Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song: MPB, 1965-1985 9780292761704

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Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song MPB 1 9 6 5 - 1 9 8 5

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Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Sona MPB

1965-1985

By Charles A. Perrone

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN

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Copyright © 1989 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First paperback printing, 1993 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, Texas 78713-7819. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS C A T A L O G I N G - I N - P U B L I C A T I O N DATA

Perrone, Charles A. Masters of contemporary Brazilian song. Bibliography: p. Discography: p. Includes index. 1. Popular music—Brazil—History and criticism. I. Title. ML3487.B7P5 1989 784.s'oo98i 88-14283 ISBN 0-292-75102-8

ISBN 0-292-76550-9 (pbk.) The publication of this book was assisted by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Photo section following page xxxiv: Bezerra da Silva, et ah, photo by Fernando Seixas, courtesy BMG Ariola (RCA Brazil); Hermeto Pascoal, courtesy Som da Gente ; Fagner and Dominguinhos, photo by Paulo Klein,- Elis Regina, photo by Paulo Vasconcelos, courtesy WEA; Gilberto Gil, photo by Livio Campos, courtesy GG P r o d u c e s ; Chico Buarque and Milton Nascimento, photo by Januario Garcia, courtesy Marisco Edigoes Musicais; Milton Nascimento, photo by Marcio Ferreira, courtesy CBS/Quilombo; Joao Bosco, photo by Amelia Simpson. Photo of Chico Buarque, p. xxxvi, courtesy Embrafilme,- Caetano Veloso, p. 46, Claudia Thompson,- Gilberto Gil, p. 90, Paulo Vasconcelos/WEA; Milton Nascimento, p. 130, Amelia Simpson; Joao Bosco and Aldir Blanc, p. 164, BMG Ariola (RCA Brazil).

ISBN 978-0-292-76170-4 (library e-book) ISBN 978-0-292-76171-1 (individual e-book)

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Para Amelia, mulher que da samba

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CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION / Brazilian Popular Music, MPB, and Song Literature 1. Chico Buarque: A Unanimous Construction 2. Other Words and Other Worlds of Caetano Veloso 3. Gilberto Gil: Guidance and Afro-Brazilliance 4. Milton Nascimento: Sallies and Banners 5. Joao Bosco and Aldir Blanc: The Drunkard and the Tightrope Walker CONCLUSION / MPB: Muse, Protest, and Beat Notes Glossary Bibliography Discography Index Permissions

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PREFACE In Brazil the 1960s witnessed great diversification and creativity in the realm of song. After the rise of the internationally known style of Bossa Nova in the early years of the decade, the acronym MPB (musica popular brasileira) came into use to designate new varieties of urban popular music. During this period many performing songwriters with exceptional musical and poetic talents appeared on the artistic scene. As a result, popular music gained new status and dignity among the Brazilian arts. Song came to be recognized as one of the nation's richest and most significant cultural manifestations. Composers and performers were involved in sociopolitical mobilization and actively participated in intellectual debate about the paths of the creative arts. Important relationships developed among songwriters, filmmakers, the literary vanguard, and members of the art music community. Expansion of the recording and broadcasting industries, songwriters' competitions, festivals of popular music, critical attention, and a discriminating public all encouraged thoughtful and innovative musical composition. With the emergence of lyrically inspired popular composers and the participation of accomplished poets in songwriting, texts began to exhibit unprecedented expressive quality. Literary critics began to discuss song texts as an important branch of poetic expression. Certain songwriters came to be considered not just as "poets of popular music" but as the best young Brazilian poets. They were likened to the ancient troubadours who blended words and melodies in compositions for performance. Such terms as "modern Brazilian popular music," "cultured urban popular music," and "erudite popular music" were used to draw attention to this new musical consciousness and sophistication.

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Many composers, performers, and poet-musicians who contributed to the making of MPB in the sixties continued to develop musical concepts through the seventies and into the eighties. The most influential, representative, and consistently inspired of these artists are songwriters Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Milton Nascimento. Joao Bosco and Aldir Blanc, who joined forces in the early seventies, represent the most distinctive composerlyricist team in MPB. The present study examines two decades of Brazilian popular music in the repertories of these leading exponents of MPB, who cultivate song as a medium of entertainment, as a means of individual and social expression, and as an art form. When it came into common usage in the late sixties, the acronym MPB was used to designate original composition rooted in or derived from Brazilian traditions, usually with acoustic instrumentation. In this sense, MPB was distinguished from international pop music and rock and roll in the early sixties' style of such groups as the Beatles, which used electric instrumentation. The original distinction became blurred in the seventies as composers began to assimilate and adapt international trends more regularly, MPB is now frequently used to refer to the music of artists who made their marks in the late sixties; the acronym also differentiates the work of those songwriters from the production of the eighties' generation, which is clearly dominated by the rock sound. The present work focuses on the major figures of MPB who established their artistic reputations in the late sixties and early seventies and whose work has been fundamental in shaping the concept and practice of Brazilian song of the last two decades. In the introduction to this study, the evolution of urban popular song in Brazil is traced from the nineteenth century to the present, with emphasis on the sixties. Subsequent chapters evaluate individual songwriters who have been instrumental in the development of popular music in Brazil since 1965. There is considerable variety in the approaches of these different songwriters as well as thematic and musical diversity within the individual repertories. Their work involves the rethinking and refinement of national musical legacy, investigation and reformulation of regional heritage, and assimilation and adaptation of foreign models. Compositions range from stylizations of simple folk tunes to avant-garde sound collages. Song is used to address social issues, to voice protest of authoritarian control, to make aesthetic statements, and to explore philosophical and spiritual themes. The music of Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, and Joao Bosco and Aldir Blanc reflects broad cultural trends and embodies both the continuity and

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the diversification of Brazilian popular music. Appraisal of the artistic output of these key figures will provide an overall picture of the preoccupations, expressivity, forms, and styles of MPB. Popular music has varied functions that are sensitive to different modes of analysis. Musical forms in a given society have concrete and abstract (symbolic) meanings for given sectors of the populace. They may facilitate group identity and social interaction, especially in live contexts, or allow for psychological compensation through identification with performers. The listener's primary response to music may be to the sound event itself or, especially when dance music is in question, to rhythmic pulse (rather than to melody, harmony, or lyrics). Popular music often serves, of course, as light entertainment or distraction. Equally important, songs may have aesthetic and communicative functions, whereby semantics plays a central role, and listeners may consciously choose to focus on the words of a vocal composition. The extensive interpretation of song texts in the present work is in no way intended to imply that the words are in any general way more important than the music but rather to encourage readers to be listeners also and to complement acoustic reception. The basic musical character of Brazilian songs is self-evident in audition even to nonnative listeners. The same cannot be said of the frequently complex lyrics and cultural contexts, which the present work seeks to illuminate. A perennial problem of writing about song is the absence of the music. Scores or lead sheets can be printed and song texts may be transcribed, but the sound structure itself cannot be transferred to the page. Discussion of songs may include the interplay of text and melody, poetic and musical moods, particular performance features, and other aspects of the mutual conditioning of words and music. There is, however, no substitute for hearing the actual recording or performance. The present study examines Brazilian song principally through the medium of sound recording, and it is hoped, again, that this account of MPB will encourage readers to hear the material in its true environment. Writing about foreign-language texts, especially rhymed poetry, poses many familiar problems. The challenges of translation are compounded when writing about songs whose words follow the contours and accents of melodies. The aim of lyricists who write versions, recasting a foreign song into English, is to fit new words to the musical notes of the original composition, and they often modify the themes and images of the original significantly. Some of the English renderings in the present study follow the melodies of the original Brazilian songs, but most should be considered transla-

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tions rather than versions. Emphasis has been placed on meaning and stylistic features. While the stanzaic divisions of these renderings correspond to the originals (or follow the form printed on the original LP, insert, or lyric sheet), metric regularity and rhyme schemes are not reflected in all cases. Attention is drawn to these formal features in instances where they are significant. Elements of the Portuguese lyrics are introduced when necessary to illustrate particular points of construction. All renderings are my responsibility. No published English versions of Brazilian songs are used; English titles, however, are cited when the song has been released or rerecorded in the United States. Documentation and citation of sound recordings or their liner notes (text on cover or inner sleeve of album) are made through reference to numerical entries in the discography, for example, D i = Bethania, Maria, A Tua Presenga, Philips 6749 001, 1971. Most Brazilian sound recordings cited (as well as some U.S. releases) include lyric sheets with original texts.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the course of researching, writing, and editing this book I have incurred debts to several institutions and many individuals to whom I would like to express my gratitude. Successive stages of fieldwork and follow-up in Brazil have been supported by a Fulbright Hayes Fellowship, a PRA research grant from the Organization of American States, and a supplementary travel stipend from the Tinker Foundation via the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. Extensive investigation in Brazil would not have been possible without the cooperation of numerous Brazilian critics and artists who carried on generous conversations with me. I am most grateful for the permissions to reprint and translate lyrics, which are duly noted below. Much assistance was provided by the staffs of the press and international relations departments of Brazilian recording companies. I am especially thankful for the attention of Clemy Pinto, who worked at Polygram of Brazil (Philips) until 1985. An appreciable portion of this book was adapted from my doctoral dissertation ("Lyric and Lyrics: The Poetry of Song in Brazil/7 University of Texas, 1985). I should like to recognize the direction and support of the examining committee: K. David Jackson, Fred P. Ellison, Lily Litvak, Merlin Forster, and Naomi Lindstrom, of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Gerard Behague, of the Department of Music. In addition, I recall fondly Zidia Oliveira Webb, of the University of California at Irvine, who first encouraged me to discern—in conjunction with compelling rhythms, melodies, and harmonies—the lyricism of Brazilian popular music. For their help in acquiring essential materials in the middle of Texas, I recognize Albert Bork, Michael Crockett, and Mike Quinn. For careful readings of drafts and editorial suggestions, I am grateful to Naomi Lindstrom, Randal Johnson and, above all, my wife and colleague, Amelia Simpson, to whom the present work is dedicated.

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INTRODUCTION Brazilian Popular Music, MPB, and Song Literature

Nineteen eighty-five was a year of jubilation and hope for Brazilians. The long-awaited transfer to a more democratic form of government took place, as the military regime that had ruled since 1964 gave way to a civilian administration.1 The advent of the "New Republic" added a special historical motif to the annual carnival festivities, which were unofficially dubbed "the carnival of democracy," reflecting popular sentiment. The end of authoritarian rule was especially satisfying for the performing arts community because of the prospect of the definitive termination of censorship, which had begun to loosen its grip around 1978. Since the mid-1960s, numerous songwriters and musicians had been affected by institutional intervention in recording, performance, and broadcasting. As far as popular music was concerned, 1985 brought other significant celebrations and commemorations. Early in the year, Brazil hosted the largest festival of popular music ever staged, the ten-day "Rock in Rio," with an impressive cast of Brazilian and international acts. This event signaled the ascendance of rock music as a major cultural force among Brazil's urban youth. The powerful presence of electric rock music stirred new debate about the quality, evolution, and directions of popular music and invited comparison with the production of previous decades. The musical values of new groups and their public sharply contrasted with the political involvement, lyrical prowess, and musicianship of the established figures of MPB. Later in the year, Gilberto Gil, a recognized star who bridges this generation gap, gave concerts commemorating his twenty years of involvement in popular music and made a record album marked by retrospection and awareness of new trends and values. The two most celebrated figures of MPB, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso, also

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reflected, in contrasting ways, on shifts in cultural and political power as they completed two decades of composition and performance. From the presidential palace to the recording studio, 1985 was a year of celebrations and transitions, a time for reflection on the historical circumstances and cultural environment in which MPB developed. The growth of rock music is the latest chapter in the history of urban popular music in Brazil. During the nineteenth century, the most widely practiced form of song was the modinha, or sentimental ballad. This form was first brought into vogue by the Brazilian poet Domingos Caldas Barbosa (1738-1800) in the Portuguese court in Lisbon. He authored and performed simple sensual songs, accompanying himself on the viola [steel-stringed guitar]. Barbosa originally called his compositions cantigas, a generic term for ballad or popular song, but the term modinha, from the diminutive form of moda [fashion/Portuguese song], became common currency. This performing poet's repertory also included lundu, a humorous and rhythmically accentuated song type derived from an Afro-Brazilian dance. When Napoleon's armies threatened Lisbon in 1808, the Portuguese court fled to Rio de Janeiro. This transfer prompted further cultivation of modinhas and lundus in Brazil. Schooled composers used these forms for voice and piano duets throughout the nineteenth century, with a bel canto style prevailing in the high-society salons. Around 1870, the modinha began to be adopted more regularly by popular musicians outside the salon context. The serenade was a common setting for its use. While the lundu was eventually absorbed into other forms, modinhas spread throughout Brazil and underwent a process of folklorization, entering the cycle of oral transmission. In the 1910s and 1920s, Catulo da Paixao Cearense (1866-1946) revitalized the modinha in Rio de Janeiro; he brought stylized rural variants to "nice" society, establishing the acceptability of the guitar as the instrument for accompaniment, and initiated a "backland vogue" in both song and poetry. Historically, the modinha is particularly important as a form of lyrical expression in Brazil because it was cultivated for an extensive period and was popular at all levels of society. The distinguishing characteristics of Brazilian popular music began to take shape in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The song form modinha had taken root by the 1870s, when the stylistic originality of dance music in Brazil first became evident. Urban musicians adapted such European forms as the polka, mazurka, schottische, and waltz, infusing them with local notions of rhythmic organization. The abolition of slavery in 1888 led to greater interaction

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between black and white musicians and the subsequent development of more-defined Brazilian styles. The first form to be recognized as a truly national genre was the maxixe, which achieved some notoriety in Europe in the early twentieth century (Behague, "Popular Music," 27). As dance music, the waltz, or valse, was in use from the time of the arrival of the Portuguese court; by the end of the century it had become popular as a song type in the serenade setting, often indistinguishable from the modinha played in 3/4 time. Another important local development in the 1870s was the chow or chohnho [little cry]. This designation was first given to the music of instrumental ensembles in Rio de Janeiro who played sentimental repertories. The basic instrumentation has survived until the present: guitar (6 or 7 string), cavaquinho [an instrument of Portuguese origin with four steel strings, akin to the ukelele], woodwind/brass instruments, and light hand percussion, usually the pandeiro [tambourine with taut skin]. The musicians were often joined by a singer for serenades. In the twentieth century, chow is known principally as instrumental music—its origins and early development may be compared with ragtime and the original jazz of New Orleans—but vocal varieties are not uncommon. In the 1920s, improvisation, virtuosity, and counterpoint became notable features of the chow. The organization of yearly carnival festivities in the 1890s encouraged the growth of popular music in the cities. Polkas, marches, and other genres were used for street dancing associated with the prelenten fests. An important factor in the evolution of popular music in Rio de Janeiro, the political and cultural capital of the nation, was the postemancipation influx of people from rural areas. Their heavily percussive Afro-Brazilian folk forms, the maxixe, and the Brazilian tango contributed to the birth of the samba, the best known manifestation of Brazil's urban popular music. Samba began taking shape as a new urban genre after 1910 in Rio. The first composition to be designated by its composers as a "samba" ("Pelo Telefone" by Donga and Mauro de Almeida) was officially registered for the carnival of 1917. By the 1920s, the samba was as commonplace as the march during carnival season. The escolas de samba, or samba schools, recreational clubs that organize group participation in street parades, first appeared in 1928. It was not until the 1950s that the category of samba de enredo was made official; this is a song specially composed for the carnival season, which tells a story or explains the theme or allegory being represented by the school's float and costumed dancers. In the 1920s, songwriters began using the samba "off-season" as well. Sambas not written for carnival were initially called "mid-year

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sambas." The growing role of radio in urban culture contributed to increased interest in samba as an everyday form of expression. There is an important distinction to be made between this newer urban samba and more "primitive" forms closer to folk origins. The inhabitants of the favelas, Rio's hillside slums, practiced samba de mono, in which such traits as call-and-response and primarily percussive instrumentation are characteristic. This form is closer to batucada, a drum session or performance of a percussion ensemble featuring typically Brazilian membranophones and idiophones. These instruments include the surdo, or bass drum, which provides the fundamental binary pulse; a shallow snare drum called caixa or taroL, the previously mentioned pandeiro} the tambohm, a small metal hoop with a tight skin struck with a stick; the agogd, or double cone-shaped bell, also struck with a stick; the reco-reco, or scraper; the ganzd or chocalho, shakers or rattles; the howling cuica or friction drum; and other assorted less frequently used items. The relatively simple patterns of these various instruments are coordinated, woven together, and overlaid to form a complex whole. Batucada may be performed entirely without singing and usually includes a cavaquinho, a small guitar, which, when strummed, forms another rhythmic pattern. In contrast with the samba de mono, the variety originally known as samba de asfalto, practiced in the paved-street districts of the city proper, placed heavier emphasis on string instrumentation, melody, and lyrics. As the decades have passed, the two types of samba have tended to grow closer together, with batucada remaining constant as a percussion session. Out of the original samba de asfalto emerged the samba-cangao [samba song] as an autonomous genre. With its slower pace and typically sentimental themes, this new form came to supplant the modinha. By the 1950s, sambacangao often bore close resemblance to the Cuban bolero and the North American-style ballad. The advent of the combinative terms sambolew (samba and bolero) and sambalada (samba and ballad) reflects the changes undergone by the more lyrical variant of the samba. Several notable songwriters emerged in Rio de Janeiro in the early stages of the samba's development as a dominant and varied form of popular music. The most revered of these composer-lyricists is Noel Rosa (1910-1937). While he wrote engaging melodies, he gained the nickname "The Philosopher of Samba" for the wit, wisdom, contemplative character, and power of subtle social observation of his song texts. Rosa's inclusion in a recent series of pedagogical publi-

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cations in Brazil, Literatura Comentada, is indicative of the respect his song texts have commanded over the years. Literary critic Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna has explored the controlled colloquial language of Rosa's sambas and noted similarities with the contemporaneous literary development of Brazilian Modernism (183-197). The combination of melodic and verbal agility in Noel Rosa was unique in his time. His legacy was an important point of reference for the poet-songwriters who emerged in the 1960s. The "golden age" of the urban samba began in the 1930s. In the late thirties and in the forties, adulterated forms of Brazilian popular music became known in the United States largely through the film performances of Carmen Miranda. The word samba entered English dictionaries to designate the ballroom variety of samba music and dance. In Rio de Janeiro, increasingly important as the musical center of Brazil, other types of popular music made their presence felt. The single most important development in the urban market was the baido, a hybridization of several types of folk music of the Brazilian Northeast.2 Accordionist Luiz Gonzaga's 1946 recording "Baiao" is the prototype of this new genre. To create it, the composer drew on rhythms he observed in fifer bands and in the stroke of the violeiros, famed Northeastern bards who play viola during their exchanges of improvised poetry. The baido did not enjoy lasting success in Rio, but it became the mainstay of popular music in the Northeast (Tinhorao, Histoha, 211). Rural themes and the Northeastern sound would resurface in later mainstream popular music, especially in the 1970s. In the 1950s, the samba played by ballroom orchestras exhibited the heavy influence of North American big band music in instrumentation and stereotypical arrangements. Sambas for street carnivals continued to rely on the energy of percussion sections. Styles of romantic ballad also developed along class lines. Many lower-class composers associated with samba schools also consistently produced low-key vocal sambas, often strikingly poetic; rarely, however, could they enter the mainstream spheres of recording and performance. Much of the middle and upper classes followed North American or European popular music and, with respect to national production, favored crooners and the samba-cangdo. This form maintained traditional harmony, typically had a simple, catchy tune, and preferred emphatic, even quasi-operatic, vocal performance of sentimental, frequently melodramatic texts. Across the decades of the twentieth century, the term samba has designated different cultural expressions in folk (rural) and popular

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(urban) contexts. The word may denote types of Afro-Brazilian music, a characteristic carnival rhythm, dance forms, or social gatherings with music. Principally it refers to a type (genre) of popular music, of which there are several varieties. Samba may be performed by an individual vocalist accompanying himself on the guitar, by small ensembles with varying levels of instrumentation, by large percussion ensembles, or by full-fledged stage bands. The Bossa Nova movement brought structural modifications to the samba, as well as innovations in performance style. Bossa Nova did not replace the traditional samba but offered a new alternative for the middle- and upper-class listening public. The prime agent of change was the guitarist and vocalist Joao Gilberto, whose presence began to be felt in the Rio music scene in the late 1950s. After participating in the sessions of other artists, Gilberto recorded his own Chega de Saudade (1959), an album that came to be regarded as the "Bible of Bossa Nova" (Medaglia, 75). In this collection, Gilberto interpreted well-known songs in his new way and introduced some wholly original compositions. Antonio Carlos Jobim, noted composer and another originator of the new style, used the term bossa nova in the liner notes of Gilberto's historical LP. In local slang, bossa meant a special skill, knack, or attractive quality; used in conjunction with nova [new], the term suggested "new wave" or musical novelty. In those same notes, Jobim noted how Gilberto had "in a very short period, influenced a whole generation of arrangers, guitarists, musicians, and vocalists" (D 50). Bossa Nova altered several stylistic parameters, seeking dynamic integration of melody, harmony, and rhythm while de-emphasizing the vocalist as the center of attention. Instead of the traditional binary samba beat, diversified syncopation was used, and standard drum set became the norm. Gilberto complemented the rhythmic foundations set by drums and bass with syncopated plucking of acoustic guitar chords; he gave new life to the guitar, assigning it both harmonic and rhythmic roles. His particular fashion of execution was known as violdo gago, or "stammering guitar." He created interplay by syncopating sung notes against guitar figures. Bossa Nova also introduced new patterns of harmony or chord progressions, frequently using the altered chords associated with jazz. Melodic lines were often sparse and chromatic, seemingly difficult or dissonant to the unattuned ear. A reserved, understated vocal delivery was characteristic. This approach contrasted sharply with the emphatic style of the samba-cangdo. In a general way, Bossa Nova favored refinement of "touch" over driving impact or "punch." Many of these new traits resembled those of the "cool jazz" of the

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West Coast of the United States, which many young Brazilian musicians admired. Bossa Nova also brought changes in attitude toward composition of text. Particular attention was given to the sonorous and rhythmic qualities of individual words and word clusters. Lyricists avoided the melodrama and tragic outlook characteristic of the samba-cangdo. In keeping with the privileged middle-class origins of most Bossa Nova writers, song texts tended to reflect the amenities of middleclass life, using a colloquial tone that corresponded to the speechlike mode of singing. Romance and nature remained as central themes, but lyricists tried to reinforce the reserved, intimate character of the musical experience in the words. The title of a later Gilberto album, O amor o Sorriso e a Flor [Love smiles and flowers], reflects the cliches of Bossa Nova texts. A classic example of understated pleasantries is the internationally known "Garota de Ipanema" / "The Girl from Ipanema" by Jobim and Vinicius de Morais. Two of the most outstanding early Bossa Nova compositions are "Desafinado" ["Slightly Out of Tune"] and "Samba de Uma Nota So" ["One Note Samba"] by Jobim and Newton Mendonga, which express a set of musical values and exhibit unique interplay between text and music. Augusto de Campos, noted theoretician and practitioner of concrete poetry, regarded this pair of songs as examples of isomorphism, which he defines as the "conflict of content and form seeking mutual identity." 3 Joao Gilberto's landmark 1959 recording included "Desafinado," in which the term bossa nova is first heard. The song presents itself as a sort of manifesto of the nascent Bossa Nova movement, whose melodic practices appeared "out of t u n e " in relation to traditional harmony. If you say that I am out of tune, my love You should know that drives me to these painful tears If chosen ones like you can have a privileged ear Mine is just the one I got from God above If you keep insisting you must classify How I now behave as antimusical My argument will be, though it may be a lie, That this is Bossa Nova That it's very natural What you don't know, what you've not even once suspected Is that the out-of-tune they also have their hearts I took your photograph with my new Rollyflex Which revealed ingratitude in all your parts

