the explanation, but there was nothing specific in the text of the song that they could point to as a direct attack on the government.
The song is emblematic of Buarque’s remarkable resiliency while navigating the political minefield of the time. Many of his songs from that period testify to this same ability. His highly nuanced, subtle, poetically charged song texts can indeed be read in many different ways, and could easily be construed as the depiction of a domestic, rather than a political, drama. Throughout the duration of the military regime he offered Brazilian society a vehicle in which its entire voice could reverberate, shielded from military scrutiny by the poetic beauty of the texts.
The text of Apesar de você is reproduced in Chico Buarque: Tantas palavras—Todas as letras (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006).
Today is Chico Buarque’s 70th birthday! Below, Maria Bethânia performs Apesar de você; a free English rendition of the song’s text appears under the video.
Apesar de você (In spite of you)
Tomorrow will be another day…
Today, you’re the one who calls the shots.
Whatever you say, it’s been spoken
And there’s no arguing.
Today, my people walk around
Talking sideways and looking toward the ground.
You who invented this situation
By inventing all darkness,
You who invented sin
Forgot to invent forgiveness.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day.
I ask you, where will you hide
From the great euphoria when it comes?
How will you forbid it
When the rooster insists on crowing?
New water will be flowing
And our people will be loving one another, nonstop.
When that moment arrives
I’m going to charge you
For all this suffering of mine,
And with interest to boot, I swear.
All this repressed love,
All these contained screams,
All this samba in the dark.
You who invented sadness,
Now do us the favor of “disinventing” it.
You’re going to pay double
For every tear that I’ve shed
In this anguish of mine.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day
I can hardly wait to see
The garden in full bloom,
The one you didn’t want to see blooming.
You’re going to be tormented,
Seeing the day break
Without asking your permission
And I’m going to have my big laugh at you
Because that day is bound to come
Sooner than you think.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day
You will be forced to see the morning reborn
And pouring out poetry.
How will you explain it to yourself
Seeing that the sky has suddenly cleared,
And there’s no more punishment?
How are you going to stifle the chorus of our voices
Singing right in front of you,
In spite of you?
In spite of you
Tomorrow is going to be another day
And you’re going to be out of luck.
Comments Off on Chico Buarque’s political activism
The folia de reis Christmas tradition of southeastern Brazil involves a group of musicians and clowns traveling from house to house in a symbolic re-enactment of the journey of the Magi. The performers sing to bless the families they visit, and the families contribute money and food; the money is used to mount a festival on 6 January for the contributors.
Familial symbolism operates on various levels: At each stop, the group begins with an adoration of the Holy Family; then they sing directly to the members of the family they are visiting, with verses ordered to reflect traditional familial hierarchy; and the culminating festival unites all of the faithful in a symbolic extended family. The performing group itself is organized on a familial model.
This according to “The family in song: Vocal organization in the Brazilian folia de reis” by Suzel Ana Reily, an essay included in Ethnomusicologica II (Siena: Accademia Musicale Chigiana, 1993) pp. 203–213. Below, folia de reis in Miracema.
The tropicália movement of the 1960s, which coincided with a period of intense cultural and political unrest in Brazil, emphasized the country’s multiethnic identity by incorporating the entire spectrum of Brazilian music. Although the movement had an ostensibly political framework of national scope, many of its products had deep roots in the traditional music of Bahia, the most important reservoir of Afro-Brazilian culture.
Among tropicália’s most important figures were Afro-Brazilian singer-songwriters such as Gilberto Gil and Tom Zé; several other artists connected with the movement hailed from Bahia. An overview of song texts and musical features of tropicália shows that the influence of Bahia’s traditional music and culture remained a strong factor behind even the most avant-garde experiments of the various artists who converge under that rubric. The website Tropicália is an extensive resource for exploring tropicalismo, the aesthetic of tropicália.
This post is part of our series celebrating Black History Month. Throughout February we will be posting about resources and landmark writings in black studies. Click here or on the Black studies category on the right to see a continuously updated page of links to all of our posts in this category.
Below, Gil speaks about Bahia, tropicália, and political suppression. Many thanks to James Melo for his help with this post!
In Macunaíma, o herói sem nenhum caráter (Macunaíma, the hero without character) by the Brazilian musicologist, ethnomusicologist, poet, and cultural activist Mário de Andrade (1893–1945), the title character leaves his home deep in the jungle for a mystical quest to São Paulo to retrieve the muiraquitã, an amulet said to embody all of the history and traditions of his culture. Macunaíma succeeds in his mission, but in the process he undergoes a series of dramatic transformations; finally, he is changed into a constellation. He leaves for the firmament with a cryptic remark: He was not brought into the world to be a stone.
The story can be read as a metaphor for the cultural developments that Andrade helped to shape: He advocated bringing the jungle to the city to create the modernist aesthetic of brasilidade that informed the growth of the Brazilian creative arts and the parallel development of musicology and ethnomusicology there. Like Macunaíma, Brazilian modernism did not come into the world to be a stone, with all its implications of rigidity, contour, and well-defined boundaries—rather, brasilidade relishes improvisation, exploration, and fluid boundaries that can be perpetually transformed.
This according to “Macunaíma out of the woods: The intersection of musicology and ethnomusicology in Brazil” by James Melo, an essay included in our recently published Music’s intellectual history.
The main entrance to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s exhibition Lou Reed: Caught between the twisted stars opens up on Lincoln Plaza, directly adjacent to the The Metropolitan Opera house. On a sunny day, the Met’s … Continue reading →
Seven strings/Сім струн (dedicated to Uncle Michael)* For thee, O Ukraine, O our mother unfortunate, bound, The first string I touch is for thee. The string will vibrate with a quiet yet deep solemn sound, The song from my heart … Continue reading →
Introduction: Dr. Philip Ewell, Associate Professor of Music at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, posted a series of daily tweets during Black History Month (February 2021) providing information on some under-researched Black … Continue reading →
For it [the Walkman] permits the possibility…of imposing your soundscape on the surrounding aural environment and thereby domesticating the external world: for a moment, it can all be brought under the STOP/START, FAST FOWARD, PAUSE and REWIND buttons. –Iain Chambers, “The … Continue reading →
