Tropicália

Young people around the world were making themselves heard in the mid-1960s. Those born at the end of the Second World War were shaking up the establishment that had always silenced them. The advent of rock itself was the most powerful megaphone of this protest against a patriarchy that was as solid as ever and with its increasingly old-fashioned traditions. In Brazil, the situation was all the more tense because the military had been controlling the country since the 1964 coup d'état that overthrew president João Goulart. In 1967, young musicians from diverse backgrounds came together with their uniqueness to create a movement that defied this dictatorship and revolutionised Brazilian and world music. It was called tropicália. There was no specific direction, but very concrete desires, channelled in particular by Caetano Veloso who, for some, is the theorist behind this movement. "Veloso's vision of tropicália," explains the Brazilian composer, musician and essayist José Miguel Wisnik, "is a statement of the contribution of bossa nova, which is an outlook of freedom, creation and deep ties with Brazil and the world. Tropicália considers Brazil to be a country which has always had roots both internally and externally. A colonised country that incorporates what comes from elsewhere to give it back to the Brazilians. So the inward-looking nationalism, the posture of defending what is national against what is foreign, is one of the keys to tropicalism! We must abolish this, not oppose what is national and what is foreign, knowing that art cancels out this difference and at the same time incorporates what is foreign, what is from our country. This is what bossa nova was already doing. Tropicália stems from this. It amplifies and magnifies bossa nova.”