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So you just can't talk like that about my love It's the greatest love that ever you will find, hear? And you with all your music, dear, forgot what really counts In the breast of those off key, off tune Inside deep down, softly beating In the breast of all the out-of-tune You'll find that hearts are beating too (D 58) Several strategies are at work in this composition. Its purposeful inclusion on the inaugural Bossa Nova album signifies a statement within the larger context of Brazilian popular music. Mendon^a's lyric uses a commonplace romantic situation to comment on the evolution of popular song. The text depicts a proponent of the novel musical style coolly explaining to an uncomprehending sweetheart that this new behavior does not imply the absence of emotion. Structural details of the song are revealing. The words "out-of-tune" are first enunciated as the singer seems to lose the pitch; such correspondence of notes and words occurs throughout. As Gerard Behague observes, the melody composed by Jobim and Mendonga complements textual meaning "by translating the idea of singing out-of-tune with unexpected melodic alterations (chromatic tones) strategically placed at the end of each verse, corresponding to the ending of each melodic phrase" ("Values," 442). The reciprocity of words and music is even greater in Jobim's "Samba de Uma Nota So." Mendon^a's text again makes a statement about compositional practices by blending musical and romantic perspectives. Listen here's a little samba built upon a single note Other notes will come along soon but the base is one sole note Now this other one's a consequence of what I've just now said The same, I'm just a consequence of you I can't avoid There's so many people all around who Talk so much but tell us nothing or nearly nothing Now the scale's used up and not a thing I've done turned out to be of use and what's left is nothing And I came back to my one note as I must come back to you And I'll keep my one note singing to say how much I love you Those who still want all the notes here: d e f g a b c Always end up without any,- stay with one, a single note! (D 59) The melody of this deceptively simple piece remains, in fact, on a single note as the first couplet is sung. When a second note enters,

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the lyrics make the connection by referring to "this other one." The bridge runs through two entire scales, while the lyrics speak of the futility of both loquacity and melodic excess. The text calls attention to the return of the one-note melody at the beginning of the second strophe, and the conclusion reinforces the implications of the bridge. Like "Desafinado," this modest "little samba" is mildly ironic, brief (1:35), and direct; no parts of the text are repeated, nor are any forceful statements made. "Samba de Uma Nota So" is also a sort of manifesto that advocates economy and integration of words and melody. Both songs embody the ideal Bossa Nova aesthetic of subdued, subtle, and polished expression. Sant'Anna sees "Samba de Uma Nota So" and "Desafinado" as examples of meta-language: "A language that comments on another, taking as the subject of composition, the composition itself, and not sentimentality or nature themes" (217). These two songs, indeed, make extratextual projections, but much of their ironic ingenuity arises from the traditional sentimental situation, that of a singer attempting to make his or her feelings understood by a sweetheart. The most prolific of all Bossa Nova lyricists was Vinicius de Morais (1913-1980), who was instrumental in establishing and promoting the movement. He was one of Brazil's most respected Modernist poets and best-loved public figures. Vinicius had authored several song texts before publishing his first book of poetry in 1933, but twenty years would pass before he returned to songwriting. During those years he served in the diplomatic corps and achieved fame as a poet. In the 1950s, Vinicius became well known in the field of popular music. French director Marcel Camus' award-winning film Black Orpheus (1959), a re-creation of the Orpheus myth in the context of Brazilian carnival, was based on Morais' verse play Orfeu da Conceigdo. The film's sound track included the metaphorical song of fleeting happiness "A Felicidade" by Jobim and Vinicius. This collaboration cemented a prolific partnership in musical composition that had enduring influence. Vinicius and Jobim co-authored all the songs on vocalist Elizete Cardozo's 1958 album, an immediate predecessor to the definitive landmarks of Bossa Nova. In addition to "Chega de Saudade" ["No More Blues"] and "The Girl from Ipanema," the pair went on to compose such well known songs as "Insensatez" ["How Insensitive"], "Amor em paz" ["Once I Loved"], and "Ela e carioca" ["She's a Carioca"]. For the remainder of his career, Vinicius de Morais was faithful to the style he helped to forge, producing upward of two hundred titles. In the sixties, he wrote some notable song texts with regionalist and social thematics, but for the most part the poet's musical lyricism

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stayed within the bounds of widely accepted romantic topics. The time-honored themes of love, passion, exaltation of women and courtship, longing, and sadness at parting are dominant in his lyrics, as they are in his poetry. Vinicius himself said that he consciously applied his literary skills to his songwriting (Mello, 157). Sant'Anna corroborates that testimony: "Even though his song texts portray the cool talk of Ipanema, and Rio's colloquial speech, an undisguisable literary' tone always remains" (215). In addition to this polished diction, Vinicius had a very sure sense of sound, rhythm, and rhyme. His song texts were consistently refined from a technical point of view. In most cases he fit words to music previously composed, and his word choice for integration with melody is noted for its precision. Vinicius also composed some music, recorded several albums, and made continual appearances on stage, singing his songs and often reciting his poems. The quantity and quality of his songs and performances, however, are not the only measure of his significance for contemporary popular music. His primary role is assessed by his effect on younger poet-lyricists and his impact on cultural values. As a leading observer of MPB stated: "Vinicius de Morai£ gave popular music status among the Brazilian arts. . . . Surely it was his influence—and he was perfectly aware of this—that encouraged the current generation to become music professionals, to have confidence in a field that would, after him, be respected as it had never been before."4 There is no question that the mere presence of a widely respected poet and diplomat in the field contributed to popular music's enhanced prestige among both producers and consumers in the 1960s. Vinicius is an important transitional figure who brought a new "dignity" to songwriting. Jose Carlos Capinan, an active poet-lyricist of the 1960s and 1970s, states: "For the creative artists of my generation who became part of popular music, he was a bridge. He transformed something that was considered lesser— because of prejudices among artists in the field itself, as well as those of intellectuals and poets—into one of the most vivid and expressive areas of Brazilian cultural life of recent years: our popular music." In this eulogy, Capinan principally addresses himself to Vinicius7 wide generational significance. When Capinan relates this general impact to his personal case, the importance of Vinicius for future lyricists is seen clearly: "Thanks to Vinicius de Morais, Bossa Nova lyrics broadened the meaning of 'song lyric' and gave everybody freedom. Vinicius really paved the way for lyricists. Perhaps, without Bossa Nova, I wouldn't have realized that poets were al-

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lowed to write song lyrics, that this didn't imply a lower level" (qtd. by Mello, 154). For musical and extramusical reasons, then, Vinicius de Morais was a central figure in the Bossa Nova movement. He adapted verse to music and music to verse, helped to bring a new sophistication to the art of song, increased audience response to performed poetry, and provided general models of diction and expressiveness to be emulated by other lyricists. He created, in addition, an essential link between popular music and literature, a connection that would become increasingly significant in the sixties and seventies. Vinicius built a stage of musicopoetic communication in contemporary Brazil on which many figures would subsequently perform. Vinicius represented the mainstream of Bossa Nova, popular vocal music performed in the intimate and controlled manner described above and typified in the style of Joao Gilberto. A branch of instrumental improvisation also grew within the movement. Such musicians as the Zimbo Trio, the Tamba Trio, and the virtuoso guitarist Baden Powell composed jazzlike pieces and explored melodies originally written for vocal performance. Several Brazilian vocalists, notably Joao Gilberto, were successful in the United States in the 1960s during a veritable explosion of Bossa Nova. The many North American interpretations of the "modern samba" tended to be of the instrumental variety. Having begun in jazz circles, the craze was manipulatively extended to pop music and audiences, where it soon met the fate of all fads. Despite the lamentable commercialization suffered in the overall musical sphere, Bossa Nova became a permanent part of jazz. A dozen of Jobim's tunes, in fact, became contemporary standards (e.g., "Triste" and "Wave"). In his unique study of Latin American music in the United States, The Latin Tinge, John Storm Roberts discusses in greater detail the impact of Bossa Nova and other later currents of Brazilian popular music in New York and around the country (170-175). On the homefront, the international appeal of Bossa Nova was exploited by its leading critic, Jose Ramos Tinhorao. Emphasizing the links between jazz and Bossa Nova, he argued that the music of Jobim and his associates was a culturally estranged product that contributed to the alienation of the Brazilian public by turning away from the samba, the true tradition of the people, and encouraging adulation of North American values.5 From the point of view of urban ethnomusicology, Behague has noted how these objections are "ill-conceived" ("Values," 440). The governmental emphasis on progress and development in the 1950s led many educated Brazilians to

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seek new art forms that would express their changing national identity. Whether elitist or not, Bossa Nova was a natural outgrowth of urban modernization and resulting class-stratified patterns of cultural production. The music emerged in the small clubs and apartments of the beachfront districts of Rio's south zone. The very character of Bossa Nova—intimate, soft, controlled—corresponds to the enclosed physical space in which it grew. Bossa Nova was made by and for middle-class citizens; as one samba musician from Rio's working-class north zone put it: "It's their samba/' From a musical point of view, the condemnations issued by Tinhorao and others are difficult to sustain. In his sociological analysis, Tinhorao regards Brazilian musicians' use of altered chords as nothing more than an emulation of the North American jazz idiom; he does not take into account the desire of educated musicians anywhere to diversify their work or to put new compositional ideas into practice. In a sarcastic response, Jobim pointed out that flat fives and sharp nines are not the exclusive domain of jazz composers, that Bach also used them. Furthermore, given its various stylistic parameters, Bossa Nova cannot ultimately be simplified as the crossing of samba and jazz, which is itself a fluid musical concept. That Brazilian musicians had contact with jazz is undeniable, but the results of this contact are purely Brazilian, a unique synthesis of rhythmic, harmonic, melodic, and performance-bound qualities. With regard to the ideology of Bossa Nova lyrics, many people shared Tinhorao's basic concerns, and there was some polarization over the issue, as seen below. Whatever controversies Bossa Nova may have provoked, it became enormously popular in a short time, at home and abroad, and left a lasting mark on popular music in Brazil. The capacity for diversification within the Bossa Nova framework accounts for its continued significance in the sixties and seventies. The ascendance of Bossa Nova coincided with growing nationalism and activism in Brazil. In the early sixties, popular music, film, theater, and literature all became increasingly identified with a surge in political activity and socioeconomic awareness.6 Dissatisfied with the apolitical, inconsequential, and frequently banal discourse of mainstream Bossa Nova, songwriters in Rio and Sao Paulo began to expand their perspectives and to express social concerns of local and national import. Composition of protest and topical songs gave rise to a trend known as a linha conteudistica [the content line] in opposition to the original a linha formalistica [the formalistic line]. Although not prevalent until the middle part of the decade, instances of social criticism in song occurred as early as i960. In 1962,

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politicized students in Rio de Janeiro founded the Popular Center of Culture, which encouraged production and dissemination of "popular revolutionary art/' including, of course, popular song. Similar activity developed in other urban centers. This often paternalistic activism was limited, centered primarily in university circles, but foreshadowed the growth of engage music making in the course of the decade. Members of student organizations sought closer contact between the privileged south zone of Rio and working-class areas. Musical composition that would cut across class lines was an express goal, and performing samba composers were brought from "popular" neighborhoods to interact with students and the middleclass public. The Popular Center of Culture published three bestselling anthologies of socially oriented poetry, edited by Moacir Felix, Violdo de Rua: Poemas para a Liberdade [Street guitar: Poems for freedom], a title that suggests the common interests of makers of poems and music during this period. As debate about national liberation spread, there was heightened emphasis on the social function of poetry and song. For those involved in political mobilization, the measure of artistic value was the level of participagdo. In Portuguese this word means both informing and taking part in an activity, hence message-oriented art that participates in social process. Interest in social problems, especially those of the rural Northeast, also led to changes in musical material. Some young songwriters began to blend elements of the samba de mono in Bossa Nova frames. Others, led by Geraldo Vandre from the Northeastern state of Paraiba, incorporated some regionalist features into their Bossa Nova sound and used folk diction in texts. This kind of focus on the part of middle-class songwriters of the sixties most frequently expressed social commitment. Popular music, like all sectors of Brazilian society, was affected by the right wing coup of 1964. The military imposed authoritarian rule, restricted democratic processes, repressed political opposition and grass roots organizations, and violated human rights. These developments sharpened sociopolitical awareness and motivated further protest, notably in song. Despite stricter application of censorship laws (in place since the 1940s), some forms of dissent were still tolerated. Social discourse in song was widespread by 1965. Committed artists began to gain larger followings, aided by the expansion of the music industry, which could service diverse interests. Protest through musical messages was but one symptom of general discontent with the military regime. Unable to control broadly based opposition, the military reacted by issuing the Fifth Institutional Act (Ai-5) in December 1968. This decree was the legal instrument for

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INTRODUCTION

the establishment of a total dictatorship. As a result, Brazil suffered increased political violence, suspension of civil liberties, and harsher censorship. Overt protest and dissent were no longer permitted. Many citizens, including some leading songwriters, were harassed, imprisoned, formally exiled, or forced to flee the country.7 Soon after the coup, there was another important development in popular music: the emergence in mass media and resulting commercial success of ie-ie-ie (yeah-yeah-yeah), the local rendition of the electric pop music that was being popularized worldwide by the Beatles. Since the Elvis Presley craze of the late 1950s, there were imitations of rock and roll in Brazil, but these manifestations were occasional and not reflective of a significant trend. In 1965 an advertising firm capitalized on the interest in "youth music'' and created a movement called Jovem Guarda [Young Guard] (Gomes, 97). This designation alludes contrastively to the Velha Guarda [Old Guard] of venerable samba composers and, perhaps somewhat ironically, to a prophetic phrase of Lenin.8 Led by the charismatic vocalist Roberto Carlos, the exponents of ie-ie-ie sang teen-oriented songs of love and adventure to simple rock and roll accompaniment. The music was highly imitative in concept and practice, as indicated by the number of Portuguese versions of North American tunes (e.g., "Splish Splash"). The Young Guard successfully reached a mass audience through a carefully orchestrated scheme of promotion via television, attracting many consumers who followed Anglo-American popular music. Roberto Carlos went on to become a best-selling romantic crooner, achieved enormous popularity without class distinctions, and was crowned "The King" of popular music. As far as Bossa Nova was concerned, participation, nationalism, and regionalism were prime concerns after 1964. Many, including Caetano Veloso in his earliest years in music, still cultivated the established style of Gilberto and Jobim, but the so-called second generation of Bossa Nova implemented various modifications. The success of the Young Guard, perceived by many to be an unmediated import, fostered concern with the authenticity or national character of popular music. Increasingly, songwriters and arrangers turned away from jazzlike configurations to draw on and stylize more traditional and rural genres. The early work of Gilberto Gil and Milton Nascimento are good examples of these practices. In many cases, only the characteristic instrumentation or syncopation of Bossa Nova was maintained. Some performers moved toward a more forceful manner of presentation, eschewing the self-effacing finesse of early Bossa Nova. More-aggressive performance approaches were

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consistent with protest themes. Texts often focused on the urban working class, injustices in the interior, or the plight of the backlands. Urban middle-class musicmakers emphasized rural settings in lyrics and identified with the country as a whole through such musical means as the use of typically Brazilian instruments, the utilization of different regional rhythms, and the imitation of popular melodies. This folk or traditional orientation usually implied what might be termed cultural nationalism but did not always imply a committed political ideology. A good example is the series of "Afro sambas" co-authored by Baden Powell and Vinicius de Morais. These Bossa Nova compositions are inspired by the Afro-Brazilian culture of Bahia, thus contributing to the regionalist trend, but do not express, as a set, a committed ideology. The best example of protest and nationalism is the show Opinido [Stubborn opinion], which opened in Rio in late 1964. This event featured committed Bossa Nova alongside sambas and other songs by popular composers from the Northeast. Perhaps the most important development on the popular music scene in the late sixties was the organization of songwriters' competitions. In 1965 television broadcasters in Sao Paulo began sponsoring these yearly festivals of Brazilian popular music. The city of Rio de Janeiro hosted the International Festivals of Song, with national and international finals. Songwriters and composer-lyricist teams were invited to submit unpublished works for evaluation by a panel of judges. Finalists performed their songs before a television audience or had a third party make their presentation. Awards were given for best songs, best lyrics, and best performances. Public reception was a factor in evaluation and awards; the audience consisted almost exclusively of liberal university-educated urban youth. In addition to wide exposure, winning participants could gain a recording contract. Most of the outstanding figures of Brazilian popular music of the sixties and seventies came into public view during these contests. In addition to Buarque, Veloso, Gil, and Nascimento, participants included such important figures as Geraldo Vandre, Edu Lobo, Paulinho da Viola, Jorge Ben, and Luiz Gonzaga, Jr. In spite of the commercial interests of sponsoring broadcasters and recording companies, the festivals were important in stimulating both textual and musical innovation (Miller, 235-243). During these events the acronym MPB became a permanent part of contemporary Brazilian vocabulary. The festivals were designed to promote popular music of a national orientation and were clearly dominated by the sounds of Bossa Nova and derivative forms, such

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INTRODUCTION

as stylized regionalist compositions. The adolescent rock of the "escapist" Young Guard was shunned; one festival expressly prohibited the use of electric instruments. There was even a demonstration in Sao Paulo against the electric guitar, perceived as a symbol of Yankee imperialism. This bias would lead to some heated polemics and controversial incidents, as seen in the discussion of Caetano Veloso. The MPB festivals lasted until 1971, but most agree that the first four years were the most exciting and diverse and that increased commercialism and censorship made the later contests much less significant. Two festival compositions that reflect both the stylistic changes in popular music of the sixties and the prevalent ideology of song are "Disparada" [Shot], by Theofilo Barros de Filho and Geraldo Vandre, and "Ponteio" [Strumming/fingerpicking], by Edu Lobo and Jose Carlos Capinan. These titles won first place awards in the second (1966) and third (1967) festivals of MPB (sponsored by TV Record), respectively. "Disparada" is a stylization of toada-galope, a genre of folk song from the interior of southern Brazil. The song, rubato, begins: Get yourself ready for these things I will tell I come from outback, might not suit you too well I learned to say no, to face death without tears Destiny, death, things were all out of gear I live to set it all straight, hear? (D 90) The remainder of the text is constructed largely with words used in cattle raising, such as "round u p " and "branding," which symbolize exploitation, social injustice, and rebellion in the tale of the narrator. He also refers to his viola, emblematic of protest in both rural folk song and contemporary urban popular music. This typical string instrument is also symbolic of the committed stance in "Ponteio," whose title and refrain refer to a folk style of guitar picking. Musically, the song blends original ideas with elements of traditional rural music of the Northeast and of the interior of the state of Sao Paulo. The following selected verses reflect the preoccupations of the lyric voice, a violeiro who struggles against repression and envisions a day when change will come. It was one, it was two, it was one hundred whole Twas the world coming down but not one single soul Who knew that I strum, that I pick, that I sing Who'd give me some money or love to me bring

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It was day, it was clear, it was almost one-half It was songs with no strumming no talking no laugh Violence and voices and folk guitar sounds It was death in this place, in the world all around I know fully well that on one certain day That day won't be long now, I hope and I pray I'm certain, I tell you, that that day will come So 111 say right away where I'm coming from (D 90) With its reference to a day of reckoning, a symbolic time of social justice, this song text typifies that which Walnice Galvao has identified as a central paradigm of sixties' protest song. This analyst notes songwriters' preferences for epic tones over the lyrical in festival songs, and the frequency with which socially marginalized figures like folk bards, victims of drought, rural bandits, urban indigents, and the proletariat appear. She argues that the promise of a future of social transformation serves the function of absolving listeners of any responsibility in historical processes. Whatever the validity of Galvao's observations, it is clear that the festival public generally preferred sociopolitical themes and paid close attention to the words of the songs being presented. One analyst has written that the festivals became a place to raise and debate issues publicly because of the military's suffocation of normal political activity (Meneses, 30). While an academic critic described the dominant process of composition of festival songs as finding a musical arrangement to reinforce a message (Favaretto, 9), a concerned entrepreneur complained that too many festival entries appeared to be poetry set to music and that songs tended to be judged more for their lyrics than for their musicality (M. Pereira, 41). In addition to political content, there developed general expectations of quality in song text writing. Heloisa Buarque de Hollanda notes that the texts of songwriters who participated in the festivals show "cultured diction" and "literary quality." She attributes the public's desires for textual elaboration in song to the "inexpressivity" and inadequacies of poetry of the same period (36-37). Anazildo Vasconcelos da Silva, for his part, argues that the festivals replaced traditional poetry contests as forums for assessing the state of the art [Liiica, 78). This last claim perhaps exaggerates the case, but it is clear that these competitions were the stage for many implicit

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"position papers" and, once dominant taste was challenged, for some of the most audacious songs of the period. The festivals also provided a platform for the introduction of one of the most controversial developments in MPB of the sixties: a series of episodes and recordings known as Tropicalia or tropicalismo. The goals and achievements of this artistic "Tropicalism" are discussed in detail in chapter 2. The brief but tremendously influential movement was spearheaded by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, both from the state of Bahia, who proposed creative openness and critical revision of Brazilian popular music in general. The music of the Young Guard was not rejected but rather incorporated into a flexible framework that included pop music, traditional samba and Bossa Nova, protest and sentimentality, kitsch and avant-garde poetry, folklore and modern technology. Tropicalia opened the way for musical and poetic experimentation and diversification in MPB, for the wide spectrum of interests of the seventies. Popular music of the 1970s formed a network of interrelated phenomena that grew out of samba, Bossa Nova, derivative regionalism, protest, the Young Guard, and Tropicalism. There was no organized trend or movement but rather a broad diversity and eclecticism within the repertory of individual artists. As the recording and broadcast industries continued to expand, MPB readily incorporated foreign and regional trends and forged new avenues of expression. Hybridization was common, as composers mixed and remixed Brazilian parameters—rhythms, patterns of harmony, instruments— with those of rock, blues, soul, funk, some discotheque, Jamaican reggae, and, to a limited degree, African music. 9 Diversification did not come at the expense of long-established genres. On the contrary, instrumental chow and traditional samba were strengthened in the 1970s, as middle-class musicians and consumers alike showed renewed interest in those forms. Several factors contributed to the revitalization and growth of the samba. Increased commercialization of carnival in Rio and the opening of samba schools for public dances during the off-season attracted many new patrons, including many from the middle class. The record industry began to seek out venerable samba composers and performers of humble origins, several of w h o m gained due recognition. The most notable of these was Cartola, from the Mangueira samba school, who recorded his first album at the age of seventy. A series of younger performers reached mass audiences and the hit parade with their presentations and recordings of polished samba de mono, samba de eniedo, and samba-cangdo. Among these new idols of samba were singer-songwriters Martinho da Vila and Joao Nogueira

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and female vocalists Beth Carvalho, Clara Nunes, and Alcione, who made inroads by appealing to audiences at all levels of society. Samba is essential to the musical projects of several of MPB'S leading artists, notably Paulinho da Viola. For their part, both Chico Buarque and Joao Bosco made several significant recordings within the genre, which should be heard as salient items of their individual repertories and of the broader scheme of samba music as well. During the decade of the seventies, the sound of the Northeast was increasingly prominent on a national scale. Many young composers and performers explored and expanded upon the vast system of traditional music of their region, especially the heritage of backland minstrels, known and respected for the lyrical and topical verse they improvise to the sound of the viola. Northeasterners who achieved recognition around Brazil include the Quinteto Violado, Dominguinhos, Raimundo Fagner, Alceu Valenga, Geraldo Azevedo, Ze Ramalho, Djavan, and, in the eighties, Elba Ramalho. The repertory of such artists invariably includes the popular dance rhythms baido, xaxado, xote, and arrasta-pe and a hybrid form called fond. The typical instrumentation of a regional group includes accordion, zabumba [bass drum], and triangle, making the traditional sound comparable to that of Cajun music of Louisiana. During the seventies, electric instrumentation became increasingly common. Mixtures of fond and rock have yielded dynamic results, sometimes called forrock. Young musicians also favor frevo, a frenetic form of big-band march and the mainstay dance music of carnival in Recife, Pernambuco. Electrified forms of frevo grew in popularity in Salvador, Bahia, and mollified vocal varieties emerged, especially in the work of Moraes Moreira, who began as a member of the innovative sambarock group Novos Baianos. The easygoing music of the Young Guard was able to challenge the hegemony of Bossa Nova in the urban middle-class sector in the 1960s. In the decade that followed, simple rock and roll and subsequent kinds of rock were never lacking but remained a minority activity, in some cases associated with "underground," or alternative youth culture, in the so-called hippy fashion. A series of performing songwriters, notably Jards Macale and Walter Franco, used rock in experiments inspired by the successes of Tropicalism. Stars of MPB like Veloso, Gil, and Nascimento included rock in their performances and recordings, but Rita Lee and Raul Seixas were the most constant bearers of the banner of Brazilian rock. It was not until 1983, with the emergence of a new generation of young musicians, that rock became truly prominent. As for the discourse of MPB in the 1970s, protest and social com-

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INTRODUCTION

mentary in song were widespread in the context of an authoritarian society The specter of censorship led to frequent use of metaphor and allegory in lyrics as means of resisting imposed silence. Chico Buarque and Aldir Blanc most effectively voiced political and sociocultural issues. Lyricists and songwriters also produced crafted texts that elaborated on behavioral, ethical, spiritual, and aesthetic questions. In addition to Gil and Veloso, such songwriters as the tropicalist Tom Ze, Northeasterners Belchior and Marcus Vinicius, rock artist Walter Franco, and, in the eighties, the unique twelve-tone composer Arrigo Barnabe experimented with the structures of sound and poetry, which led to the recognition of an avant-garde trend within popular music.10 The chapters that follow explore form and content, music and lyrics, performance and reception, and social issues and art in contemporary Brazilian song. The lyricism of the modinha, the contagious rhythms of the samba, the finesse of Bossa Nova, the distinct traditions of regions, the electricity of rock music, and original sonority are all present in the works of Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, and Joao Bosco and Aldir Blanc. Examining their repertories reveals the individuality and collective appeal of these artists, the particular ways in which each draws and builds on tradition and develops a distinctive musical personality.

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Left to right: Bezerra da Silva, Alcione, Joao Nogueira, Beth Carvalho, Martinho da Vila

Hermeto Pascoal

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Gilberto Gil

Chico Buarque and Milton Nascimento

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Milton Nascimento

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Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song MPB 1965-1985

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Chico Buarque A UNANIMOUS

CONSTRUCTION

Chico Buarque is "the only unanimous choice of the nation/' Brazilian columnist Millor Fernandes wrote in the late 1960s. In the 1980s, having received more critical acclaim than any other Brazilian songwriter of the last twenty years, Buarque maintains his status as the most widely respected figure in popular music. His musical appeal cuts across class lines because his songs are both "popular" in their musical foundations and themes and "erudite" in their refinement and lyrical tones. Buarque synthesizes popular musical traditions and designs original stylizations. He is best known as a social critic who voices popular sentiment in crafted musical molds, but his sensitive sentimental songs have been equally successful. Although he is principally a poet-songwriter and composer, Buarque has also authored or coauthored musical dramas and published works of fiction and children's literature. Buarque's initial production (1965-1968) reveals a concept of music making as a magical or mythical enterprise and shows the beginnings of a sophisticated discourse of social criticism. These early compositions consistently show mastery of rhyme and rhythm, careful manipulation of sound effects, subtlety of imagery and idea, reliance on metaphor and symbol, and depth of perception of emotional, psychological, and social phenomena. Among Buarque's 1970 compositions is a series of pivotal works, which constitutes reflections on the state of MPB and on the artist's own development. In the 1970s and 1980s, Buarque's output is marked by the intensification of social themes and diversification of formal approach. Many of his compositions from this later period were written for the theater or film. Buarque's mature songs are notable for ingenious struc-

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turing, for variety of personae, and for ambiguity and plurisignification, especially as strategies for making social commentaries. Chico Buarque (Francisco Buarque de Holanda), son of the prominent historian Sergio Buarque de Holanda, was born July 19, 1944, in Rio de Janeiro. The family moved to Sao Paulo in 1946 and resided in Italy between 1952 and i960. A frequent visitor in the family home was the diplomat Vinicius de Morais, who influenced the music and poetry of the young Chico. After the family returned to Brazil, the Buarque de Holanda home became a meeting place for Vinicius and other central figures of Bossa Nova. Chico imitated the guitar style of Joao Gilberto but also absorbed the work of Old Guard samba composers. Although he enrolled in the school of architecture at the University of Sao Paulo, Buarque's main interests were composing and performing. In November 1964, he was invited to sing at the Paramount Theater, the focal point of Bossa Nova in Sao Paulo. In 1965 Buarque's career in popular music began taking shape. One of his songs was presented by Geraldo Vandre at the inaugural MPB festival, which gave the young songwriter national exposure. In the same year Buarque made his first recording, a single with the songs "Pedro Pedreiro" and "Ole Ola/' now recognized as two of his most representative early works. Buarque's involvement with theater began when he composed the music for a staging of "Morte e Vida Severina," a verse play by Joao Cabral de Mello Neto, one of Brazil's greatest living poets.1 Buarque also performed on a television showcase of Bossa Nova, and three of his songs appeared on an album by the successful Bossa Nova vocalist Nara Leao. In 1966 she presented his entry, "A Banda" [The band], in the second MPB festival. This optimistic march received first place honors, but Buarque insisted on sharing the award with Vandre, whose entry was the engage song "Disparada." With the success of "A Banda" at the festival, Buarque came into the limelight. He signed a recording contract, had his own weekly television program called "Pra Ver A Banda Passar" [To see the band go by], and published a songbook entitled A Banda. Buarque's lament "Carolina" took third place at the 1967 International Song Festival, and his composition "Roda Viva" [Spinning wheel] won third place at the third MPB festival. The song "Roda Viva" developed into a dramatic work of the same name; the play was a Kafkaesque farce examining the music industry's fabrication of pop stars in which the protagonist commits suicide. This song and the mordant play challenged the public image of Buarque as a bom mogo, or "nice young man," and led to problems with government watchdogs and reactionaries. The script was recalled by

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military censors, the author underwent police interrogation, and right-wing thugs disrupted performances of the play, destroying props and assaulting actors.2 Controversy surrounded Buarque in the 1968 festivals, and there was a break in the "unanimity" of popularity he had enjoyed. Although his entry, "Bom Tempo" [Good time], won second place in TV Record's samba competition, "socially committed" listeners objected to the seemingly apolitical lyric, finding it out of step with the social reality of the period. At the fourth MPB festival, the official jury did not award a prize to his entry, "Bem-Vinda" [Welcome]. In the audience vote, the song took first place. Nonetheless, a large group of dissenters shouted at Buarque, again accusing him of being alienated from contemporary issues. In December, the month the Fifth Institutional Act was promulgated, the International Song Festival awarded first place to "Sabia" [Songbird] by Jobim and Buarque, a decision that was met with loud and boisterous public disapproval. The festival public preferred the militant entry of Geraldo Vandre and seemed to believe "Sabia" was escapist. Buarque's lyric, a reworking of a well-known nineteenth-century poem, actually symbolically depicted a homeland devoid of beauty and freedom.3 In the face of government harassment and uncertainty about his career, Buarque left for Italy in 1969. The vocal tracks of his fourth album, a transitional recording marked by self-reflection, were done during this voluntary exile. When he returned to Brazil in March of 1970, Buarque found MPB in disarray Its leaders, such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Edu Lobo, and Geraldo Vandre, had been forced to leave the country, and Brazil had entered the harshest period of military repression. Buarque interpreted the situation in a song called "Apesar de Voce" [In spite of you], which was released as a single. The lyric of this rousing samba was disguised as the vindictive harangue of a rejected suitor, but such phrases as "you who invented this state, please be so kind as to disinvent it" suggested that the military government was the target of the malicious text. The song, not unexpectedly, was banned, but it remained a popular clandestine favorite to express displeasure with the regime. Buarque's 1971 album Construgdo [Construction] included some traditional sentimental songs, but the main thrust was social and contemporary. This collection marks a shift in his production from the lyrical to the epic, the dramatic, and the tragic. In 1971 Buarque and others withdrew their songs from the last International Song Festival to protest censorship. A television executive asked that Buarque be declared a subversive, and continual run-ins with cen-

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sors ensued. Buarque at one point declared that he could not make an album because two of every three songs he composed were proscribed. After Construgdo, Buarque was increasingly involved with film, theatre, and literature. He wrote the sound track for and acted in Carlos Diegues' 1972 film Quando o Carnaval Chegar [When carnival comes]. In 1973, in partnership with filmmaker Ruy Guerra, Buarque wrote Calabar—O Elogio da Traigdo [Calabar—in praise of betrayal], a re-examination of a colonial figure accused of treason by the Portuguese crown during the Dutch occupation of 1630-1645. After a prolonged period of doubt and anxiety for the producers, the performance fell victim to censors. The recording of the drama's songs (Chico Canta [Chico sings]) did not fare much better; the title "Calabar" could not be used on the cover and half of the compositions became instrumentals because the texts were censored. In 1974, Buarque published Fazenda Modelo: Novela Pecudiia [Model farm: A bovine novel], an allegorical work reminiscent of Animal Farm, in its use of animal protagonists, and of 1984, in the depiction of a state of terror. Buarque did record an album in 1974 (Sinai Fechado [Red light]), but, with one exception, all the selections were by other composers. Buarque managed to slip one piece past the censors by using a pseudonym. In the lyric of this celebrated song, "Acorda Amor" [Wake up dear], the narrator raises the issue of police repression; he hears intruders and calls for thieves to come to his aid. After this incident with the 1974 album, censors required composers to send copies of their identification papers along with applications for permits to record. In 1975 Buarque and Paulo Pontes published Gota d'dgua [The last straw], a re-creation of Euripides' Greek tragedy Medea in the working-class outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. A song from this drama appeared on Buarque's next LP, Mens Caws Amigos [My dear friends]. Nearly all the songs on the album are the result of collaborations with other musicians, filmmakers, or dramatists. The title track is a vocal chow whose text takes the form of a letter to a friend in exile describing conditions in Brazil. The song seems to be lighthearted but the central line of the lyric says "things are dark here." During this period, Buarque collaborated with Milton Nascimento on several recordings, and together they staged a Woodstock-like festival in the state of Minas Gerais. Buarque's next project was Os Saltimbancos [The Mountebanks], a recording of children's literature derived from Grimm's fairy tales. The author later published two other original works of fiction for children. Buarque traveled to Cuba in early 1978 to attend the annual

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awards ceremony of the Casa de las Americas. On returning to Brazil, he was detained, and his luggage, including books and records, was confiscated. Yet the content of the album Buarque released at the end of the year indicated that authoritarian control was diminishing in Brazil. The LP included "Apesar de Voce/7 another bitter protest song ("Calice" [Cup]) banned in the early 1970s, a 1975 song ("Tanto Mar" [So much sea]) in praise of the Portuguese Revolution of 1974, and the first Brazilian recording of a song ("Pequefia Serenata Diurna" [Small daytime serenade] by Silvio Rodriguez) from revolutionary Cuba. The lifting of these bans was a clear sign that censorship was on the decline. The LP also included several songs from Buarque's Opera do Malandw [Hustler's opera], a musical based on John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) and The Three Penny Opera (1928) by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Buarque's leading samba, "Homenagem ao Malandro" [Homage to the hustler], is the Brazilian version of "Mack the Knife." The Brazilian opera is a social satire that takes place during the Brazilian Estado Novo of the 1940s. One of the characters of this work is the central figure in Geni, the next musical for which Buarque wrote music. Buarque included songs from Geni and from various films on his albums in the 1980s alongside new independent compositions. He collaborated with Edu Lobo on a mystical musical in 1983 and wrote words for thirteen melodies by the same composer for Augusto Boal's drama O Corsdrio do Rei [The king's corsair] in 1985. In the same year, Buarque also wrote six new songs for Ruy Guerra's film version of Opera do Malandro. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Buarque frequently supported progressive causes. Besides appearing at benefits for striking workers and at opposition rallies in Brazil, he performed in Angola and at such international events as the 1983 Concert for Peace in Nicaragua. Buarque is the best-known figure of MPB in Spanish America. He has released an anthology of songs in Spanish, and many of his works have been recorded by noted artists, such as Uruguay's Daniel Viglietti and Venezuela's Soledad Bravo. Buarque reflected on the period of redemocratization in Brazil in singular sambas released in late 1984. The career of this poet-composer developed under the sign of authoritarian rule, and for many years his songs articulated the hopes, dreams, and frustrations of an entire generation. The dominant mode of Buarque's early poetry of song has been termed "nostalgic lyricism." His lyrics generally express a longing to create or return to an idyllic or Utopian situation free of suffering.4 The "nostalgic" character of his songs resides in both textual and

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musical content. In addition to compositions in the Bossa Nova style, Buarque composed marches, vocal chows, modinhas, and many restrained sambas reminiscent in their lyrical and melodic qualities of the classic works of Noel Rosa. Buarque's songs are often narrative and use typically Brazilian settings, such as the serenade and carnival balls. Music and song themselves are recurring themes and metaphorical constants in Buarque's lyrics. With few exceptions, the songs of his first three albums refer to singers, singing, dancing, or carnival. The various expressions of music making symbolize the search for happiness, individual and collective fulfillment, and fraternity, as well as personal and social transformation. Walnice Galvao underlines this feature in Buarque's early work: "Song, or music, appears in Chico Buarque's work under various rubrics: band, samba, refrain, choro, percussion, guitar, dance, party, music-box, viola, carnival, etc. But it always has the same meaning: music is the place of brotherhood and therefore the place of happiness" (114). Narrative sequences in Buarque's songs reinforce the symbolic significance of music making. His lyrics typically depict unhappiness and empty routine being overcome by music; the absence of music signifies a return to the initial situation. The poles of closure-silence and opening-music are consistently interrelated as principles of semantic and narrative organization (Sant'Anna, 100-102). This pattern is evident in "A Banda"; in the text, the passing of a musical group transforms a sad reality that is reconstituted once the ensemble has left. I was aimlessly drifting along / Then my love called to me Come see the band go by / Singing songs of love The suffering people / Left their cares behind To come see the band go by / Singing songs of love The grave man counting his money, stopped The braggart counting his glories, stopped The lovesick girl counting stars, stopped To come see, to hear, to make way for the band The sad girl, a quiet life, smiled The sad rose, a closed life, opened And all the kids in a fever rushed out To see the band go by, singing songs of love The weary old man forgot himself Danced and was young again

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The ugly girl leaning on the windowsill Knew the band was playing for her The joyful march spread through the streets and beyond A moon that was hiding came out full The whole town put on its finest To watch the band go by, singing songs of love But then disenchantment / The sweet life had to end Everything back in place / And the band was gone Everyone in his place / Sadness in everyman's song After the band went by / Singing songs of love (D 17) This lively march was tremendously popular at the time of its release in 1966. Buarque's song taps national musical memory with an arrangement reminiscent of traditionally popular brass and military bands. The lyrics are accessible to a broad public and evoke the tranquility of premetropolitan society. In "A Banda" music touches and transforms both individuals and the collective; the song suggests personal rejuvenation through music and a contagious joy that overcomes greed, self-interest, and personal affliction. This depiction relates to the real world of Brazilian listeners as well: the music of the imaginary band is conspicuously absent, unrealized in a present ruled by a military that suppresses "music' 7 in the symbolic sense that Buarque creates. Many songs of Buarque's early phase propose these privileged moments in which music has the power to effect fraternity and magical alterations. The act of singing as well as the texts themselves have a mythical air. In the imaginary world of Buarque's songs, as Adelia Bezerra de Meneses writes, "life's suffering is placed in parentheses by the Orphic spell of the music. . . . In each case, a constant: an effort to overcome the normal course of life by creating a mythic time (always invoked . . . by means of a Dionysiac element)" (42, 64). Such a mythical, ahistorical time is present in the song "Ole Ola." Here, the lyric singer attempts to cheer a dispirited listener through song's power of enchantment and ability to alleviate suffering. This lengthy composition of sixty-four verses is sung in three slow movements, each one containing key images associated with music making. In the first, music conjures up a personified happiness that is assigned a curative role: Now don't you shed a tear / I have a guitar here Together we can sing Happiness may come this way / And hear what's going on

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And if she feels the samba / She'll surely want to stay Father ring the church bells / For everyone to know The night is still young / And samba is a child Pain is under age's spell / She's old and she may die Ole ole ola (D 17) In the second movement, the singer's efforts take on a universal dimension: " . . . May my guitar be strong / To awaken the whole world. . . . " The concluding section depicts a samba of mythical proportions, and time itself is suspended in its presence: Now don't you shed a tear / For my impression's clear A samba is on its way This samba is so immense / At times it makes me think That time itself will blink / Then stop to lend an ear As exemplified in "Ole Ola," the word "samba" takes on multiple meanings in Buarque's work. Besides denoting the characteristic Brazilian rhythm, dance, and song genre, "samba" may signify plenitude of experience or the material of poetry. Leyla Perrone Moises emphasizes the breadth of the term: "The word 'samba' is magical to such a degree that it becomes synonymous with poetry, beauty, love." One of Buarque's first compositions, "Tern Mais Samba" [There's more samba], embodies the composer's broad concept of samba; the song is the generative nucleus and thematic synthesis of his repertory through 1968. The lyric is structured as two series of comparisons and two conclusive statements: There's more samba in meeting than in waiting There's more samba in evil than in wounds There's more samba in anchors than in sailing There's more samba in forgiveness than farewell There's more samba in hands than in the eye There's more samba on the ground than in the moonlit sky There's more samba in men who are working There's more samba in street sounds and cries There's more samba in the heart of a weeping face There's more samba in the tears of those who see That good samba has no time or place No open heart can turn away Come, your suffering must bend and give If everyone joined in the samba It would be so easy to live (D 17)

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In the first six verses, proximity to and contact with others (fraternity) are enhanced through opposition of related terms. Midverse words ("meeting," etc.) suggest reuniting or reduction of distance, and verse-final terms ("waiting/7 etc.), isolation or separation. While there are various levels of meaning here, where "there's more samba" is a place of encounter and plurality opposed to detachment, isolation, and the singular, as Silva proposes [Poetica, 22). In verses 7-10, the element in opposition is absent but implied. There is a concrete, popular content in "men who are working" and "street sounds" that takes on greater significance at the song's end. In the concluding refrain, "samba" denotes on the primary level singing and dancing but carries all the accumulated figurative meanings of the term. Musical features of "Tern Mais Samba" amplify and clarify the singer's words. Verses 1-6 are sung to an unaltered, repeating melodic line that underlines the common core in the metaphors. Only slight alterations of intervals differentiate the series in which the element of opposition is absent, but when the singer arrives at the conclusive statement—"That good samba . . ."—there is a melodic climax with notes of strong duration leading to a final resolution. The breadth of the song is suggested at its end by musical means. After a single voice has sung all the verses and the refrain to typical Bossa Nova accompaniment, a chorus of feminine voices enters repeating the refrain to the accompaniment of cavaquinho, and traditional samba accents replace Bossa Nova syncopation. These modifications suggest the participation of a typical samba school. In this way, the popular element hinted at in "men who are working" and "street sounds" is highlighted, and the metaphorical projections of "samba" are related to the fundamental sense of the term as a musical form. In the world Buarque creates, song is endowed with special powers: it can cast a spell, stop time, and reshape daily life. "Tern Mais Samba" is the quintessential expression of this concept of the artist's vision, and of the nostalgic lyricism that characterizes his early work. This composition comprises a poetics, offering music making as a fundamental activity for shared intimacy and for human welfare. In his fourth collection (1970), Buarque reflects on these attitudes and on his early production in general. In three songs keyed by introspection and allusion to his own repertory, he probes the process of composition and the status of MPB. Buarque's work remained close

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to mainstream Bossa Nova and classic samba-cangdo while stylistic elements of rock music (e.g., electric guitar) and experimental lyrics were becoming increasingly evident in the work of other leading figures. The meditations on song considered below are, to some degree, a result of debates provoked by the innovations of the Tropicalia group. In "Essa Moga Ta Diferente" [This girl's changed], Buarque confronts changes in Brazilian popular music and in the tastes of the young public, both of which are symbolized in the lyric by the "girl." The songwriter composes the stanzas in rhymed quatrains, the most common form of traditional popular poetry, and uses current slang to make ironic observations about the modernization of popular music and about the shifts in cultural values that affected him. This girl's really changed She won't see me any more She's gone beyond what's far out She's walked right out the door Now this girl's decided To be supermodernistic Ask about the samba and She'll say it's anachronistic The roses and rhymes I cultivate Are the best that I have found She keeps on looking down on me And disinvents my sound When I come to play the flute for her She doesn't hear my tune She's busy watching astronauts Landing on the moon Refrain But all things come / And all things She undoes me / What's wrong with She scorns me I She spites me But all things come I And all things She undoes me / What's wrong with Somewhere deep down Inside she still loves me

pass that pass that

This girl's the one in the window I'm tired of singing of her

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Now she does her own thing Just trying to make a stir (D 20) Brazilian listeners would associate the word "window" here with three successful Buarque songs: "Ela e Sua Janela" [She and her window], "Carolina," and "Januaria." The focal point of the text of each song is a woman seen at her window. Although Buarque implies that his listeners still identify with these sentimental songs, he "confesses" that he has tired of them. The revision and intrarepertory allusion evident in "Essa Moga" are also present in the light ballad "Onde Andara Nicanor" [Where can Nicanor be]: Oh where can Nicanor be? / You know when it came to love The hands of a gardener had he / So many girls they are waiting For gentle springtime showers / Oh such a waste of flowers Oh where can Nicanor be? / The whole harbor fit for his love The chest of an oarsman had he / How I wish the brown-haired girls Were mine alone to console / I'd soften the warmth of their souls Look at them, always so troubled Whether it rains or the wind blows Each one is prettier than the next and more of a widow (D 20) The missing Nicanor referred to is a symbol of values of earlier compositions. The first stanza identifies a frequent situation in Buarque song texts—"girls waiting"—and invokes one of his favorite Romantic images, "flowers." In the second stanza, the phrase "the whole harbor" alludes to a set of his songs with waterfront settings and solitary female characters: "Madalena Foi pro Mar" [Magdalena went to sea], "Morena dos Olhos d'Agua" [Teary-eyed girl], "Januaria," and others. Reference to "brown-haired girls" also suggests the series of melancholy figures in earlier songs, while desire to console them underlines another recurring attitude. The absence of Nicanor and the use of verbs in past tense emphasize the abandonment of the previously dominant nostalgic lyric self. The phrase "more of a widow" further expresses this modification. Buarque's new or alternative outlook is characterized by the contrariness and self-doubts expressed in the song "Agora Falando Serio" [Speaking seriously now]. Reference to earlier songs and rejection of previous ideas inform the first stanza of the song. Speaking seriously now / I'd like not to sing That pretty song / They say / Chases all evil away

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I'll give lyricism the boot / Have it out with the dog The songbird [sabid] I'll shoot / I'll get rid of the violins Pack my bag and fly / Not to see the band go by (D 20) The phrase "that pretty song" alludes to an Iberian proverb that says, "He who sings, chases his troubles away." Wanting not to sing proverbial songs implies both abandoning such Utopian notions as the magically therapeutic power of music and feeling a bit of skepticism about protest song. The term "lyricism," in turn, encompasses a significant part of lyrics by Buarque, who had been recognized as a poet of song by this time. The songbird [sabid] denotes the 1968 festival song coauthored by Jobim, and "violins" may represent string arrangements (the syrupy "romantic violins") used in some earlier recordings. Finally, and most important, "the band" is a clear reference to Buarque's first commercial success. The songwriter's selfquestioning new approach is also reflected at the musical level. Buarque abandons his customary Brazilian musical styles and adopts an acoustic rock format. The second stanza of "Agora Falando Serio" expresses a desire for authenticity, implies the difficulties of composing under the threat of censorship, and poses a direct question to listeners, drawing on images from previous songs (e.g., "flowers," "rose"): Speaking seriously now / I wanted not to lie I sought not to deceive / To trick to fool or try So much disenchantment / And you who are listening hard Want to know what's going on / With the flowers in my yard The pansy's perfect love betrayed / The life of evergreens delayed And roses smelling bad In the third stanza the author makes no allusions to earlier songs and uses a much more figurative language. He takes a metaphorical and paradoxical stance: an extended oxymoron combines silence with speech and/or song: Speaking seriously now / I'd prefer to say nothing That might stir or disturb you / Or your hard troubled sleep Like a lullaby refrain / I want to make some silence A silence so sickly / That the neighbors complain Call the doc and cops quickly / And the manager of my boredom Asking please for me to sing The substitution of "boredom" [tedio] for the expected words "apartment building" [predio] calls attention through "defamiliarization" to the singer's unsure situation and restlessness. Enhancing

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the antithetical tone of the stanza is the fact that the desire for silence is voiced. A final affirmation of wanting not to sing while singing comes as a simple statement after a musical interlude without text: "Speaking seriously now / I wanted not to sing / Speaking seriously" Yet discouragement is not the conclusive attitude of the song. Silence may be heard here as a metaphor for a plenitude of expressiveness that would overcome such contrariness and insecurity. "Agora Falando Serio" is most significant as an indication of Chico Buarque's self-evaluation. This 1970 song is a symbolic recreation of the artist's own situation at the turn of the decade when he was in voluntary exile. This and related songs of aesthetic selfawareness are also commentaries on the characteristic "nostalgic lyricism" of many earlier songs. This capacity for reflection on the creative process is but one of the features of the composer's early work (1965-1970) that prompted his recognition as a gifted songwriter. Music making and disillusionment in love are the most prominent themes in Buarque's repertory up to 1970, but each of his first four collections also has songs of social commentary. The songwriter employs various musical and textual strategies—lyrical narrative, allegory, caricature, satire, literary allusion—to express political messages or to communicate dissenting views of history and society. The Bossa Nova "Pedro Pedreiro" is the most striking song on Buarque's 1966 debut album for the synthesis of verbal and musical effects and textual elaboration. This composition is also one of the most celebrated examples of midsixties protest song. The text depicts the ruminations of a destitute working-class immigrant from a northern state who is waiting for the train that will take h i m to work. His name translates as Peter the Bricklayer, but it is left in Portuguese because of significant connections with other words. Refrain Pedro Pedreiro pensatively \penseiro] waiting for the train Tomorrow it seems hell have to be waiting again For the gain, for the good of the prosperous and the penniless Pedro Pedreiro is waiting and thinking Thinking and waiting time goes by And he and his are left behind (D 17) These verses introduce two themes that are developed in the course of the song: deferred happiness and elusive material well-being. In the original the poetic function of the language is accentuated. The

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three words that introduce the character in the first line are united by repetition of sounds, while a subtle semantic contrast is created. The morpheme pedr-, present in the first and last name of the character, as well as the referential value of pedreiro (stonemason, bricklayer) give the notion of stone [pedra), implying immobility and nonthinking inanimate nature. The morpheme -eiro, in turn, suggests activity, and penseiro—poetic neologism—connotes thinking. Throughout, there are concentrated alliterative effects. In the Portuguese, there is a concatenation of rhyming nasal dipthongs (e.g., bem and tern), a particularly effective sound device. It should be noted that this chain, although written by the author in separate lines in his songbook, is produced rapidly and without melodic pauses in performance. When the third line is heard as "Deesperar-tambem-para-o-bem-de-quem-tem-bem de-quem-ndo-temvintem," the profusion of related words is like a verbal train that resounds the visual image of the train itself. These effects tighten internal semantic relationships and intensify the impact of these three lines, which constitute a refrain. Repetition is a central device in the lengthy text (58 lines). The incessant reiteration of "waiting" reinforces the character's static situation and conveys the idea of monotony and frustrations of life for the working class (Medaglia, 93). Waiting waiting waiting Waiting for the sun's rays / Waiting for the train Still waiting for next month's raise / A year in vain Refrain Pedro Pedreiro waits for carnival / To hit the jackpot in the lottery Every month / Waiting waiting waiting Waiting for the sun's rays / Waiting for the train Waiting for next month's raise / Waiting for holidays Waiting for a break / And Pedro's wife / Is expecting a child So he can join the waiting chain Refrain Concrete referents, such as the lottery and a raise that never comes, suggest that Pedro, who represents disenfranchised sectors of urban society, depends on luck and chance for survival. These hopes are complemented by underlying suggestions of the ineffable, as symbolized in "sea," in the next series: Pedro Pedreiro is waiting to die For the day when he'll see the northern sky Pedro doesn't know but deep down maybe

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He's waiting for something more beautiful than this world Greater than the sea The Portuguese word for "wait," esperar, also means "expect" and "hope." The multiple meaning of this axial word creates ambiguity as the text unfolds, contributing to the development of a sense of anguish. But why think / If too much waiting breeds despair Pedro Pedreiro wants to go back where He's a poor bricklayer nothing more And not keep on waiting, hoping, expecting Waiting for the sun / Waiting for the train Waiting for next month's raise again Waiting for a son who'll not break the chain Waiting for holidays / Waiting for a break Waiting to die / Waiting to see the northern sky Waiting for the day of waiting for no one Finally waiting for nothing more Than the afflicted, infinite hope / Of the whistle of a train Pedro Pedreiro pedreiro waiting Pedro Pedreiro pedreiro waiting Pedro Pedreiro pedreiro waiting for the train Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes In the lines following "but why think," Buarque broaches the issue of raising consciousness. The character's focusing on his situation does not result in any liberating knowledge but rather increases his dismay. There is a veiled resurfacing of this unresolved question at the song's end. Stylistically, the last six verses exemplify, in the original, the composer's use of alliteration as a device to create percussive vocal performance and reinforce the rhythmic effects of the song (Behague, "Values," 440). In particular, the final verse announcing the arrival of the train onomatopoeically suggests locomotion, an effect that is supported by drum rolls. As the final three words are sung several times with increasing rapidity, the volume of the recording fades to imply an endless round of waiting. In the three lines before "here it comes," a subtle modification of the pattern in the refrain occurs, reflecting the termination of the character's ruminating. While the refrain has earlier repeated "Pedro Pedreiro penseiro/' at song's end there is duplication of the morpheme pedr-, "Pedro Pedreiro pedreiro," in the place of the neologism that conveyed the notion of thinking. This change, hinted at in the line that asks "why think," signals the character's acquiescence to the constituted re-

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ality of unfulfilled expectations. The parting implication is that Pedro will be transported to the worksite but that none of his other hopes for a better life will be met. In contrast to the specific context of "Pedro Pedreiro," namely, the train station of a working-class suburb in southern Brazil, the setting of the text of "Ano Novo" [New Year] (1967) is an unspecified fairy-tale kingdom. The lyric voice of the song is a young subject of a king who orders public festivities for the New Year's occasion. At first impression, the song seems festive indeed; the pace of performance is brisk, and the narration refers to an impending celebration: The king has arrived / And had the bells rung All over the city / So hymns may be sung And flags may be hung / And I, a young boy Who's known to obey / I didn't quite care But I soon join the cheer / Because it's New Year

(D 18)

But this modern samba is a disguised lament about the quality of life in a stagnant land: For such a long time / These folks in a fix They've lived by their wits / It's the same old story It's the same old tune / They no longer believe It's the same old tricks References to joy are ironic in the song; the subjects must feign contentedness to please the royal authority: And I told my friend here / Who's no longer amused For each passing year / It just makes him cry I said listen here man / Hold your head up higher But keep your mouth shut / Or you'll feel the king's ire The parallels between the "royal authority" and Brazil's authoritarian military regime were clear enough so that radio play of the song was prohibited. Buarque uses the seemingly innocent convention of a fairy-tale kingdom to play out a contemporary ethical drama. "Ano Novo" is composed and performed in an ironic mode,the allegorical sociopolitical statement is encoded in the pseudocelebration of the song. The most socially acute composition on Buarque's 1968 album is his festival song "Roda Viva." The Brazilian idiom roda viva may be translated as "rat race," and the song depicts the smothering of initiative, the disillusionment, and the frustrations produced by the stressful grind and "hustle and bustle" of modern living.

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There are days when we feel so / Like someone departed or died All of a sudden we've stopped / Or was it the world, did it grow? We want so to have our own voice / In this fate of ours have a say But the spinning wheel comes along / To steal fate to take it away (D

19)

In the refrain, a series of images based on various combinations of the Portuguese words roda [wheel] and rodar [to spin] transmits the notion of losing one's bearings in a world whose pace is dizzying. Ferris wheels and round the world Whirlwindpools and spinning tops For an instant time it twirled The twists and turns of my heart In the Portuguese this refrain is much more compact verbally, making for greater semantic association. The phrase "round the world" [roda mundo] suggests worldly experience but also the insignificance of the individual in relation to the rotation of Earth. The image of the Ferris wheel [roda gigante] also implies imposing size, as well as the arbitrary circumstances to which the individual is subject, as on the amusement park ride. The Portuguese words for "whirlwind" or "whirlpool" [roda moinho], connoting swirling confusion and displacement, also evoke grinding [moinho means "mill") and suggest the wearing down of the subject. "Spinning t o p " [roda piao] implies larger forces playing with the fate of the subject and gives the idea of endless mesmerizing spinning. All of these associations are intensified as the refrain recurs. The second strophe laments the loss of beauty and integrity: Against all the currents we row / Until we can't take any more When the boat turns back we regret / All the things we've failed to know We cultivate such a long time / The most beautiful rose-lined way But the spinning wheel comes along / To sweep all the roses away The third stanza (not cited here) depicts the suffocation of artistic expression (samba), and the fourth brings elements of previous stanzas together, bemoaning the loss of the essential emotion of longing, symbolic of perseverance and the continuity of vision. Samba, guitar, and roses / One day were consumed by the fire It was all a passing illusion / All gone with the first gust of wind The heart prays that longing will stay / To stop time's flow we aspire But the spinning wheel comes along / To carry all longing away

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Vocal arrangement accentuates textual aspects of "Roda Viva." Buarque is accompanied by the vocal quartet MPB-4 on the recording; the interplay of lead voice and chorus echoes the depiction of an individual lost in the midst of social forces. The last choral "away" is prolonged, descending in tone and volume to reflect the notion of dissolution or deprivation. At this juncture, the refrain is taken up chorally, but at an extremely slow pace; several repetitions follow, each with increasing rapidity and varied juxtapositions of voices until the final unison stop. This coda musically creates a sense of being swept away in a whirlwind or current, an acoustic image of an individual being overwhelmed or drowned out by larger forces. Although thematically similar, the serious tones of "Roda Viva" contrast with Buarque's upbeat song "Cara a Cara" [Face to face] (1970). This composition is musically exultant, but the lyric is a satirical self-portrait of a member of consumer society. I have a tin-can chest / A lump in my tie / And a knot in my throat I have a few square feet / A glass eye, and a television I bought a smile on time . . . I marked time / And set a course / My mind is made up I have an appointment / With loneliness (D 20) The final stanza is consistent with this characterization but also introduces an allusion to the composer's flight from his homeland: "Fve got to run got to go, I'll have a send-off party / Get your handkerchiefs out, wave and cry, do your d u t y . . . " Stanzas alternate with the refrain in the course of the song, but after the final cadence of the last refrain, a concluding line (marked * below) is added. Make this thing strong I For if it stops We'll be face to face / Face to face to face * With what we don't want to see The refrain synthesizes the isolation and alienation expressed in the stanzas; the concluding line further suggests fear of something unnamed. What the individual does not want to see, in Meneses' interpretation, is his own affective misery, an emptiness poorly disguised by exaggerated mechanical activity (92). But "what we don't want to see" may imply not only subjective problems but also external reality: sociopolitical regimentation and other control mechanisms of the contemporary consumer society in which the subject operates. "Cara a Cara" satirically depicts personal and psychological repression, and, as in many Buarque songs, implies consciousness of an encompassing social repression.

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"Rosa dos Ventos /; [Weathervane], also from Buarque's 1970 LP, speaks to the contemporary Brazilian situation indirectly. The lyric of this song has wide historical perspective and a key intertextual tie. There is a direct relation between "Rosa dos Ventos ;/ and another of the album's tracks, Buarque's musical setting of selections from O Romanceiro da Inconfidencia (1953), Cecilia Meireles' series of literary ballads about Brazil's colonial conspirators for independence. The musician's choice of this text was strategic. The ballads were respected as patriotic literature and unlikely to be censored. At the same time, the reflections of censorship and repression in colonial times in Meireles' verse were relevant to the Brazilian situation in 1970. Whenever an honest man shouts A scoundrel comes to silence him The useless may go on living They sentence good men to death A man would pass by here And the people would laugh Liberty, even if tardy He would promise us (D 20) "Rosa dos Ventos" relates both thematically and stylistically to Meireles' long historical poem. The lyric is linked to the setting of her verses through quotation of a historical slogan, emphasized above, which also appears in Buarque's own song. The recording of "Rosa dos Ventos" begins with an eerie, somewhat disorderly, musical atmosphere: an organ plays clusters of dissonant notes, piercing string lines intervene, and wavering vocables become gradually stronger until the song proper starts. The first word, "and," is held in such a way that it appears to emerge out of the musical confusion, which becomes the background for a text that begins in medias res. The first two stanzas are a metaphorical narration of tumult and repression with little melodic variation: And from love the scandal grew From fear the tragic was born The countenance was painted out And not a tear was shed Not even a lament for succor And we became accustomed To walking through darkness And whispering through the cracks

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To drawing milk from stones And seeing time run out (D 20) The second movement of the song develops images of cosmic disturbance to give a vision of apocalyptical transformation: Yet under the weight of centuries The spectacle dawned Like a shower of petals As if the heavens seeing the pain Perished with pity And unleashed their rains of pardon And the prudent wise men Could not keep passion And smiles from their lips Overflowing with flowers The calm of the lakes was angered The weathervane was damned The riverbeds were filled And fresh sweet water Flooded the bitter sea The idea of universal metamorphoses is intensified musically with a gradual buildup of harmonic support, culminating in dramatic flourishes that occur with the intonation of "rains of pardon" and "bitter sea," which carry notions of plenitude and are marked in performance by extended duration at a noticeably higher interval. Aquatic imagery is employed throughout the song: "tear," "milk," "rain," "overflowing," "lakes," "rivers," "fresh water," "sea." The progression of images flows into a diluvial conclusion, which, with the exception of the last verse, is sung by a flood of voices. An Amazonic flood An Atlantic explosion And the panicked crowds And the amazed crowds of people Even if tardy See their own awakening There is a brief and cacophonous coda; this musical epilogue contrasts with the prologue, suggesting through sound structures the transformation that the text proposes. Buarque's lyrics conjure up visions of a deluge in reverse, one that brings liberation rather than punishment or destruction. The climax of the song has definite historical and political overtones. The adjective "Amazonic" clearly in-

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dicates the Brazilian context, as does the use of "even if tardy/' a partial citation of the insurrectionary motto seen earlier in Meireles' ballad. The grandiose awakening portrayed in "Rosa dos Ventos" is a poetic vision of historical consciousness and the Brazilian struggle for independence. In contemporary terms, the song is an expression of discontent with the current situation and an implicit call for its transformation. The critical discourse evident in such 1970 songs as "Cara a Cara" and "Rosa dos Ventos" prefigures the dominant mode of Buarque's songwriting throughout the decade and up to 1985. The social concerns evident in his song repertory also guide his endeavors in drama and fiction. Buarque employs various musical and textual strategies to express protest, dissatisfaction with the status quo, and refusal to comply with the dominant ideology of the Brazilian state. The double-edged, ironic qualities of many of his songs often reflect conflicts between artists and censors, especially during the early seventies. Buarque plays with word order, linguistic formulas, sayings, idiomatic expressions, and other cultural conventions to forge lyrics that are enriched and diversified through musical and performance traits. The 1971 album Construgdo presents three penetrating compositions about psychosocial conditions in Brazil. The first of these is "Cotidiano" [Quotidian], a bleak song that depicts the daily routine of a working-class couple through the eyes of the man: Every day she always does the same thing Six o'clock she shakes me out of bed Punctually each day she makes her greeting With kisses from her morning mouth of mint Every day she tells me please be careful And all those things that women always say She tells me that my dinner will be waiting Her mouth of coffee kisses me goodbye All day long I only think of quitting Noontime I just think of saying no Then I think about what life would be like And then I stop and close my mouth of beans Afternoons at six I find her waiting Standing by the factory gate outside Now she says she's dying to embrace me Then her mouth of passion kisses me

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Every night she wants me close beside her Midnight she's declaring endless love She's squeezing so I'm nearly suffocating She bites me with her nightly mouth of dread Every day she always does the same thing Six o'clock she shakes me out of bed Punctually each day she makes her greeting With kisses from her morning mouth of mint

(D 21)

The song's impact derives from its thematic and structural unity. Paradigmatic continuity is established in the lyric by a consistent rhyme scheme (in the original), the recurrent temporal pattern based on parts of the working day, and corresponding images of the mouth. The circularity of the couple's life is indicated by the repetition of the first stanza at the end of the song. In its repetitive simplicity, the melodic line also reduplicates the idea of "every day always the same." According to the thrust of the lyric, the singing voice is serious in tone but even throughout, avoiding stress on any part of the text. In his account, the narrator sets forth a symptomatic view of the relationship between man and woman and of the alienation they share. She is seen in conventional roles of giving emotional support and looking after the provider. Yet he portrays her solicitude as overbearing, as part of the oppressive routine that shapes his life. The narrator's attitude suggests that engraved male perceptions of women may be, in the domestic context, a reflection of the regimentation of the work cycle. The notes of urgency and anxiety he expresses are tied to both of them. In this regard, the third and fifth stanzas stand out. The third, at the midpoint of the song, is the only one in which the man is subject rather than object. His desire to escape drudgery is opposed to cold pragmatic reality, the primacy of survival, and resignation to fate. Temporal factors link the third stanza (midday) to the fifth (midnight), which brings a telling conclusion to the series of m o u t h images. There is a striking difference between the kisses of the preceding stanzas and the figure of biting in the fifth. The woman's bite suggests more than the intensification of passion and the release of accumulated tensions. In the established context of "Cotidiano," this act may be seen as an aggressive affirmation of self, contrasting with the woman's conventional self-negating behavior, and as an indirect comment on the victimization of women. The "mouth of dread" here comes at midnight, the dead of night or "witching hour," often associated with apprehensiveness and loosening control of impulses. Following the perceptions of the man, the woman's

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fear appears to be a reflection of her emotional possessiveness, fear of losing her companion. In the social dimension, however, her fears are not unlike those which motivate the narrator's midday surrender to the demands of the system. "Cotidiano" communicates a sense of symptomatic emptiness and frustration for both man and woman, illustrating Buarque's poetic renderings of emblematic social and psychological situations and his empathy with the working class. On the Construgdo album, the title track and its companion piece "Deus Lhe Pague" [May God reward you] are powerful compositions with intimate formal and thematic connections. The latter presents a much broader questioning of the quality of life in contemporary Brazil than does "Cotidiano." The somber tones of "Deus Lhe Pague" are bitterly ironic, mournful, and accusatory. The pounding musical arrangement is the antithesis of soft Bossa Nova; emphatic statements by brass and woodwinds, a bass ostinato, and choral declamation are some of the effects that help to create a menacing mood in the music. The composition is a mock litany, whose text is largely based on inversion of a linguistic formula commonly used to express gratitude for charity or mercy. The lyric voice sardonically thanks an unnamed "benefactor" (the powers that be in Brazilian society) for a life marked by regimentation, subjugation, and deprivation. For this bread to eat, this floor to sleep on A certificate to be born, a concession to smile For letting me breathe, for letting me exist May God reward you For the pleasure of crying, the "we're here to serve you" For jokes at the bar, soccer to root for Crimes to discuss, sambas to distract May God reward you For a beach, a skirt, a woman to take Quickly, badly, shave and leave For lovely Sundays, the soaps, the comics, and Mass May God reward you For the free liquor that we have to swallow For the curse of smoke that we have to cough For the dripping scaffolding from which we fall May God reward you For getting up for one more day of agony For the gritting of teeth in the grinding streets

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For the demented screams that help us escape May God reward you For the mourning women that praise us and spit For the maggots that kiss and cover us For the final peace that redeems us at last May God reward you (D 21) The lyric presents an existence totally ruled by others. From the birth certificate of the second verse to the allusion to burial at the end, the subject is beholden to another. Allusions to popular forms of recreation represent indirect societal manipulation, while images of atmospheric and noise pollution ("smoke," "grinding") are direct and acrid. The only escape from the grim vision here is madness ("demented screams") or the redemption that death brings, the image of which is grotesque with the presence of maggots. The ironic expression of gratitude is also a voicing of vindictiveness; the implied hope is that God will give the "other" his just due and punish him for sins of oppression. The verse "for the dripping scaffolding from which we fall" is a protest of notoriously precarious working conditions and directly links the song "Deus Lhe Pague" to the title track of the collection. "Construgao" is perhaps Buarque's most famous composition. It is a complex song that obliquely narrates the fatal fall of a bricklayer. The protagonist is reminiscent of the figure created in the song "Pedro Pedreiro." The text of "Constru^ao" also harks back to an image in the prose introduction to A Banda, that of a bricklayer or construction worker perched precariously at the worksite: " . . . a worker hanging from scaffolding" (2). The title "Construgao" announces the architectonic arrangement of the song. The concrete referent—construction work, a structure being built—is a homologue for the melody and the text, which are meticulously designed with measured dimensions and calculated structural balance. The last word of each line of the original text is reproduced below, to facilitate discussion of key textual features. He loved on that occasion as if it were the last [ultima] He kissed his wife as if she were the last [ultima] And each of his sons as if he were the only one [unico] And he crossed the street with a timid step [timido] 5 He climbed the construction as if he were a machine [mdquina] In the stairwell he built four solid walls [solidas] Brick on brick in a magic design [mdgico] His eyes numb with cement and tears [ldgrimas]

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He 10 He He He

/ 2$

sat down to rest as if it were Saturday [sdbado] ate rice and beans as if he were a prince \principe] drank and wept as if he were shipwrecked [ndufrago] danced and laughed as if he heard music [musica]

And stumbled in the sky as if he were drunk [bebado] And floated in the air as if he were a bird \pdssaro] 15 And ended up on the ground as a flaccid bundle \fldcido] He agonized in the middle of the sidewalk [publico] He died on the wrong side of the street disturbing the traffic [trdfego] He loved on that occasion as if he were the last [ultimo] He kissed his wife as if she were the only one [unica] 20 And each of his sons as if he were the prodigal [prodigo] And he crossed the street with his drunken step [bebado]

25

He climbed the construction as if he were solid [solido] He built four magic walls in the stairwell [mdgicas] Brick on brick in a logical design [logico] His eyes numb with cement and traffic [trdfego] He He He He

sat down to rest as if he were a prince [phncipe] ate rice and beans as if he were the greatest [mdximo] drank and wept as if he were a machine [mdquina] danced and laughed as if he were his fellow man [proximo]

30 And stumbled in the sky as if he heard music [musica] And floated in the air as if it were Saturday [sdbado] And ended up on the ground a timid bundle [timido] He agonized in the middle of the shipwrecked sidewalk [ndufrago] He died on the wrong side of the street disturbing the public [publico] 35

He loved on that occasion as if he were a machine [mdquina] He kissed his wife as if it were logical [logico] He built four flaccid walls in the stairwell [fldcidas] He sat down to rest as if he were a bird [pdssaro] And floated in the air as if he were a prince [principe] 40 And ended up on the ground a drunken bundle [bebado] He died on the wrong side of the street disturbing Saturday [sdbado] (D 21) The text has forty-one lines of twelve syllables, all of which end in a proparoxytone, that is, a word stressed on the antepenultimate syllable. A pattern of preterites organizes the text as two series of

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four quatrains and a sextain comprised of verses from each of the four quatrains, with both series and the sextain followed by an isolated single-line refrain. The strophes of the two series are differentiated only by the changing of the line-final word. Four new words are introduced in the second series, and the words used in the first now modify a different line. In the sextain, there is another substitution or switch at the end of each line. This rigorous formal framework leads Meneses (152) to make a well-founded comparison with Brazil's "engineer-poet" Joao Cabral de Mello Neto and with the "poet-builder" conceived of by Paul Valery. In Buarque's project of verbal engineering, there is a selfreferential design in the form of allusions to the encompassing text. Lines 6, 23, and 37 refer to "four solid / magic / flaccid walls"; these represent the verses of each quatrain and the four stanzas of the first two movements. These formal divisions lose their "solidity" in the "magical" rearrangement of lexical items and become "flaccid" in the relative disequilibrium of the sextain. Lines 7 and 24 are an image of the text itself—"brick on brick in a magic / logical design"— where each word or phrase is a piece in a larger rational scheme that is transformed by single-word alterations. The isolated lines 17 and 34 correspond to musical stops that divide the song into movements. Transitions are further distinguished by a tightening or loosening of the logic that governs semantic relationships. In the first block of 16 lines, many of the hypothetical qualifiers have a clear relationship to the subject: solid—walls, tearful—eyes, Saturday—rest, dancing—music, stumble—drunk, bird— air, and so on. But in the second and third movements—after death has been introduced into the text—there is a more purely poetic language, a progressively less logical articulation: magic—walls, eyes— traffic, sit—bird, drink—machine, stumble—music, air—Saturday, rest—bird, and so on. This semantic loosening relates to the social content of the song. After the first movement, the last word of each line seems out of focus, strange, or incongruous. Meneses speculates that the shattered body of the worker—which reflects the fragmented or mutilated body of society—has "contaminated" the language of the poem, "throwing it out of joint" (155). This disarticulation is not evident, however, in the three isolated verses—"He died on the wrong side of the street disturbing the traffic / the public / Saturday." These concluding lines ironically indicate that the only effect of the insignificant worker's death is to block traffic or to get in the way of the public's enjoyment of a Saturday afternoon. A few line-final words appear three times instead of two. Individually, these words may suggest disarticulation, but upon close scrutiny of

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the overall context they prove to have other functions. The repetition of "last," for instance, hints at impending death. The word "machine," in turn, establishes the dehumanization of the subject at work and in love. In view of the subject's routine of work, which is anything but regal, "prince" is antithetical and ironic. Similarly, the reiteration of "Saturday" achieves a sharp contrast between the public's day of rest and the six-day work week of the ill-fated bricklayer. The strong verbal tension created by these semantic and organizational features is complemented by musical arrangement. The recorded performance of "Construgao" dictates the divisions of the text and creates a dramatic musicopoetic dynamic. The omnipresence of proparoxytones creates a phonetic sense of falling ( U-) in the text, a kinetic effect that is heard in corresponding melodic descensions. This combination of words and melodic motion contributes to the notion of falling, crucial to the narration. The segmentations of the text can also be heard in musical performance. Melodic pauses occur evenly between each line of each stanza, with the exception of the third and fourth lines, which are fused by an uninterrupted melodic line. This fusion anticipates the conclusion of the stanzas, since pauses between lines and stanzas are equal. Lines 17, 34, and 41 are set off by musical stops that leave only the voice to convey the death scene. The synthetic final movement of the song differentiates itself by eliminating pauses between all of the verses; delivery here is hurried by comparison. This part corresponds to the climax of a huge musical crescendo, which, in Behague's analysis, "supports very effectively the ultimate purpose of the song: protest" ("Values," 447). The first movement of "Construgao" begins serenely with basic instrumentation, adding only a simple percussive line and subdued violins before a startling brass flourish enters after verse 17, precisely at the moment of death in the narration. The second and third movements are sung chorally, allowing for some echoing effects that acoustically mirror the lexical exchange in the text. Vocal diversification also contributes to the intensification of attack. Sound production (volume, instrumentation) gradually increases, especially with string and brass flourishes, creating mounting tension and lending an imposing urgency to the narration. On the recording, the performance of "ConstruQao" is followed by a partial repetition of "Deus Lhe Pague." Immediately after the final cadence of "ConstniQao," the music of the companion piece begins. With no loss of musical continuity or intensity, three of the strongest stanzas of "Deus Lhe Pague" are sung. Besides the musical link, the two songs are thematically related through the verse "For the

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dripping scaffolding from which we fall/' an allusion to the event narrated in the album's title song. The tragedy of "Construgao" can be heard as an elaboration on one of the adversities depicted in "Deus Lhe Pague." The unmistakable association of these two songs, confirmed in the emphatic repetition of the latter at the end of "Construgao," enhances the denunciatory impact of both compositions. Buarque himself de-emphasizes the social and ethical implications of "Construgao" and underscores the aesthetic pleasure of word play. He denies that this was a true protest song, yet his denial leaves open that possibility. His reticence to label his composition as "protest" is understandable during the period of severest repression of art in Brazil. "It was no more than a formal experiment, a game with bricks. It didn't have anything to do with the problem of workers—of course you always open some windows . . . When I compose, there's no intention, only emotion. In 'Construgao' the emotion was in the wordplay (all the proparoxytones). Now, if you put a human being in the word game, as if he were [pause] a brick, you end up stirring people's emotions" (qtd. by Meneses, 148). If lexical juggling is the rhetorical key to "Construgao," the principal operative device in the lyric of "Deus Lhe Pague" is ironic inversion of a linguistic formula; Buarque stretches the limits of a sarcastic "May God reward you" or "thanks a lot" to voice a sweeping condemnation of the patrons of Brazilian society. In other songs, Buarque employs a similar approach. The disruption of formulaic language is essential in his compositions "Bom Conselho" [Good advice] (1972) and "O Que Sera" [What can it be] (1976). In the former, the songwriter makes his social statements through exaggerated subversion of proverbs. While the altering or inverting of sayings may be done playfully or humorously, Buarque systematically transgresses the folk repertory to send serious political messages. In the text of "Bom Conselho," expressions of popular wisdom are deconditioned through semantic inversion and transposition. The text of this simple Bossa Nova is a series of enunciations mixing and negating popular proverbs by stating their opposites or distorted variants. Here's some good advice / I'll let you have it free Sleep's not better than medicine Sit while you wait / Take a load off your feet It's a fact: nothing comes to those who wait Come here my friend / throw away those apron strings Play with my fire! Come get burnt!

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Do as I say / Do as I do / Leap before you look Begin before you think on the end I fly after time / I came from who knows where Slowly and surely won't win the race I sow wind in my city I whirl in the street and drink the tempest I whirl in the street and drink the tempest I whirl in the street and drink the tempest (D 97) In performance, smooth prosodic regularity, characteristic of proverbial phraseology, is upset in each stanza with misplaced accents, melodic holds on atonic words, and uneven syllabic extensions. This intentional dislocation contributes to the effects of semantic inversion. Buarque targets sayings that postulate passive acceptance. Proverbs, such as "Sleep is better than medicine," "Look before you leap," and "Slowly but surely," are invitations to "inertia and conformity. . . . pacifying and tranquilizing recipes, standardized thoughts that cover up an interest in maintaining the status quo" (Meneses, 197). The aim of Buarque's verbal juggling here is to draw attention to these social codes of conformity and to defy "authority" represented in linguistic convention. More than a cynic, the lyric self is a provocateur who contests traditional formulas and challenges the entrenched values of the community. The formal and ethical antagonism that guides this voice is most evident in the twice-repeated final verse, in which modification of the original proverbs is most radical. The normally impersonal subject of "you reap what you sow" and "They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind" is personalized ("I"), and the popular sayings are blended with another related one—"Tempest in a teapot"—to give an image of defiance engulfing reticence and complacency. The composition "O Que Sera" presents itself as a vast musical and poetic elaboration on the riddle. Again, social overtones result from the reformulation and expansion of a folk practice, but erotic suggestions are equally important here. There are three sets of lyrics for separate recordings of "O Que Sera." 5 The two principal versions—subtitled "A Flor da Terra" [At the earth's surface] and "A Flor da Pele" [At the skin], respectively—have intimate thematic and structural links and may be considered companion pieces. Both song texts are constituted as complex riddles with no express solution. The pace of "A Flor da Terra" is quick and elusive; the subject of the lyric seems unlimited: What can it be can it be That's whispered in the bedrooms

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That's murmured in poems and songs That's settled in pitch dark shanties That's on people's minds and tongues That's in the burning candles in alleys That's said out loud in the bars That's shouted in the markets It's surely nature's way Oh, what can it be It's not certain and never will be It can't be fixed and never will be It has no size to measure What can it be can it be That lives in the ideas of lovers That raving poets sing of That drunk prophets swear by It's in the pilgrimage of the deformed It's in the fantasy of the wretched It's in the day to day of the whores In the plans of bandits and cripples In every sense Oh, what can it be It's not decent and never will be It can't be censored and never will be It has no rhyme or reason What can it be can it be That no warning can avert Because all laughter will challenge Because all the bells will peal Because all the hymns will consecrate And all the children will stampede And all destinies will become one And even the Eternal Father who's never been there Seeing that hell will bless What has no government and never will What has no shame and never will What has no judge or judgment (D 26) This elliptical text is composed almost exclusively of noun or adjective clauses with an unnamed subject. The proliferation of allusions, affirmations, negations, qualifications, and modifications takes place around an invisible axis. The lyric suggests some ubiquitous entity,

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part of human experience but always elusive, ineffable, undefinable. This protean lyric poses an enormous question, omnipresent in its own poetic space and in the vast human sphere. Jose Miguel Wisnik tells how musical features of the song correspond to this textual configuration: "The lyric of 'A Flor da Terra' poses a question that is a riddle. The melody imitates the course of that question/riddle, through the pulsating reiteration of a rhythmic-melodic cell that moves in search of tonal resolution, which is continually put off by new and insistent cadences, until a circular return to the beginning has been completed. The intonation of the question overlays the design of the tonal phrase, an imitation of the query that is fully carried out with the return to the beginning. The melody is a wave whose movement (desire) has ebb and flow"(i3). These comments are equally applicable to the second version of "O Que Sera/' in which the tempo is considerably slower. In the wide lyrical spectrum of the first version, erotic hints are present ("bedrooms," "lovers," "not decent," "no shame"); these are more pronounced in "A Flor da Pele," though the subject is still not indicated. Here, however, wonder is related to the lyric self, as indicated by the use of first-person pronouns. What can it be inside of me That stirs me up, what can it be That blossoms on my skin, what can it be That rushes to my cheeks and makes me blush That jumps before my eyes to betray me That squeezes my chest and makes me confess That can no longer be concealed That no one can rightly refuse It makes me a beggar, it makes me plead It can't be measured and never will be It can't be healed and never will be It has no cure What can it be can it be That gets into us that shouldn't That disrespects and disregards That's like a liquor that can't quench That's like being ill with revelry Not even ten commandments can win it over Nor any ointment can soothe Nor any spell or alchemy Not even all the saints, what can it be

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It never rests and never will It never tires and never will It has no limits What can it be inside of me That burns me so, what can it be That brings all tremors to shake me That brings all passions to incite me That brings all sweats to drench me That all my nerves are beseeching That all my organs are pleading And a frightful affliction makes me implore What has no shame and never will What has no government and never will What has no judge or judgment (D 71) Abstract and specific poetic statements project a possible solution to the riddle: the presence of basic erotic impulses, the universal Eros. Body imagery is strong in "A Flor da Pele," beginning with the subtitle. Negative reference to religion (e.g., "commandments," "saints") fits this impression and seconds some of the images of "A Flor da Terra" (e.g., "Eternal Father," "hell"). Political implications in the two lyrics cannot be overlooked either. Besides references to censorship and government, there is a suggestion of conspiracy in the first part of "A Flor da Terra" as well as frequent mention of underdogs and outcasts in a seeming call for social redemption. There is, moreover, an implicit desire for freedom expressed in the incessant restating of the enigma. Meneses proposes that Buarque's song text is a Utopian vision: "projection toward an absolute future, toward that which can only exist as a fantasy for the time being, but which provides sustenance for man to face the realities of the present" (123). Despite the strong erotic and social overtones, Buarque's riddle of verbal abundance lacks unequivocal resolution; there is no definitive answer to the variegated questioning. The aesthetic profundity of the song resides in a multiform melodic and verbal device: the figure of the ellipsis. In Buarque's controversial composition "Calice," coauthored by Gilberto Gil, religious references key a discourse of protest. The lyric depicts the despair of a subject who has been silenced by an implied repressive authority. Choral vocable and organ chords precede the song proper, creating a pseudoliturgical atmosphere. The refrain is drawn from a biblical passage: "Father, take away this cup from m e " (Mark 14:36). This allusion to the prelude to the Passion suggests persecution by evoking Christ's betrayal and crucifixion. The refrain

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also introduces the notion of drink or drinking, which evolves to combine with that of inebriation, important at the song's end. Father, take away this cup from me Father, take away this cup from me Father, take away this cup from me This cup of wine red with blood How to partake of this bitter drink Swallow the pain, gulp our daily toil Though my mouth is sealed, my breast remains No one hears the silence in the city What good is it to be a son of a saint It would be better to be a son of a . . . Another less lifeless reality So many lies, so much brute force How hard it is to awaken silenced If I am damned in the still of the silent night I want to unleash an inhuman scream Which is a way to be heard All this silence makes me senseless Senseless yet still watchful For the lake monster to emerge In the grandstand at any moment The sow is so fat she can't move anymore The knife is so used it can't cut anymore It is so difficult, Father, to open the door These words caught in my throat This Homeric spree in the world What good will good will do Though my heart is sealed, there are still The heads of the drunks downtown Perhaps the world is not so small Nor life a consummated fact I want to invent my own sins I want to die by my own poison I want to lose once and for all your head My head to lose your judgment I want to sniff diesel fumes Get intoxicated until someone forgets me

(D 27)

The key word of the lyric is "cup" (chalice), which coordinates and juxtaposes the images of drinking. More important, the Portuguese

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word cdlice is a homophone of the imperative "shut up!" [cale-se]. Thus, the biblical symbol of betrayal and persecution is linked with the contemporary political context of the song, where the phrase cale-se represents imposed silence, censorship, and victimization. The refrain that says "Father, take away this cup from me" also says "Father, remove this gag-order from me." The arrangement of the song increasingly stresses the homophone to draw attention to its double-edged intent. In the first two sections, the singing voice is foregrounded, and, together with light acoustic instrumentation, creates a subdued doleful mood. In the third and fourth sections, however, the musical attack becomes aggressive. Pounding drums and a harsh electric guitar figure enter behind a more forceful vocal presentation. These changes in sound reinforce the development of mood in the text. The words "Father" and "cup/shut up" resound insistently from the third stanza until the conclusion, in a choral counterpoint executed in a stern, authoritative tone. This choral section echoes the dialogue between victim and oppressor implicit in the text. The concluding verses, which are sung a cappella, emphasize the surrounding silence; as the instruments drop out, a sense of isolation and abandonment is created. Meneses observes that, on the semantic level, there is a cumulative contamination or "inebriation" of the lyric voice by a deranging silence that gradually takes control (94). Speech, feeling, and reason—alluded to via corresponding parts of the body—are progressively "shut up" or cut off. When the subject refers to "losing his head," self-destructive delusions have set in and the process of dismemberment is complete. An incident that occurred during the first performance of "Calice" in 1973 illustrates the power of the song. Censors had not acted when the lyric was published in a Sao Paulo newspaper. When the composers attempted to sing it in public, however, police came on stage to say the song had been proscribed. When agents removed one microphone, Buarque moved to another. Agents followed him to this and each of the remaining microphones to prevent him from using them. Thus, before a large audience, government agents dramatically enacted the song's central message: "Shut up!" This incident was captured on film and broadcast on television (Bandeirantes Network) on Christmas Day 1978 during the early stages of liberalization and redemocratization. The song was freed by censors and, through recordings by Buarque and others, became a top-ten airplay song in late 1978 and early 1979. Such titles as "Calice" and "Constru^ao" reveal how Buarque's organization and presentation of language and sound make popular

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music a powerful vehicle of social expression. In the 1976 samba "Corrente" [Chain], compositional structure and recorded performance are part of the composer's calculated strategy to denounce official optimism and censorship. "Corrente" is a chain of sixteen simple phrases with three different readings. The first comprises lines 1-16 as printed below. Repetition of the musical form marks the second division (lines 17-30), which is nearly identical to the first but modifies emphases and meanings with shifts in the relationship of the words to the melody. A third version is created when lines 1 5 - 3 0 of the lyric are sung in reverse order (30-15). On the jacket, the author provides a key to the ambivalence of his text, referring specifically to alternate readings. (Buarque's note: in this chain, the lines are links that may be freely placed, according to user preference; observe, for example, that the same chain may be read forward or backwards.)

5

10

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Today I wrote a real right on samba \pra frente] Saying what it is that I really think I think my samba is a chain My signature is one more link Today it's necessary to pause and reflect To admit that samba's found its stride You have to be drunk or crazy now To challenge and criticize To be sincere what I ought to do is To confess the errors of my samba Maybe what I need is to try real hard To see that samba's getting better You really have to be stupefied Not to see joy in the samba crowds This leaves me feeling downcast and sad That's why I wrote a right on samba \pra frente] Saying what it is that I really think I think my sambas are a chain My signature is one more link Today it's necessary to pause and reflect To admit that samba's found its stride You have to be drunk or crazy now To challenge and criticize To be sincere what I ought to do is To confess the errors of my samba Maybe what I need is to try real hard

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To see that samba's getting better You really have to be stupefied Not to see joy in the samba crowds This leaves me feeling downcast and sad (D 26) The slang phrase "right on" \pia frente] also means "forward" and underlines the direction of movement of the first reading or listening, but it has specific political meaning as well. During the socalled Brazilian economic miracle of the 1970s, the government pushed the slogan este e um pais que vai pra frente, roughly "onward and upward Brazil." When the first half of the text is sung, it seems the singer is adopting this official slogan and retracting, or apologizing for, his criticisms of the state: "to confess the errors of my samba." This forward version appears to express approbation of the status quo; the singer says, for example, that only a drunk or a madman would criticize the system (lines 7-8), and that the joy of the crowd is clear to all but the "stupefied" (lines 13-14). When the second part of the text is sung, however, subtle changes begin to occur. After a break in the singing, the vocal melody picks up at line 17, a repetition of line 2. But intonation and phrasing now make the adverbial clause "Saying what it is that I really think" modify the predicate that follows ("I think," line 18) rather than the previous predicate ("I wrote," line 16), as in the first part. This switch emphasizes the form and message of the present song as a continuation of the songwriter's critical work by saying the equivalent of "I think my sambas are a chain" and linking "Corrente" to a series of notoriously anti-regime songs.6 This subtle difference negates the implication that "Corrente" is a retraction as earlier implied. In the third musical section, the verses of part two are sung in reverse order, performing the suggestion in the author's note. The line "This leaves me feeling downcast and sad" is heard both at the beginning and the end of the final part; this bit of editing supports changes in attitude. Underneath the main vocal part, another voice can be heard repeating the first, forward version of the text; this mixing effect strongly accentuates the ambivalence of the composition. In the backward version, the singer "unsays" what was said in the original chain of lines. Initially, the voice admits things ("samba") are "in stride" and "getting better"; he attributes his failure to see favorable conditions to his own deficiencies. But when the lines are reversed, a cynical and critical stance results. In the forward version, for instance, lines 9-10 indicate the subject's desire for sincerity in order to confess his errors. In the reverse direction in

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lines 2 6 - 2 5 , the subject implies that continual efforts have not yet led him to see any error in his ways. Lines 2 4 - 2 3 now propose an obligation to "challenge and criticize/' not to confess errors as before. What is challenged, in effect, is the apparent mea culpa of the first reading of the song and, consequently, the principles of the system to which those supposedly contrite remarks were addressed. Buarque is using the irony of changing musical structures to mock and question official optimism. The strategy of the chain samba "Corrente," as noted above, is hinted at on the jacket. The composition "As Vitrines" [Showcases] offers another notable instance of imaginative interplay between sung lyric and printed song text. Here, however, the issue is poetic expression, not political commentary. While the song is cast as a saccharine love ballad, the perspective of the lyric is unusual. I see you out and about I warned you the city was an opening in a wall For a window for your hand / Look at me Don't do that / Not over there Signs they color you so / They've clouded up my sight I saw your troubled sighs / And laughing fits after the show I see you playing now, you like being / Your own multiplying shadow In your eyes I'm also seeing / The showcases watch you go by Down the mall's way / Each blink of light Is like a day after another day Opening a shop / You're quite a display You've already passed by / Your gaze has not found Your watchman / who picks up the poetry you spill on the ground (D 30) There is an evident emphasis on visual images: watching, reflecting, mirroring, showcasing. This imagery is linked to the graphic art and transcription of lyrics on the inside jacket of the album. The intentions of the composition go beyond the sound recording; to get the full effect the listener must see the relationship of the sung words to their graphic representation. The text of "As Vitrines" is printed four times in an apparently symmetrical quadrature. The upper-lefthand text is a verbatim transcription of the song as sung; the other three printings appear to be mirror reflections. This arrangement on the page seems to be a graphic equivalent of the image of multiple reflection at the end of the first strophe. If the cover is inverted, however, the reflection to the right is revealed to be an illusion: the

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text is different, formally and semantically similar to the song lyric but with essential modifications. The first four lines of the unsung written text duplicate those of the sung version, as if to confirm the identity of the two, but the rest differ significantly. In the new text, there are pointed allusions to the graphic trick; some of the lines say: "Read the signs, then I switch / A wise erring slipped axles / My verses are well-placed blinders / Thou art a sudden backward virgin." Through the upside-down poem, the songwriter implies, he enjoys, in contemporary literary fashion, "the pleasure of the text:" "In happiness / The face of the clan / A crazy doctor granted me poetry / A laughing absalom." After reading the free-form poem on the inverted cover, the listener finds new meaning in the sung words of "As Vitrines." The lines "I see you playing now, you like being / Your own multiplying shadow" refer to the illusive interplay of sound and print. The last three lines of the sung lyric may be heard as an utterance directed to those who overlook the printed poem. Extrapolating, Buarque seems to be provoking those who do not question given circumstances, explore, or look beyond the obvious. The textual transformation performed with "As Vitrines" achieves a contrast between the poetry of song and the redundant triviality of most sentimental tunes. In the final analysis, Buarque's poem-song is not a gratuitous game but a springboard for commentary on the values and motivations of songwriters and listeners, composers and consumers of popular music. Buarque is noted for his creation of female lyric voices, especially in his love songs, and of personae drawn from the marginalized sectors of Brazilian society: the socioeconomically disenfranchised, the exploited proletariat, and the inhabitants of the favelas. These qualities are well illustrated in "O Meu Guri" [My kid] (1981), a composition with traditional samba accompaniment. The voice of the lyric is a single mother in a favela. The songwriter adopts this maternal and underclass outlook to treat different values, needs, and concepts of suffering. While singing the praises of her son to an implied listener ("mister"), Buarque's character is sadly shortsighted. When my kid was born, mister It wasn't the season for blooming He already had a hungry look on his face And I didn't even have a name to give him How I got by I really can't explain So I took care of him takin' care of me And when he was still young he told me He was gonna get somewhere

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Hey will you look at that What a kid, he's goin' places He'll show up all of a sudden, still sweaty from his job He's always bringin' presents, I get so embarrassed So many gold chains, mister Need some more necks to hang 'em on He brought me a purse with everything in it Keys, a billfold, a rosary, and a charm A hankie and a bunch of documents So I can finally identify myself Hey will you look at that What a kid, he's goin' places He comes up here with all his stuff Bracelets, cement, watches, tires, tape players I'm prayin' til he's all the way up the hill That wave of muggings is really awful I comfort him and he comforts me I sit him on my lap for him to lull me to sleep Then I'll wake up and look around And that damn kid's already gone to work Hey will you look at that What a kid, he's goin' places He shows up in print, a headline with a picture Blindfolded, with a caption and his initials I don't get these folk, mister Makin' such a big fuss That's him there in the field, looks like he's laughin' He's so cute lyin' down takin' a rest Didn't I tell you from the start, mister He said he was goin' to get somewhere Hey will you look at that What a kid, he's goin' places (D 30) In this sung narration, the limited perspective of the Active voice generates a strong dramatic irony. The refrain of the song underlines the son's ambition to "get somewhere"; this goal is realized w h e n he "shows u p " as a photographed corpse in a crime story in the newspaper. While listeners hear this conclusion to the sketch biography of a thief, the narrator herself seems uncomprehending. This reaction is consistent with her naive interpretation of the stolen property her son brings as "presents." Yet her ingenuous maternal bias also suggests that thievery is a profession of survival in the fav-

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ela, not a criminal activity as held in official society. The distance between the world of the implied interlocutor (and of Buarque's middle-class listeners) and the marginalized mother is further established in the motif of identity. The mother and son are nonentities representing the anonymous mass of urban indigents: he has no name, only his initials appear in the photo of his corpse, and she "identifies" herself with stolen documents. In her expressions of admiration for her son, the narrator unwittingly denounces the adversity of life in shantytowns and discloses the narrowness of her own perspective. Her lack of awareness and low level of consciousness are themselves problems suffered in the slums. The samba "O Meu Guri" illustrates well both the variety of poetic voice in Buarque's repertory and his efforts to probe the mentality of the most underprivileged members of Brazilian society through creation of dramatic situations in song. In the provocative and insightful fashion that has characterized his work, two of Buarque's latest compositions explore the process of redemocratization in Brazil.7 By 1984 the military had announced that the next president, although to be chosen by an electoral college, would be a civilian. Many campaigned for institution of the popular vote; street demonstrations were common until a congressional amendment to legislate direct elections for president failed. Buarque set his late 1984 samba "Pelas Tabelas" [On the skids] in the midst of the popular clamor for the right to choose the next president, a mobilization that saw many symbolically clad yellowshirted and pot-banging demonstrators. My head is so run down / I'm on the skids Of course nobody's touched by my affliction When I saw everyone in the street wearing yellow shirts I thought it was her at the head of a parade* The clock strikes eight and I'm dancing in a yellow shirt Maybe this way my head will make peace When I heard the city banging pots and pans at night I thought it was her coming back to me* My head banging pots and pans at night Will probably keep the city from sleeping When I saw crowds running down from the slums I thought it was the people coming to ask for The head of a man who watched the slums My head rolling around the soccer stadium When I saw fans on their feet cheering the players I swore it was her who was coming with* [repeat]

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My head on a serving platter Of course nobody's touched by my affliction When I saw everyone in the street wearing yellow shirts I thought it was her at the head of a parade (D 33) The song juxtaposes an individual perspective with larger social forces. Buarque's Active voice here confuses personal troubles—separation from his companion, an implied desire for reconciliation— with social events, such as mobilization, political demonstrations, and a soccer match. In the Portuguese, this crossing of perspectives is underlined by phonomelodic fusion of lines; with melodic continuity, the last syllable of each line marked by an asterisk above serves as the first syllable of the next line. Distorted perception is also suggested through punning. The most noticeable pun is drawn with the title phrase "run down / on the skids" [pelas tabelas, line 1] and standing applause for soccer players who "skid and run down" passes [de pe as tabelas, line 15]. The words pelas tabelas also are a roundabout allusion to the issue of direct elections, because the sister phrase por tabela means "indirectly." In the narration, the singing voice interprets the historical collective moment in terms of his own "affliction," subordinating the clamor for popular vote to his preoccupation with the unnamed "her." The only hint of reservation comes with the imagined beheading by the masses. The episode that Buarque creates raises questions of self-centeredness, social responsibility, and sensitivity to the small private dramas that occur in the midst of social agitation. Buarque's samba does not propose any solid answers or lessons; the essential value, rather, is to sound individual and collective responses to circumstances of change. In an allegorical interpretation, the voice of the song may embody the fears of the ruling class, which is "afflicted" by the threat the female figure brings. "She" symbolizes abertura, the government's plan for liberalization, as both a return to democratic government and mass mobilization. The voice senses its own demise and attempts to understand the forces of opposition—represented in his joining the street dance—but is mortified at the prospects of sociopolitical transformation. The image of beheading is central to this reading, through evocation of historical episodes of violent revolt such as the French Revolution. The variant in the third round of the text—where the subject's head is on a platter or a table setting [numa baixela]—further affirms the notion of decapitation while also suggesting a head hung in fatigue. The samba "Pelas Tabelas," from either interpretative vantage point, is more an expressionistic portrait of a historical moment than a statement of position. Bu-

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arque offers a cautious treatment of an antiregime theme, because he addresses concerns of the opposition without adopting that perspective. Simulating voices of "victims of circumstance" proves to be a more effective rhetorical device. Like "Pelas Tabelas," Buarque's samba "Vai Passar" [On its way] was released in late 1984 on the eve of transition to civilian administration. Many interpreted "Vai Passar" as a farewell hymn to the military because of the title, the epic and topical nature of the text, and the time of its release. 8 But the song has more overtones than the striking of this simple circumstantial chord would suggest. The composition, with music coauthored by Francis Hime, is a refined and stylized samba de enredo in the fashion of the theme songs of samba schools, which characteristically glorify national history and cultural heritage. It's on its way A samba's coming down the street All the cobblestones / Of the old city Tonight will / Be shivering Remembering That immortal sambas passed by here That here they bled about our feet That our ancestors danced here There was a time Unhappy page of our history A faded passage in the memory Of our younger generations Our fatherland was asleep A distracted mother Didn't see she was diminished By shady transactions Her sons / Wandered the continent blindly Carrying stones as if doing penance Erecting strange cathedrals Until finally one day They had the right to a fleeting joy A panting epidemic That was called carnival Oh, carnival! Oh, carnival! It's on its way A hand for the carnival groups: The famished barons

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The painted Napoleons and The pygmies of the boulevard My God come see! Get a close look at the city singing The evolution of liberty Until the night is day Oh, what a good life, la la dee do Oh, what a good life, la la dee da The banner of the State Hospital is on its way Oh, what a good life, la la dee do Oh, what a good life, la la dee da The banner of the State Hospital It's on its way (D 33) Although "Vai Passar," in its five musical sections, displays more textual, melodic, and harmonic crafting than a common samba de enredo, there is a clear effort to establish association with popular roots and practices. Instrumentation, vocal arrangement, and duration of the song are all typical: the full array of percussion and string instruments common to samba is used; after one time through the text, Buarque's lead voice fades into a unison chorus of female voices; and the form is repeated several times, as if to simulate the repetitive parade context. The text makes reference to numerous classic elements of the quintessentially Brazilian phenomenon of carnival: the excitement in the streets, the passing of the samba parade, veneration of ancestors, festive exclamations, and singing until dawn. A metaphorical vision of Brazilian history unfolds within this framework. In a television interview, the composer said he had imagined someone in the twenty-first century looking back at the eighties. The "unhappy page of history/ 7 clearly, can be understood to represent two decades of military domination. In this reading, "carnival" and the "evolution of liberty" allude to redemocratization and popular jubilation at the end of military rule. Singing "what a good life" might seem a naive assertion that all is well with the new situation. But this refrain is ironic since it is associated with the passing of the banner of a school from the State Hospital (i.e., mental institution). Buarque maintains critical distance in his review of recent events. Carnival is called a "fleeting" event, and the celebration of newfound freedom is represented by a performance of the mentally unstable. The lengthy lyric of "Vai Passar" lends itself to alternate readings. The samba verses also evoke the early years of Brazil, when the

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economy still depended on slavery. If in a contemporary focus the "blind sons carrying stones'' symbolize the proletariat during the building boom of the so-called economic miracle, in this second reading they may represent the nineteenth-century slave force. These "blind sons'7 are the "ancestors," revered in present-day festivities, and emancipation is their carnival of liberty. Like the best of Buarque's narratives, "Vai Passar" cannot be reduced to a single allegorical dimension. He invests his song with critical perspectives on the recent period of transition in the broader context of national heritage. Drawing on established patterns of Brazil's rhetoric of revelry, "Vai Passar" captures the essence of a truly popular form, the samba de enredo, and expands its accepted function as primarily an expression of national pride and euphoric celebration. With carefully placed "passing tones," Buarque forges an ironic reprise that embodies a critical cultural consciousness. His language is accessible to a wide listening audience but a discerning vision of Brazilian history supersedes the typical discourse of a familiar musical form. In this way, the late 1984 samba "Vai Passar" is truly representative of Buarque's twenty years of songwriting and of his broad concept of samba as a rhythm, a song genre, a mode of individual and historical expression, a collective spirit, and a reflection of the national situation.

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2 OTHER W O R D S AND OTHER WORLDS OF

Caetano Veloso The most imaginative, versatile, and controversial popular composer in contemporary Brazil is Caetano Veloso. Although he incorporates traditional Brazilian forms into his musical practices, creative adaptation of diverse models has distinguished him the most. Veloso is known as the poet laureate of Brazilian song and as a "trend setter/' an influential innovator whose work has often anticipated major developments in MPB. His importance in Brazil can be compared with that of Bob Dylan and John Lennon in the AngloAmerican sphere. Veloso's early Bossa Nova songs show primary poetic concerns within the context of music. His composition "Tropicalia" (1968) initiates and typifies a movement of the same name, also called tropicalismo, which critically reviewed Brazilian culture through song and inalterably widened the horizons of MPB. Veloso and his tropicalist colleagues elaborated on Bossa Nova and Young Guard rock and roll alike, exploring the artistic and ideological implications of mass-market music. The tropicalists also applied literary concepts to song, drawing especially on the legacy of the Modernist iconoclast Oswald de Andrade and the concrete poets. After the turbulent 1960s, Veloso continued to adopt and adapt foreign sounds and to revitalize Brazilian forms. His synthetic repertory juxtaposes a fundamental romantic lyricism, celebrations of love and beauty, with an impulsive vanguardism, audacious vocalizations, and experimentation with text and sound. While Tropicalism brought such issues as consumer mentality and the impact of mass media to the fore, Veloso's later songs rarely focus on social or political issues. He proves to be most adept at shaping mellifluous tone-word patterns in the contemplation of self, nature, and language.

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Caetano Emmanuel Viana Telles Veloso was born in 1942 in Santo Amaro da Purificagao, Bahia. The young Bahian singer admired Luiz Gonzaga, the leading figure of popular music of the Northeastern region; Dorival Caymmi, Bahia's most revered songsmith; and, above all, Joao Gilberto, who led the Bossa Nova revolution. Suspending his university studies to pursue music, Veloso went to Rio in 1965, the year in which vocalist Maria Bethania, his sister, made the first recording of his music. At the inaugural festival of MPB, Veloso's entry "Boa Palavra" [Good word] took fifth place, and in 1966 he was awarded a festival prize for best lyrics with "Urn Dia" [One day]. In interviews and debates he showed himself to be an insightful critic of MPB and a stimulating commentator on Brazilian cultural affairs. In his most oft-cited contribution to the discussion of new musical issues, Veloso insisted on the need "to retake an evolutionary line" in order to achieve organic criteria with which to choose and judge musical material.1 The Bossa Nova sound is dominant in the artist's first album (Domingo [Sunday], July 1967), done with vocalist Gal Costa, who would become a premier performer and recording artist in her own right. Veloso, the performing songwriter, was already looking beyond the reserved lyric songs of this LP at the time of its release. On the jacket, he announces new directions: ". . . my current inspiration is leaning toward paths very different from those I've followed up to this p o i n t . . . I no longer desire to thrive on nostalgia for other times and places; on the contrary, I wish to incorporate that nostalgia in a future project" (D 91). Veloso initiates his neoteric project with the presentation of "Alegria Alegria" [Joy joy] at the third festival of MPB (October 1967). This new composition was bold both musically and lyrically. The rhythmic foundation of the song was the traditional Brazilian march, but the musical accompaniment was carried out by a pop rock group. Given the overwhelming prejudice in the festival context against electric instrumentation, seen by most as a sign of alienation or antinationalist sentiment, Veloso's instrumentation was in itself a statement, related to the song's challenging refrain. The festival performance of "Alegria Alegria" inspired the distinguished critic and concrete poet Augusto de Campos to seek out Veloso to discuss the directions of music and poetry in Brazil. The young songwriter from Bahia began an enduring friendship with the Sao Paulo concrete poets, who introduced him to their own poetry and literary criticism, as well as to the works of Ezra Pound, Mayacovsky, James Joyce, and Oswald de Andrade. In subsequent years there is ample evidence of this association with the literary avant-

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garde. Veloso has set to music several concrete poems and translations by the concrete poets, and in his own compositions specific techniques or stylistic models associable with avant-garde poetry are evident. The inventive recordings of the Tropicalia movement led to one of the most controversial incidents at the song festivals. In mid-1968 Veloso had been disqualified from a samba competition for using electric guitar. At the September International Song Festival (Sao Paulo), he appeared on stage in plastic clothing to perform an aggressive rock song, "E Proibido Proibir/; [Prohibiting prohibited], the text of which was based on the slogan of a radical French student organization. Shouted down by the disapproving audience, Veloso launched into an impromptu counterattack, a verbal assault that has achieved anthological status in Brazil. "So these are the young people that say they want to take power! . . . You're out of it! You don't get anything! You're the same as those thugs who beat up the actors of 'Roda Viva'! . . . This is the problem: you all want to police Brazilian music! . . . Gilberto Gil and I are here to do away with the imbecility that rules in Brazil! If you're the same in politics as you are in music, we're done for! . . . God is on the loose! . . . And I say no to no! I say prohibiting prohibited . .. Enough!!" (D IOI). At the next MPB festival, Veloso and Gilberto Gil took third place with their song "Divino Maravilhoso" [Marvelous divine], which became the name of their short-lived television show. It was on this antic-filled program that Veloso unveiled a banner reading, "Here lies Tropicalism," symbolically burying the movement. Political repression spelled the definitive end to Tropicalia as an organized movement. In late 1968 Veloso and Gil were detained by federal police and later placed under house arrest in Salvador. The pair was forced to abandon Brazil in mid-1969 and took up residence in exile in London. There was never an official explanation of the artists' detention. Their song discourse was not explicitly political or "subversive"; left-wing critics, in fact, accused the tropicalists of promoting alienation. The fact that military authorities considered Gil and Veloso to be potentially dangerous attests to their growing popularity and influence in the artistic sphere. Veloso was not totally cut off from MPB and Brazilian youth culture in London. He became a correspondent for the Rio de Janeiro underground publication Pasquim. He also sent songs to Brazil to be recorded by others and made a visit himself in 1971 to record a television special with Joao Gilberto and Gal Costa. In addition, two LPS Veloso made in England were released in Brazil. These works reflect both nostalgia for Brazil and efforts to keep up with develop-

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ments in Anglo-American acoustic and electric rock. Veloso's 1972 LP Transa included "Nine Out of Ten," the first Brazilian interpretation of Jamaican reggae, which would become extremely popular in Brazil by the late 1970s. Following his return home in 1972, Veloso experimented with diverse modes of musical and literary expression, including duodecaphonic arrangements and concrete poetry. The first album he recorded after returning, Aragd Azul [Blue cattley guava] (1972), is the most enthusiastically avant-garde work of his careeer. In 1975 Veloso played on the expectations of music critics by writing pseudomanifestos of nonexistent "movements." These mock avant-garde documents were press releases for the 1975 LPS foia [Gem] and Qualquer Coisa [Any old thing]. In this pair of albums, the elegant simplicity of vocal interpretations—including several songs by the Beatles in English—contrasts with unsettling verbal and musical game playing. An anthology of Veloso's letters, interviews, prose, and poetry, entitled Alegiia Alegiia, was published in 1977. In the same year, the songwriter participated in the Festival of Black Art and Culture in Nigeria; Veloso's 1977 album, Bicho [Critter], reflects the impact of this experience. One of the most popular selections from this LP was "Odara"; this key word, meaning roughly "in good spirits," was taken from the Airo-Bahian linguistic repertory. Since the song celebrates song and dance as forms of fulfillment, it became emblematic, for Veloso's "politically committed" critics, of the artist's hedonism and supposed alienation.2 In 1977 Veloso also released a collection of compositions for various carnival seasons. The album included two songs that had already made a mark. "Atras do Trio Eletrico" [Behind the electric trio] (1969) had enshrined a unique musical phenomenon of Salvador, Bahia, namely, the electric string ensembles mounted on large trucks that tour the streets of the city during carnival.3 Veloso's composition "Chuva Suor e Cerveja (Rain Sweat and Beer)" (1972) had also become a carnival classic and had given strong impetus to the revitalization of the fievo, as an expression of Salvador and as a form of song. Veloso has performed in France, Italy, and other European countries and appeared four times in concert in New York; one of the performances led to a 1986 North American re-recording of some of his outstanding compositions.4 Despite his superstar status since the late sixties, he did not have a gold record in Brazil (100,000 copies sold) until 1981. In the eighties he moved toward an eclectic urban music; elements of styles, such as rock, funk, and soul, are increasingly evident in his repertory. It would be unfair to call these

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stylistic developments "concessions'7 to mass-market trends, for the composer's interpretative acumen and originality, especially textual, are manifested even in what might be considered more "commercial" works. Songwriter Djavan's 1982 "Sina" [Fate], a homage to Veloso in which he coins the verb caetaneai [to Caetano-ize], is evidence of the respect and admiration Veloso commands. Djavan writes: "I will play his name so I can speak of love .. . Perhaps one day the fury of this front will become lapidary dreams / like wanting to Caetano-ize what is good" (D 108). In contrast to Chico Buarque, Veloso has regularly given public performances in Brazil and has deliberately cultivated a media image. One lesson to be learned from Veloso's performative roles is that show business and art do not have to be mutually exclusive. Caetano Veloso's early musical goals are tied to poetic ambitions. He tried "to use consecrated poetry as musical material" and to compose songs that, like the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca or Joao Gilberto's recastings of folk-based songs, would modernistically elaborate on traditional cultural material (qtd. by Bar, 193). Veloso's first album, Domingo, attests to his musicoliterary preoccupations. All the songs are performed in the soft, intimate Bossa Nova style, with careful enunciation and clarity of lyrics. The imagery and thematic orientation of the texts are conventional, but a deeper contemplation of self often outweighs simple emotive expressiveness, as seen in the following three songs. In "Coragao Vagabundo" [Vagabond heart], notions of spiritual growth and the universality of experience are introduced into the often superficial Bossa Nova framework. My heart does not tire / Of having hope Of one day being all it desires / Mine is the heart of a child Not just the memory / Of the fleeting image of a woman who smiled And passed through my dreams / Without bidding farewell Making of my eyes it seems / Another endless weeping My vagabond heart desires / To guard the world in me (D 91) The lyric song "Onde Nasci Passa um Rio" [Where I was born a river flows] synthesizes a learning process, which is symbolized in elemental images of nature. There is intimate association between land, river, sea, and lyric self, and each is related to the passage of time. The text follows a flowing melodic line with few pauses that enhances the continuity of these images. A river flows where I was born It passes through another without end

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Thus too my land an endless flow To pass and flow through me As if in the passing of time Nothing could be changed As if rivers in their flowing Led not to the sea (D 91) One of Veloso's most celebrated early songs is "Avarandado" [Verandawn]. In the original, tone color and rhythmic effects are keyed by assonance. The neologistic title prefigures a lyric that moves toward an unusual image of awakening. . . . my girl and I go courting the sunrise go jaunting down the road that spies and leads to the verandawn of daybreak the verandawn of daybreak the verandawn of daybreak (D 91) With the festival song "Alegria Alegria" (1967), Veloso begins a new musical project. The electric march arrangement and lyrics were novel for MPB. Veloso's text strikes a carefree, unabashed pose and paints the diversity of the modern urban experience through fragmentation of images of news publications. Eschewing the linearity of most voguish socially relevant songs, Veloso constructs a kaleidoscopic verbal montage. Words and concepts are clustered in unconventional combinations, resulting in unusual associations. Walking straight into the wind Nothing to tie me down, no particular place to go In the nearly December sun, I'm on my way The sun scatters into guerrillas, spaceships, crimes Into lovely Claudia Cardinales, I'm on my way Into presidents' faces, big loving kisses Into teeth, legs, flags, bombs, and Brigitte Bardot The sun at the newsstand fills me with joy and laziness Who reads all this news? I'm headed into photos and names, colors filling my eyes My heart full of vain love, I'm on my way, why not? Why not? She thinks about getting married I never went back to school, I'm on my way Nothing to tie me down, no particular place to go I drink a Coca Cola, she thinks about a wedding A song consoles me, I'm headed Into photos and names with no books or rifles

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No hunger, no phone in the heart of Brazil She doesn't know I even thought of singing on TV The sun is so lovely Nothing to tie me down, I'm on my way, empty pockets, emptyhanded I want to go on living love, I'm on my way, why not? Why not? (D92)

Veloso's song text represents, in the estimation of Augusto de Campos, the "verbal consciousness of a critical postulate: to free Brazilian music from a closed system of isolationist and solipsistic nationalistic prejudices in order to provide conditions for free investigation and experimentation in the field of song" (152-153). For her part, Heloisa Buarque highlights in "Alegria Alegria" two traits she believes to be fundamental to the nascent Tropicalia trend: criticism of leftist intelligentzia ("no books or rifles / No hunger, no phone in the heart of Brazil") and courtship of mass media ("singing on TV") (55). Both this song and the cultural movement it anticipates are characterized by a multiplicity of aesthetic information that breaks down facile schematic divisions of popular song into "national / engage" and "foreign / alienated" categories. In early 1968, Caetano Veloso released a collection of new compositions that Augusto de Campos characterized as "Oswaldian, anthropophagous, demystifying" (161). This assessment must be understood in terms of the role Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954) played in literary Modernism of the 1920s. Oswald was the most radical of the Brazilian Modernists. His 1924 "Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil" [Manifesto of Brazil-wood poetry] was an iconoclastic statement against conservative tradition, exaggerated eloquence, and false reverence for belles-lettres. The document advocated liberation from precepts and preconceived notions of poetry. One of the manifesto's most celebrated phrases, "see with free eyes," comprises a capsule reflection of this position. In the wake of Futurism and Cubism, Oswald's poetics highlights "Synthesis . . . Invention. Surprise. A new perspective." This new outlook is derived, in theory and practice, from a fusion of "primitive," native elements of national culture with modern elements, especially technological advances: "Nostalgia for the medicine man and military air fields . . . The forest and the school." Central aspects of Oswald's first collection of verse, Pau-Brasil (1925), are the use of colloquial language, humor, syntactical fragmentation, montage of diverse images, and cultural referents—including the "ready made" or objet trouve —and synthesis of perceptions through the "camera eye," as in John Dos Pas-

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sos7 prose. A satirical vein runs throughout the collection; Oswald critically reviews Brazilian sociocultural history, especially with respect to language. This aesthetic project evolves with the issuance of a second declaration of principles, the "Manifesto Antropofago" [Anthropophagous manifesto] (1928), also marked by a rebellious, antiestablishment spirit. Here, Oswald uses the metaphors of cannibalism and deglutition to advocate creative adaptation of European aesthetic ideas. Haroldo de Campos characterizes this second manifesto as moving toward a "Brazilian view of the world under the sign of devourment, toward a critical assimilation of foreign experience and its re-elaboration in national terms and circumstances, allegorizing, in this sense, the cannibalism of our savages" (Trechos, 17). Drawing a Shakespearean pun with the name of peoples indigenous to Brazil, Oswald's famous phrase, "Tupy or not tupy, that is the question," illustrates the polemical juxtaposition of foreign and national cultural elements in the manifesto. Again, literary parody and satire of prevailing cultural values are central concerns. The style and tone of the two manifestos, and of Oswald's poetry, are also present in his avant-garde fiction.5 Another work by Oswald that is important with regard to Veloso's concept of popular music is the drama O Rei da Vela [The candle king] (1937). A lavish production of the play, directed by Jose Celso Martinez Correa, was staged in Sao Paulo in 1967. The director extracted maximum effects from the playwright's text, a bitterly satirical farce about decadent bourgeois life-style and socioeconomic values in early twentieth-century Brazil. Characters are grotesquely exaggerated and their language is cynically direct. The 1967 staging of the play is often cited as an extramusical manifestation of a general tropicalist artistic consciousness. Veloso saw the play soon after composing "Tropicalia" and confirms the impact of the work on his subsequent composition.6 The attitudes and concepts that inform Oswald's writing clearly influence the development of Tropicalism and Veloso's approach to songwriting. In addition to noting affinities with Oswald de Andrade, Augusto de Campos called Veloso's 1968 album the most inventive in MPB since Joao Gilberto's. Caetano Veloso's innovation, unlike that of the central figure of Bossa Nova, is based on sustained poetization and on variety of sound structure (international pop, traditional Brazilian, Bossa Nova, calypso, etc.). Several songs stand out as experiments in musical expression. "Clara" is a Cubist construction with uncommon melodic modulations. Truncated statements and iso-

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lated images are strung together in an assonant spatialization without a well-defined tonal center. The album also includes the definitive recording of "Alegria Alegria," which the composer labeled a "planned response, a dialogue with or continuation of" another song on the 1968 LP, "Paisagem Util" [Useful landscape] (qtd. by Chidiac, 9). This predecessor to "Alegria Alegria" is also an ironic reply to a Bossa Nova lament by Jobim entitled "Iniitil Paisagem" ["Useless Landscape"]. Like his celebrated festival song, Veloso's "Paisagem Util" is a march (here without electric instrumentation) and has a text constructed through the "camera eyes" of a lyric singer in transit through a modern urban center. Veloso imagines an automobile going along the landfill expressway in Rio, the aterro. The vision ends satirically with a couple's kiss under a neon sign. eyes open in the wind / over the space of the aterro over the space, over the sun / the sea goes far from Flamengo the sky goes far suspended / in slow and firm masts a cold palm grove of cement / the sky goes far from the knoll the sky goes far from Gloria / the sky goes far suspended in lights of dead moons / lights of a new dawn that keep the grass new / and the day always breaking those who go to the movies / who go to the theater / who go to work who go to rest / who sing, who sing / who think about life who look at the avenue / who hope to return the automobiles seem to fly / the automobiles seem to fly but now a moon comes on and floats high in the sky a red and blue oval high in the Rio sky the oval moon of Esso moves and illuminates the kiss of the poor sad happy hearts of lovers in our Brazil (D 92) The succession of images in the first part traces a path through districts of Rio de Janeiro (Flamengo, Gloria). The first verse is reminiscent of Oswald's exhortation "see with free eyes," though Veloso was not yet acquainted with the Brazil-wood manifesto when he wrote the song. Here, unusual images like "cold palm grove of cement," in which tropical flora metamorphose into a cityscape of light posts, embody an amalgamatic aesthetic similar to Oswald's. The image of the moon, so common in traditional romantic songs and poetry, appears as denaturalized light in industrialized illumination. Conventional amorous connotations attached to the moon image are twisted here; the lovers embrace under the neon sign of a multinational petroleum company (Esso). The emotional contradic-

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tion in the "sad happy" lovers, finally, is encompassed within the larger dichotomy of developed / underdeveloped. The arrangement of "Paisagem Util" illustrates how music and lyrics tend to complement each other in Veloso's recordings. The first section is sung softly and melodiously with restrained string arrangements over the march rhythm. The second part, beginning with "those who," has no percussive base; the time of the interlude is freed, as the text refers to an uncoordinated variety of activities in the urban environment. The rhythm picks up again as the futuristic automobile image is sung. Musical citations of stereotypically slow and grievous Brazilian marches punctuate the remainder of the recording (A. Campos, 168). Vocal effects and string arrangement accentuate a parody of the traditional serenade. Another collage of "urban folklore" from the 1968 album is the exuberant "Superbacana" [Supercool]. In a satirical view of consumer society, the text introduces the proliferation of superfluous products and technological advances, as well as real and imagined comic book heroes emblematic of transnational cultural industry. The theatrical music could serve as a jingle or sound track for a publicity campaign. All those people are easy to fool / so they pretend not to see I was born to be Supercool, I was born to be Supercool, Supercool, Superman, Superflint, Supervink, Superhist, Supercool, Superbanana splinters over Copacabana, the world in Copacabana, Copacabana The world explodes / far away / the sun responds time hides / the wind scatters / all the crumbs fall on Copacabana fools me / hides the super-peanut / biotonic spinach supersonic jet command / atomic power / economic advances Uncle Scrooge's number one coin / isn't mine / a battalion of cowboys blocks the way / of the legion of super heroes / and me: Supercool I dream / until I explode colorfully / in the sun in the five senses empty pockets, empty-handed; One moment, maestro! Superman, Superflint, Supervink, Superhist Superlife, Supershell, Superhot! (D 92) Veloso's inflated musical persona uses hyperbole to attack media hype and the emphatic aspect of the discourse of advertising. The abuse of superlatives keys the humor of the song and its implicit social criticism alike. With its focus on popular urban culture and

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consumer attitudes, "Superbacana" brings into play one of the central issues of Tropicalism. The most important selection of the 1968 LP, "Tropicalia," is an allegory of the Brazilian cultural experience. The recording begins with a montage of native percussion and melodic instruments imitating wild birds, a sound ambience that evokes the virgin tropics. A voice then enters to declaim parodically a passage from "The Letter of Pero Vaz Caminha," the first literary document in colonial Brazil. Oswald de Andrade's Pau Brasil interestingly enough, also begins with a montage of texts by Caminha. During the performance of the melodically simple stanzas, the voice is complemented by a contrapuntal arrangement without generic rhythmic foundation, while a pulsating baido underlies the singing of the refrains. The first stanza of the following rendering of the lengthy text best illustrates the verbal rhythm and rhyme scheme of the original. Over my head the aeroplanes / Under my feet the trucks and trains And pointing out the highland plains / Is my nose I organize the movement, too / 1 lead the carnival; I'm who Inaugurates the monument in the midwest of a country in a pose Long live the Bossa-sa-sa! Long live the stra-stra-straw

huts!

The monument is crepe paper and silver / The "green-eyed mulatta" Hides the "backland moonlight" with her hair behind the forest The monument has no door / An entrance is an old crooked narrow street And on its knee a smiling ugly dead child sticks out his hand Long live the forest la-la-land! Long live the

mulatta-ta-ta!

In the courtyard there's a swimming pool / With blue waters from Bahia The coconut trees speak and the Northeastern breeze and lighthouses In its right hand it has a rose bush / Authenticating the eternal spring And in the garden the vultures stroll all day amongst the sunflowers Long live Maria-ia-ia! Long live Bahia-ia-ia! On its left wrist a Western shoot-out / In its veins little blood runs But its heart swings to samba's tambourine It emits dissonant chords / Over five thousand loudspeakers Ladies and gentlemen, it sets its big eyes on me

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Long live Iracema-ma-ma! Long live Ipanema-ma-ma! Sunday the "Best of Bossa" is on / Monday is blue Monday for him Tuesday he's down on the farm, however / The monument is very modern It didn't say anything about the pattern of my new suit "To hell with everything else" my dear Long live "A Banda" da-da! Carmen Miranda-da-da Long live "A Banda" da-da! Carmen Miranda-da-da Long live "A Banda" da-da! Carmen Miranda-da-da (D 92) In his poetic construction of a monument that symbolizes a contradictory Brazil, Veloso convokes diverse manifestations and residues of Brazilian culture, events, quotations, and labels. The lyric is structured around a series of elements in opposition and wavers between the comic and the serious, a vacillation that is matched in vocal tones. Each refrain juxtaposes different aspects of Brazilian reality: modernization of popular music (Bossa Nova) versus the primitive straw huts of peasants in the interior, for example, or the plush beachfront district of Rio de Janeiro (Ipanema) versus a common indigenous name (Iracema), the title of a major nineteenthcentury novel by Jose de Alencar and his anagram for America. The stanzas mix the grotesque and the picturesque, the archaic and the up-to-date, in a surreal confrontation of dislocated terms. One of the significant features of "Tropicalia" in performance is the use of the same musical measures for short and long phrases. This organization breaks the quadrature of the text and highlights the nouns that emerge at the end of the strophes. In the original, these stanzafinal nouns are rhymed, drawing disparate references, such as "my nose-the country," into association. In addition, the alternating fast and slow delivery corresponds to the disorienting effects of the juxtaposed items. Allusions to songs and musical shows from different epochs of Brazilian popular music punctuate the text as landmarks in Veloso's figurative map of Brazilian culture; these references are in quotation marks above (e.g., "backland moonlight"). The importance of popular music in Veloso's eclectic vision emerges most strongly in the last two stanzas, in which the "monument" is associated with a spectrum ranging from country music to Brazilian rock and roll. Although this provocative song was not originally conceived as a manifesto, "Tropicalia" and the contrasts it paints came to represent focal points of the homonymous artistic movement. The group was formed by Caetano, his collaborator Gilberto Gil, poet-lyricists

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Torquato Neto and Jose Carlos Capinan, Bahian songwriter Tom Ze, vocalists Gal Costa and Nara Leao, the rock trio Os Mutantes, and art music composer-arranger Rogerio Duprat. Veloso was the central figure of this brief but tremendously influential movement, as both a songwriter and a cultural agitator. The work of the collective evolved out of discussions of new musical directions,- their common aesthetic goals were not set until after the release of Veloso's and Gil's 1968 albums. The aims of the group included creatively adapting Anglo-American rock, achieving a sophisticated level of song discourse, and effecting a critical review of popular music in Brazil that would reflect on the nation as a whole. Particular value is placed on the interplay of music and text. Antonio Riserio identifies the musical and literary sources of the movement: "Strategically, the tropicalists relied on Oswald de Andrade and Joao Gilberto. Tactically, they drew on the Beatles, the Young Guard, the concreteelectronic vanguard, concrete poetry. From Oswald, they received critical lessons about cultural 'cannibalism,' about the poetic possibilities of exploring the disconcerting superimposition of Brazil's historical strata, about experimental language in urban industrial perspectives, about the critical potential of the ready-made and of parody, and about paying attention to the creativity of underdeveloped people. With Joao, the tropicalists learned how important it was not to look down on the people's sensibilities (Jobim dixit), to be always 'out of tune,' and not to be afraid of being 'culturally strong' (Caetano) in the incorporation of modern international musical culture" (Expresso 2222, 260-261). Tropicalism's first critic, Roberto Schwarz, describes the movement's fundamental procedures as "submitting anachronisms—grotesque at first sight, inevitable at second sight—to the white light of the ultramodern and transforming the result into an allegory of Brazil" (74). Such allegorical compositions juxtapose the old (primitive, native, savage, underdeveloped) and the new (modern, foreign, industrialized, developed) to mock and criticize Brazilian culture and society. The creative energies of the group result in the collective album Tropicdlia ou Panis et Circensis, a manifesto and a realization of the aesthetic implicit in the song "Tropicalia." This is a true concept album: the cover photo depicts the Brazilian allegory, which the songs present in fragmentary fashion; the liner notes consist of an incomplete sequence from a film script (text by Veloso) that refers to the designs of the tropicalists, to critical responses to them, and to a myriad of cultural figures. The record is structured as a long suite, with no separation between the tracks and with thematic interplay among the various compositions. Taken individually and as

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a set, the songs, most of which are coauthored, constitute an allegory of Brazilian reality (Favaretto, 55-56). Some of the most representative compositions, such as Gilberto Gil's and Torquato Neto's "Geleia Geral" [General jam], are examined in chapter 3. The title track of Tropicdlia ou Panis et Circencis contrasts established attitudes and enlightened vision. The macaronic title "Panis et Circenses" (Gil & Veloso) is drawn from the Roman poet Juvenal, who expressed disdain for herdlike citizens who asked for nothing but bread and entertainment: "Duas tantum res anxius optat / Panem et circenses" (Satires, x-80). Notions of satiety, placation, and diversion are integral parts of the song; the music is circuslike, and the text refers to people immobilized in a dining room. The words establish a duality of liberation/stagnation in which a prophetic lyric voice seeks to pierce the indifference of the listeners, to affect the consciousness of an unthinking group resistant to change: I tried to sing / my sunlit song / I unfurled the sails on the masts in the air / I let the lions and tigers loose / in the backyard but the people in the dining room / are busy being born and dying (D93)

The song's avant-garde spirit is clear: epater les bourgeois (Behague, "Bossas," 217). The dualistic structure of the lyric is progressively reinforced. The urgings of the visionary singer grow more audacious while alternating references to "those people" are identical throughout, underscoring rigidity. Separation of the two poles is also communicated in the jerky, awkward melody and accompaniment. Some images verge on the surreal; in later verses, a sensational murder with a luminous blade is depicted, and drug use is hinted at in a sequence that suggests searching for prelogical truths in the subconscious ("leaves know how to search/for the sun / and roots to search / to search"). The song ends with the monotonous refrain referring to "those people," invoking a warning against stagnation, against the type of irreflexive decadence alluded to in the title. Another song that attacks routine and passive cultural habits is "Mamae Coragem" (Veloso & Torquato Neto), which borrows its title from Bertolt Brecht's 1940 play Mother Courage and Her Children. The song speaks to the desires of the young to break traditional family bonds and parodies "Ser Mae" [To be a mother], a celebrated sonnet by the model of grandiloquence in Brazilian letters, Coelho Neto. His original line—"To be a mother is to undo one's heart fiber by fiber"—is inverted to connote cruelty and parental intransigence: "To be a mother is to undo one's children's hearts

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fiber by fiber." This song is linked to Caetano Veloso's cold interpretation of the old sentimental ballad "Coragao Materno" [Maternal heart] (1937, Vicente Celestino), which narrates how a young man's passion leads him to cut out his mother's heart. Several tracks of the Tropicdlia album broach social issues, but rather than denouncing injustices or the suffering of the rural poor, in the style of most protest songs, the tropicalists poke fun at developmental hoopla or focus on estrangement in modern urban culture. Tom Ze's "Parque Industrial" satirizes the enthusiasm with which industrialization and the implantation of an export economy are viewed as solutions to Brazilian problems. The song also criticizes stereotyping in advertising and challenges the complacency of prodevelopment ideology. Brazilianized pronunciation of the English refrain "Made in Brazil" is the scornful song's keynote. The impact of Anglo-American models on the values and behavior of the Brazilian middle class is exemplified in Veloso's pop tune "Baby," which incorporates English phrases (italicized below) and juxtaposes imported songs (including a musical quote of Paul Anka's "Diana") with national equivalents (e.g., the music of Roberto Carlos). You need to know about swimming pools, margarine, Caroline, gasoline You need to know about me, baby baby, I know it's so You need to have ice cream at the snack bar, to hang around with us To see me up close, to hear that song by Roberto Carlos Baby baby, It's been so long You need to learn English to learn what I know and don't know anymore I don't know, everything's cool with me, all's peace with you We live in the best city in South America in South America You need you need you need I don't know, read my T-shirt: Baby baby, I love you (D 93) Unveiling youth's concern with being up-to-date, the importance of English in formulas for success, and the creation of false needs by consumerism, the casually toned text effectively presents questions of cultural penetration (imperialism) without making overt sociological statements. One composition on the Tropicdlia album, "Batmacumba" (Gil & Veloso), represents an intentional fusion of concrete poetry and artistic "deglutition" a la Oswald de Andrade. In this voodoo rock, varied cultural references enter into a superimposition of verbal, acoustic, and (implied) visual signs that breaks away from linear

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syntax and semantics. This configuration is made clear in Augusto de Campos' transcription (287): batmacumbaieie batmacumbaoba batmacumbaieie batmacumbao batmacumbaieie batmacumba batmacumbaieie batmacum batmacumbaieie batman batmacumbaieie bat batmacumbaieie ba batmacumbaieie batmacumbaie batmacumba batmacum batman bat ba bat batman batmacum batmacumba batmacumbaie batmacumbaieie batmacumbaieie ba batmacumbaieie bat batmacumbaieie batman batmacumbaieie batmacum batmacumbaieie batmacumbao batmacumbaieie batmacumbaoba (D 93) The song's repeating melodic line is first shortened and then expanded according to the shape of the text (Behague, "Bossas," 218). At the center of the futuristic text is ba, which signifies a priest in the Afro-Brazilian religious cults macumba and candomble. The related Yoruba word oba, at the end of the first and last lines, designates a king or a minister of Shango, a deity in the African pantheon. Oba is also a common greeting or exclamation in Brazilian Portuguese. The word "bat," homophone of the Portuguese word "hits," is seconded, on the musical level, by the pounding of conga drums that evoke macumba rituals. The name of the comic book hero Batman emerges next, counterpoising international mass-cultural industry with the native element of ritual. The transcribed words form the wings of a bat or a K, the phoneme (/k/) that divides the text into vertical quarters. The most prominent references to contemporary

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popular culture are the term ie-ie and the electric musical accompaniment. The overall effect is one of cultural syncretism, a central concern of the group. Tropicalist songs tend to depict the contradictions of modernization in a developing country where the archaic and the modern coexist and collide. Schwarz sees severe limitations in the view "Batmacumba" and other such songs offer: "It is essential that the juxtaposition of the old and the new—whether between content and form or in the internal content—should comprise an absurdity and be in the form of aberrations referred to by the melancholy and humor of this style" (76). From this critic's standpoint, tropicalismo fixed an atemporal view of Brazil as a static absurdity without solution. The songs took inventory of a contradictory socioeconomic and cultural reality without indicating historical causes or ways to overcome the situation, thus contributing to the petrification of an absurd image of Brazil. From different vantage points, Schwarz's criticism is overstated. The attitudes of the Tropicalia songwriters were certainly not rigorous or dogmatic. They sought to create polemics and critically review cultural traditions, but, as Behague notes, they did not intend to perpetuate anything ("Values," 449). Moreover, one of the theoretical positions the tropicalists questioned was precisely the dialectical materialism (and its corollary of goal-oriented art) that Schwarz advocates. Years later, Veloso recorded a humorous reply to Schwarz' objections: "Absurd Brazil may be absurd . . . But it's not hard of hearing / It's got a musical ear that's endearing" (D 105). Veloso's sung response relativizes the ideological and analytical critique of Tropicalia and stresses the musical and poetic innovation at the heart of the movement. The manifesto LP stirred heated controversy and stimulated further discussion of musical history and the role of popular music in society. Commercial interests, focusing on the pop aspects of the music and worldwide antiestablishment sentiment among urban youth, attempted to exploit circumstances to create a fad. Yet Tropicalia as an actual movement dissolved soon after the lone collective recording effort. Like the poets of certain early twentiethcentury avant-garde movements in Europe, the tropicalists made their statement and then disbanded as an organized group, preserving their aesthetic freedom and the vitality of their project. Decio Pignatari makes this cogent comparison: "They did not want to commit themselves to any -ism, and in a typically Dada position they soon destroyed Tropicalism" (qtd. in "Tropicalismo," 83). Brazilian critics often speak of tropicalismo as a movement that lasted

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through the early 1970s. While the implicit aesthetic of several later musical projects is close to that of the 1968 manifesto LP, no concept album in the fashion of Tiopicdlia ou Panis et Circensis subsequently appeared. Wherever one wishes to set the boundaries of the movement, the commotion caused by the Bahian group made an indelible imprint on the artistic scene. The collective 1968 album— one of the most fascinating examples of popular musical art anywhere—remains as one of the most important documents of contemporary cultural production in Brazil. In the words of one critic, Veloso and colleagues caused a "short circuit" in the structure of Brazilian song and unleashed a spirit of "ceaseless renovation" (Favaretto, 21). The tropicalists challenged and surpassed the linearity of most socially committed song, as well as the simple emotivity of traditional musical lyricism. They put into practice a more complex and sophisticated concept of song, involving, in particular, refined parody, sociocultural allegory, and structural experimentation. The critical discourse and eclectic creativity of the Tropicalia group were essential to the recognition of popular song as a salient cultural expression in the late sixties. In his posttropicalist endeavors, Caetano Veloso consistently draws on varied musical sources (international pop, indigenous, Afro-Brazilian, etc.) and explores different sound structures, textures of arrangement, rhythmic bases, and textual approaches. Melodic and lyrical acrobatics are constants in his post-1968 work. In addition to love songs, which form a significant part of his repertory, Veloso's romantic musical lyricism encompasses songs of philosophical and spiritual inquiry. This lyrical poetry of song contrasts with his renewed experimentalism, with his continuation and radicalization of some Tropicalia ideas, notably the infusion of literary information into music. A prime example of Veloso's use of song as a vehicle to express philosophical ideas is "Janelas Abertas # 2 " [Open windows #2], an existential meditation performed by Chico Buarque in 1972. The sober tone of this tango-ballad is established in its plodding tempo and laborious vocal delivery, appropriate for the performance of a lyric that considers the themes of nothingness and death. A sung contemplation of self is intertwined with surreal images of a symbolic abode: Yes, I could open the doors that lead inside run across corridors in silence lose the apparent walls of the building

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penetrate the labyrinth / the labyrinth of labyrinths inside the apartment Yes, I could search inside the house cross one by one the seven doors of the seven dwellings receive the cold kiss on my mouth in the living room the kiss of a dead goddess / dead god female frozen tongue frozen tongue like nothing Yes, I could drink the furniture in every room in each one kill a member of the family until plenitude and death one day coincided which would happen anyway / but I prefer to open the windows for all the insects to come in (D 97) These sung words project a potential for investigating existence, both in the complexities of self and in relationship to others in the world. In the utterances of the subject, it is difficult to separate that which is interior from that which is exterior to him. This ambiguity is central to the process of reflection; the "inside" of the text is a dual poetic space: the actual setting in an apartment and the inner self of the voice. The multiple images of dwellings represent both a domestic situation in which interpersonal interaction can take place and the depths of being that the subject could explore. The use of the conditional tense is pivotal since the conclusion of the song expresses reticence toward the projections of the stanzas. Exploration of self ultimately means confronting the annihilation of self in death, and, in a gesture of Sartrean "bad faith," the final statement expresses a seeming unwillingness to assume such an undertaking. The sung poem's last image is a counterbalance to the metaphysical abstractions developed earlier. The singer would anchor himself in concrete reality, open "real" windows, and deal with the nuisance of insects rather than indulge in a search for plenitude that implies fearful disquiet. The singer's preference is also signaled by formal means. In the original, end-rhymes provide cohesive texture, but the final strophe breaks the pattern, creating a dissociation with the previous projections. Moreover, the concluding two verses are not sung to the second melodic line, with which the first two strophes end, but rather to the lead melody. The "but"—the rejection of inquiry symbolized by the insects—is underscored by this acoustic signal. The conclusion interjects the concrete into the abstract realm of philosophical questioning. The tendency of Veloso, the pop philosopher, to relativize the metaphysical dimension, to bring abstract reflection down to earth,

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is also evident in "Gente" [People] (1977), an exuberant song with a show-tune mood. Veloso's lyric juxtaposes the capacity for metaphysical wonder with the fulfillment of basic emotional and instinctual needs: People look at the heavens People want to know the one People are the place to wonder about the one For the stars to wonder if they are so many People want to eat / People want to be happy People want to breathe air through their noses People washing clothes, kneading bread Poor people pulling up life with their hands People are for shining, not to starve to death

(D 103)

Cosmic wonder is further counterbalanced, in other lines not cited, with a prosaic listing of common names (including Caetano). Images of stars and shining are constant throughout the long lyric, and at song's end "people" are presented as a "mirror of life sweet mystery." This final line alludes to "Sweet Mystery of Life," a stage tune (ca. 1910) by the North American songsmith Victor Herbert, a Brazilian version of which was recorded by Maria Bethania in 1971 (D 2). Herbert's song resolves the vital mystery in the most predictable romantic way ("the secret of it all . . . 'tis love"). Veloso's "Gente," on the other hand, sings a spectrum of experience, from material satisfaction to ethereal speculation. The song offers a pop paradox (people as a reflection, rather than the embodiment, of life) and is a striking example of the songwriter's mixing of the popular/concrete and the erudite/sublime. Elsewhere in Veloso's repertory, thought is elevated in an unexpected setting. In the lyric of "Cajuina" [Cashew juice] (1979), the questioning of existence emerges from the sharp visual perception of a fruit drink common in the Northeastern city of Teresina. Our existence? I wonder what it's destined for? For when you gave me the tiny little rose I swore You're a beautiful man and if perhaps to explore The fate of unhappy children can't enlighten us more Nor do Northeastern tears become cloudy to the core Only the matter of life was such fine lore

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Looking-at-each-other eyes intact was our rapport Teresina's crystalline cashew juice to pour (D 106) Here Veloso's metaphysical mode is played out in the context of rural folk simplicity. The melodically uncomplicated song is set in a traditional Northeastern style, with accordion and triangle accompaniment. A single rhyme operates throughout the brief text, which alludes to the well-known suffering of the people of the region ("unhappy children/' "tears"). At the same time, the lyrical statement demonstrates polished diction and is imbued with wonder about human destiny. Like "Janelas Abertas # 2 " and "Gente," this sophisticated country music tune shows how Veloso can simultaneously appeal to different levels, adapting speculative poetry to popular music. The poet-composer's existential use of melodically charged language continues in a pair of 1983 compositions, "Peter Gast" and " U n s " [Some], which link individual contemplation to an all-encompassing view of man. The first song focuses on the self through the theme of music; the second employs melodic and verbal repetition to scan the breadth of human experience. In "Peter Gast," Veloso pays homage to an obscure nineteenth-century German art music composer and friend of Nietzsche. Distant echoes of lieder can be heard in the melody and harmonic modulations of this slowly paced ballad. The lyric defines a persona unsettled between contrary poles, "common man/poet" and "pain/pleasure" in the first part: I am a common man / Every man anyone Deceived between pain and pleasure I shall live and die / As a common man Yet mine is the heart of a poet / Projecting me in such solitude That at times I witness / Immense wars and feasts I know flight and my fibers are tense / And I am one (D 109) The last "one" [um] establishes a connection with the companion song " U n s " [Some], whose universal perspective will complement the individual focus here. In "Peter Gast," the use of "one" suggests an artistic integrity of self. In the Portuguese, um also echoes "common" [comum] and "anyone" [qualquer um], contributing to the fundamental contrast with uncommon lyrical vision. Musically, there is a complementary differentiation in the alternation of major and minor tonalities. Notions of commonness recur in a simple conceit to open the second part: No one is common / And I am no one In the midst of so many people / Suddenly it comes

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Even in my automobile / In the traffic it comes The profound silence of the limpid music of Peter Gast Peter Gast / Guest of the homeless prophet The pretty boy Peter Gast / Rose of the Venetian twilight *Even here in the samba-cangdo of my rock and roll I hear the silent music of Peter Gast I am a common man The tension that inhabits the poetic self is present in the oxymoronic silence that characterizes the special music he hears. Expression of admiration for the art music composer is linked to the singer's own musical art, somewhere between the poles of rock and roll and Brazilian ballad. The line marked * above is sung as a descending chromatic octave that breaks the melodic and harmonic regularity of the second part. This musical trait makes the line stand out and, with the use of "my/ 7 confirms the impression that a concept of self is central to the composition. Moreover, the two verses further develop contrast by referring to a musical style not actually heard in "Peter Gast." At song's end, the opening line and melodic phrase are repeated. The modesty of the statement, "I am a common man," is put into question following the delivery of the text, which reveals an artistically sensitive and perceptive self. While this ballad specifically explores musical and poetic expression, the lyric of the companion piece " U n s " presents itself as a vast metaphor for variety and contrast within human experience on material, emotional, moral, and spiritual levels. The text revolves around the reiteration of the word "some" in rhyming series or sets of short lines: Some go / Some live / Some so / Some give / Some no Some must be Some feet / Some hands / Some heads / Some hearts free Some love you / Some shove you / Some advance too Some come through Some few / Some new / Some vain / Some gain / Some are just plain Some good, some bad / Some have been had / All at once never Some creatures / Some prophets / Some blue some Almost the same Some lesser / Some more / Some half way / Some just too much Some ones masculine / Some ones feminine / Some are such Some mine / Some thine / Some divine / Some no cross or sign Some say the end / Some say my friend / And there's no one else (D

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The first strophe suggests, among other features, mobility, generosity, manual labor versus intellectuality, emotional intensity, and different levels of material well-being. Musical and lyrical structures cooperate in an interplay of segregation and integration. Pauseless delivery brings the referents in each set into closer proximity; the melody is such that the enumerated items flow together in each series. While there is natural semantic differentiation, rhymes and melodic shape suggest sameness within diversity. The melody is a succession of descending fourths; items of each series are enunciated at identical intervals but with changing pitch. At the same time, the text distinguishes among multiple qualities that are united by common denominators. The broadest statements, marked by melodic alterations, come at the end of the musical sections, and the conclusion offers a binary yes/no reduction of all that is presented. The poetic construct is a rhyming chain whose constant pulse "some" alludes to a wide spectrum of opinion and experience without proposing judgment of any kind. There is simplicity in each melodic phrase and in each modified "some," but when the set is complete, it is complex, forming a vast image of multiplicity. In numerous compositions, Veloso seeks to evoke a universal or cosmic dimension, exploring, through such musical moods and poetic texts as those seen in the following three 1975 compositions, cycles of nature or our place in the cosmos. The first three strophes of "Gravidade" [Gravity], for instance, process the four universal elements—air, water, fire, and earth—to arrive, at song's end, at an image of cyclical destiny: "infinite river in the bed of a river / pebble pebble pebble pebble / destiny of destiny / destiny of destiny" (D 99). The song "Tudo Tudo Tudo" [Everything] is a lullaby that evokes vital cycles. Rhythmic regularity is established with clapping hands, while textually the nouns "sea" and "everything" alongside the infinitives "to eat" and "to sleep" contrast life and death. ssssssssss ssssssssss sssssssea Everything to eat Everything to sleep Everything at the bottom of the sea

(D 99)

The underlying thematic idea of "Pipoca Moderna" [Modern popcorn] is a cosmic cycle, the transition from the darkness of night to the light of day; the transformation is embodied in shifting sound strata.

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and it was nothingness, not even the nightly no's and it was nay of never more / and it was nary darkness no yet plenty pilings of pounding Ps / of pans and pins / of apparent power and it was nothing neither nor it was enough of nothing new popcorning here and there popcorn beyond disnighting now comes the morn now all is changed disnighting now comes the morn now all is changed (D 99) This composition was originally an instrumental piece by a fifer ensemble (A Banda de Pifanos de Caruaru). Veloso's lyric tries to duplicate verbally the onomatopoeic quality of the melody, which is increasingly agitated, as corn heating up and popping. The first three lines are replete with alveolar /n/, a relatively restrained sound. The second set, beginning with the fourth line, is centered around /p/, slightly aspirated in performance to suggest popping. The phonetic playfulness of this song illustrates the importance of sound and language in Veloso's musical interpretation of the environment and natural processes. The poet-singer's propensity toward embracing cosmic dimensions is also evident in ' T e r r a " [Earth] (1978), a slow and tender stanzaic song addressed to Earth. The planet is personified as a traveler through the galactic system; other integral parts are the lyric voice's notions of self and homeland. In the fourth and fifth stanzas, astrological symbology and stellar imagery are the bases for a poetic concept of our attachment to Earth: I am a fire-sign lion, without you I should consume myself eternally and happening to be people would do no good for people are another joy different from the stars Refrain Earth, oh, Earth, No matter how far away the errant navigator should stray who could ever forget youl Whence neither time nor space that the force sends us courage to give you affection during the voyage you undertake through which you carry the name of your flesh (D 105) Another instance of a composition with cosmological traits is "A Grande Borboleta" [The great butterfly] (1977). The haikulike song

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text has a tight symmetrical construction and seeks to evoke harmony and freedom through verbal manipulations. The words also have a complementary relationship with an abstract pastel drawing on the cover of the LP, Bicho (D 103). The two artifacts describe each other, and the whole of the composition seems to propose "a worldview in which all things complement and reveal each other" (Franchetti, 74). As in several other midseventies' compositions, Veloso here develops sound ambience through the use of wind instruments and harmonies suggestive of Amerindian culture. Elsewhere, the native paradigm is developed textually. In "Urn Indio" [An Indian] (1977), an apocalyptic vision unfolds. Accompanied by a sweeping melodic descension, the lyric announces the descent of a grandiose indigenous figure from a shining star, "after the last Indian nation has been exterminated" (D 103). The song implicitly condemns the mistreatment of native peoples and assigns great value to "primitive" spirituality and wisdom. The prophetic stance of "Um Indio" is also found in "Genesis" (1976), a rock tune the text of which draws on Amazonian cosmogony. The lyric is made of folklike quatrains in which European and indigenous elements are fused. The opening stanzas constitute a brief creation narrative: First there was nothing / Neither people nor screws The heavens were confused / And there was nothing, yeah! The spirit-of-all / When all was still fog Took the form of a frog / Spirit-of-all, yeah! And when it first jumped / It became verse and reverse Of the entire universe / When it first jumped, yeah! (D 102 and 108) The song's rock sound, especially the stanza-final shouting of the typical interjection "yeah," neutralizes solemn tones contained in the sacred theme. The Tupy word for frog [jia] represents divinity in the original, but the resonances of this choice are by no means limited to the indigenous. In the oral literatures of many cultures, frogs represent rain, the aquatic domain, or abundance, meanings that relate to an image of ritual drink in the second part of the song. The frog is also commonly an element of comic representation. It may suggest, in Christian cultures, astuteness and deceit, devilish ways, or even heresy (Cascudo, 403, 696; Ferguson, 19). The frog figure has serious mythoreligious associations, as well as indigenous and Christian underpinnings. This blending of cultural traditions is evident in the second part of the song, in which tribal people are said to be found "among the automobiles," and the celebration of the

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Amerindian view is qualified: ' T h e y say that all is sacred / The frog should be worshipped / And the things that aren't frogs." The sung narration turns out to endorse an accommodating panculturalism. The overtones of indigenous and Christian beliefs, folk tradition, behavioral deviance, and modern urban rock sound are different faces of an overall harmony. Religious aspects of Veloso's music are again evident in his contemplative song "Oragao ao Tempo" [Prayer to time] (1979), an invocation of deified time. Repetition is a key device in this composition, especially in the third and fifth lines of the ten strophes, which incessantly name the deity. This recurring affirmation sets the chanting tempo of the performance and is a central effect in the creation of a ceremonious mood. Thou art a lord as lovely / As the face of my child / Time Time Time Time I shall make of thee a request / Time Time Time Time Composer of destinies / Drum of all rhythms / Time Time Time Time I shall make an agreement with thee / Time Time Time Time Because thou art so inventive and continuous / Time Time Time Time Thou art one of the most beautiful gods / Time Time Time Time May my refrain's sounds make thee even more lively / Time Time Time Time Hear well what I say to thee / Time Time Time Time I ask for legitimate pleasure and precise movement / Time Time Time Time Of thee when the time is right / Time Time Time Time So that my spirit may gain distinct brilliance / Time Time Time Time And I may spread rewards / Time Time Time Time What we shall use for this shall remain a secret / Time Time Time Time Between thee and me / Time Time Time Time And when I have gone from thy circle / Time Time Time Time I shall not be nor shall thou hast been / Time Time Time Time I still believe it is possible for us to unite / Time Time Time Time At another level of linkage / Time Time Time Time

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So I ask this of thee and offer thee praise / Time Time Time Time In the rhymes of my style / Time Time Time Time (D 106) Here musical time becomes a spiritual realization in the singing of a text that comprises a personal entreaty and offering. The lyric voice addresses his god in musical metaphors and offers the song as an embellishment of the divine. The final, artistically self-conscious line synthesizes the motivation for the hymn. The singer seeks a pact for his own spiritual betterment and projects Christian sharing. A justification for such a pact is offered in terms of the complementary ontological relationship between people and time. Existence is demarcated temporally; death means separation from time and, conversely, the elimination of time, which exists, in an idealist conception, only by virtue of one's perception. The anticipation of death does not preclude communion with the temporal deity. Finally, the most immediate manifestation of this transcendent potential is the time-bound performance of the lyrical prayer itself. Concepts of the divine also inform Veloso's discursive song "Ele Me Deu u m Beijo na Boca" [He kissed me on the mouth] (1982). Here, there is a simple, continuous harmonic base for a lengthy (72 lines) semiparlante text, which the composer conceived as a dialogue with Gilberto Gil (Scarnecchia, 117). The speaker-singer reports an encounter he had with another man, whose words occupy the greater part of the text. A symbolic kiss precedes the exchange, which reveals interpersonal rapport and the worldviews of the lyric self and his interlocutor. He kissed me on the mouth and said to me Life is hollow like the bonnet / Of a headless baby And I laughed my head off / And he: like the den of a drunken fox And I said: Enough of your talk, it's a bottomless well I know that the world / Is a bedless flux That rivers only flow in your breast. . . And he laughed and laughed and laughed And said: That's enough philosophy (D 108) The passages that follow have a concrete contemporary focus; there are ironic references to such topics as urban renewal, atomic power, international politics, and journalistic criticism of popular music. When the interlocutor mocks Marx and Engels' call to the working class—"Apaches, punks, existentialists, hippies, beatniks: Unite!"—the reaction of the primary speaker is to return to the religious focus: "but yes, but no, not so / Only a few saints and aints in your songs." Of the various retorts of the second voice, the most

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important is his appraisal of conflicting value systems—"the fact is that there's an isthmus / Between my gods and your gods." The parting words of the first voice are an apparent confirmation of fundamental discord: And I responded: The god you feel is the god of saints The iridescent surface of a hollow ball My gods are heads of bonnetless babies It was a moment without fear or desire He kissed me on the mouth / And I returned that kiss The metaphor for personal gods (". . . heads of bonnetless babies") is a reversal of the interlocutor's original simile for life (". . . the bonnet of a headless baby"). This development suggests that the sung account will conclude as a portrait of conflict. Yet acceptance and harmony in spite of diverging views emerge in the return of the symbolic kiss. This conclusion embodies the spirit of accommodation fundamental to all of Veloso's musical endeavors. Tropicalism's provocative blendings of folk, traditional, pop, and art music in the late sixties both prefigured the widespread hybridization of MPB in the seventies and encouraged further cultivation of experimentalism. Continuing at the same time to develop the romantic side of his repertory, Veloso's experiments in the 1970s are among MPB'S most outstanding. While it is often difficult to separate the more "lyrical" from the "avant-garde" in Veloso's repertory, as seen above in some of his "cosmic" songs, certain compositions and collections do stand out as implementations of a vanguard aesthetic. This stance often involves appropriation and reformulation of literary material as diverse as baroque sonnets and concrete poetry. Unusual juxtapositions, sound and text collages, fragmentation, linguistic acrobatics, and playfulness are also part of what has been termed Veloso's "permanent revolution." 7 The internationalist, experimental, and literary tendencies of Veloso's composition are evident in "Os Argonautas" [The argonauts], an immediate derivation of the Tropicalia experience. This 1969 piece is composed as a fado, a typical Portuguese song form. Veloso's sparse melody carries a fragmentary, image-laden lyric. The refrain is drawn from the writings of Fernando Pessoa, the most important of all Portuguese-language poets in the twentieth century. 8 Veloso's alignment with Pessoa is equivalent to an English or North American songwriter looking to T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound, as the early Bob Dylan did, to a limited degree. The title "Os Argonautas" denotes the legendary crew of the mythological vessel Argo and connotes

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"a daring navigator." In the fashion of the traditional fado, Veloso's lyrics evoke maritime adventure and tragic passion. Nouns dominate the montage of emotive and visual images that comprises the stanzas. the ship joy the day

my heart my heart the landmark

sailing is necessary sailing is necessary sailing is necessary the ship horizon the arc of

cannot bear so much torment cannot fare my heart the port no

living is not necessary living is not necessary living is not necessary

night in your so beautiful dawn laughter the dawn the port

sailing is necessary sailing is necessary sailing is necessary

loose lost smile nothing

living is not necessary living is not necessary living is not necessary

the ship the shining automobile the loose track the noise of my teeth in your veins the blood the puddle slow noise the port silence sailing is necessary sailing is necessary sailing is necessary

living is not necessary living is not necessary living (D 94)

Ending the song abruptly with the word "living/' truncating the second line of the refrain, Veloso modifies his identification with Pessoa and the bold spirit of the historical navigators. This small but significant modification stresses creativity and the plenitude of experience alike. Veloso also cultivates avant-garde strategies in "Acrilirico" [Acrydlyrical] (1969), a spoken poem with sound effects for its only accompaniment. 9 An essential facet of the text-for-performance is its phonosemantic twists and combinations, evident in the suggestive density of the title, which fuses the words acre [acrid], lirico [lyrical], and acrilico [acrylic] to link the notions of bitterness, lyricism, and plasticity or plastic. Neolexical formation is also present in the first lines of the poem, which are informed by duality and filmic images. Colyrical look / Plastic lilies of the field and counterfield Screenastic cinemascope / Your smile all that / All gone and read Becoming and coming from / What I lived in my adolescity

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Age of stone and peace / Your quiet smile in my corner song I still sing what has gone been had and said Given consumed and consummated Act of love mortified motor of nostalgia Diluted in the greatcicity age of stone I still sing a still song of what I know I want what I don't deserve: the beginning I want songs of advent / Divinity of the hard future total totem As I want I sing Meanwhile I just undermine the green field Acrid and lyrical ice cream Acrydlyrical Bitter-Swaint of the Purification (D 94) In Veloso's unusual sound-oriented text, inventions like adolescity and greatcicity are central items in an effective process of lexical and semantic fusion, in which Haroldo de Campos perceives the "stimulating presence" of James Joyce, one of literature's foremost experimenters ("Wake," 60). In the final line of the original, the word Amaro, part of the name of Veloso's home town, becomes amargo [bitter], synonym of acrid. The poem's phonosemantic aspects are also part of a concerted attitudinal and thematic development. Like Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Veloso's "Acrilirico" depicts a lyric self preoccupied with his adolescent past and with the very nature of his artistic expressiveness in transition toward a future of change. In this composition, Veloso vocalizes vanguard techniques, notably word formation, and their underlying aesthetic attitudes favoring surprise and invention. Elsewhere, Veloso takes pages from Brazilian literary history to comment on contemporary situations. He bases a 1972 sound collage on "Triste Bahia" [Sad Bahia], a sonnet by Gregorio de Matos ( I 6 3 3 ? - I 6 9 6 ) about the corruption of colonial Salvador by commercial enterprise. How sad Bahia! Oh, how dissimilar You are and I am from our old state! I see your poverty, you see me pawned I've seen you rich, you've seen me abundant The merchant ships that have crossed Your long reefs have shortchanged you And so many merchants and so much business Have changed and are changing me (D 96) Veloso's reworking of the sonnet involves confrontation of the literary text and varied acoustic signs. The recording adds modern and

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traditional information to the vocalization of the sonnet, blending Bahian folk songs and instruments with electronic noise, electric guitars, and superimposed voices, as if situating the industrial explosion of contemporary Brazil in the sadness of seventeenth-century Bahia. The musical experiment becomes a mosaic that takes historical inventory and critiques the impact of commercialism on the quality of life in two epochs. The collage approach initiated in "Triste Bahia" is continued in Veloso's collection Aragd Azul. This work is the most experimental of the songwriter's career. Here Veloso integrates urban noise with harmonies and melodies, mixes Afro-Brazilian choruses and rhythms with electric guitars, recites nonmelodic texts to duodecaphonic arrangements, and uses nonsense sounds along with nondiscursive language. In the words of a noted critic, the album is "a Cubist record . . . a mosaic construction on diverse planes united by innovating radicalism and the leitmotif of nostalgia-rebellion. Caetano disassembles and reassembles, decomposes and composes" (Riserio, "Nome/' 4). At least two of these musical experiments can be considered oral concrete poems. Among the other unusual compositions is a madrigalesque setting for a verse from 'The Inferno of Wall Street/' by Brazil's most radical Romantic poet, Sousandrade.10 The sole line "gil-engenders in gil-nightingale" is phrased in different and alternating registers, accentuating from varying perspectives the sound structure of the literary citation. The technique of juxtaposition of the Aragd Azul LP is taken to its extreme in "Sugarcane Fields Forever," which alludes to the Beatles' opaque "Strawberry Fields Forever" (1967). Veloso's hermetic composition, in the true spirit of Tropicalia, alternates primitive round sambas with modern cosmopolitan musics, including dissonant sound clusters with Dadaist textual fragments (e.g., "green mothers") and popular styles (Bossa Nova, light rock) with brief folklike texts. The suite concludes by blending the divergent perspectives. The mixture of traditional and contemporary avantgarde technique is also fundamental to "Epico" [Epic], in which verses are sung in the style of the Northeastern violeiro against the background of urban noise. The last quatrain says: "I don't ask for fate, I make it / I'm entitled to the other side / I put all the failures / On the hit parade" (D 98). This stanza expresses the operative poetics of the album—probing the "other side" of popular music. Retrospectively, the composer's stance here is ironic, for if Aragd Azul is one of Veloso's most artistically fascinating projects, it was his least commercially successful venture. The playful relationships between the various selections of Aragd

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Azul are made explicit in the final song, "Araga Blue." This is a subdued lyrical piece, sung gently to a simple melody with minimal guitar accompaniment. If isolated from the encompassing collection, Veloso's lyric song is like a Romantic poem, which communicates joyous identification with natural beauty, here, that of a native Brazilian fruit. Aragd blue are secret-dreams it's not a secret Aragd azul remains it seems the most beautiful name of fear with faith in god my death cannot be so near Aragd azul is a toy here (D 98) On a metamusical level, "Ara^a Blue" expresses the fundamental aesthetic stance of Aragd Azul. The last verse clearly denotes artistic gamesomeness, a musicopoetic playfulness that underlies all the compositions. Riserio further notes a link between the line "the most beautiful name of fear" and a poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade about fear ; the critic relates the theme of pervasive fear to reticence in the sphere of composition ("Nome," 4). In Aragd Azul Veloso wholly overcomes the fears of rejection and commercial inviability that keep composers from following experimental impulses or daring to propose new concepts of song. Linguistic playfulness emerges as a central concern in two textcentered 1975 songs, "Qualquer Coisa" and "Da Maior Importancia" [Of the greatest importance]. The latter is somewhat like a talking blues, but vague development marks Veloso's digressive lyric. Equivocality and emptiness of the discourse become themes unto themselves:".. .it's going to be an error / a word / an erroneous word / nothing nothing . . . because I'm timid, and there was this business of you asking my sign / when there was no sign at all / scorpion Sagittarius / 1 dunno / it ended up sucker t a l k . . ." (D 100). The term "sign" refers to astrological identification (a social cliche) and broaches the question of signification. Taken as a whole, the sung poem appears to be empty chatter in which "nothing or nearly nothing is being said" (Franchetti, 64-65). Extrapolating on the song's title, what is "of the greatest importance" here is not unequivocal meaning, the enunciation of signs to indicate specific signifieds, but rather the flow of words, in somewhat free association without clear direction, in a playful demasking gesture. In the companion song "Qualquer Coisa," Veloso applies a "phonetic poetic," generating words by sound associations, an approach

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reflected in the following English rendering. While semantic meaning may seem incidental, the theme of discourse is made explicit through qualified use of a colloquial word for "talk" or "speech" [papo] in an apparent context of sender-receiver: that rap's any old thing no big deal you're gone you're out in left field some crazy thing's messing with me something crazy's teasing inside don't get hassled now double dip cut out the tricks contain the feign get outta this fix without this pain without this pain there's no scratch strains on the car nor tar stains on Spain a measure so plain a measure so vain it's morning for that rap of yours I shout through the snout you be out I shout for your rout for your screams I want you to sprout that me you should tout I'm your devout trout swimming up stream my rap's any old thing no big deal and you're gone you're out in right field (D ioo) Although first- and second-person pronouns are used, a speakerlistener relationship is not clearly delineated. Instead, notions of dissociation and craziness are made evident through the free play of colloquial usages and the oddity or combinatory absurdity of the words being sung. In the final analysis, Veloso's lyric voice may be addressing not a fictitious interlocutor but his own linguistic deviance. The importance of linguistic craft in Veloso's foia collection is heard in a pair of songs that celebrate the literary legacy of Oswald de Andrade and in others that show affinities with concrete poetry. The most translatable of the "concretist" compositions is "Lua Lua Lua" [Moon moon moon]. moon moon moon for a moment my song makes a corn-pact with you and the very wind sings itself compact in time balks blank blank blank m-y-our voice acts being silence

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my song has nothing to do with the moon (D 99) Aside from literary comparison, there are noteworthy poetic effects here, namely, neologistic formations, semantic condensation, and the multiplicity of associations between textual elements. The moon is used as a chromatic and romantic image that combines with implications of union to suggest an amatory situation that is undercut in the last two lines. This seemingly antiromantic gesture affirms the vanguard stance of the composition. Musically, the eerie flow of "Lua Lua Lua" contrasts with the percussive energy of the samba sound, which Veloso uses in a setting of "Escapulario" [Scapular], the opening poem of Oswald's Pau-Brasil: "On the Sugar Loaf / Of Every Day / Give Us Lord / Our Daily Poetry." The title track of the foia LP, in turn, realizes one of the aims of Oswald's poetry, previously explored by Veloso in tropicalismo, namely, the ironic counterpointing of the modern urban populace and the primitive native folk. "Joia" is sung in parallel fourths and resembles an Indian chant. The text captures two parallel visions of Brazil in a snapshot contrast: Sea shore sea shore sea shore in South America A savage raises his arm opens his hand and plucks a cashew nut A moment of great love of great love Copacabana Copacabana a total nut and completely crazy A very contented girl strokes some Coca Cola on her lips A moment of pure love of pure love (D 100) Veloso's creative linguistic spirit is perhaps most vividly expressed in "Outras Palavras" [Other words] (1980). The song has a modern urban "funk" feel, with popping bass lines, electric piano punctuation, and a chorus of female voices. The melody is stretched to accommodate the density of the complicated verses. Language itself is the focus of the text, which reveals a poetics of baroque effusion and assumes an avant-garde mode of playful verbal inventiveness. The lyric voice may be identified with the composer, with his fascination with textual self-reflection. Images of felicity and desire realized through the word are clearly present in the first stanza: Nothing of that bad sad taste word in me or in my mouth Bitter beam restrain mom and pop alma buena and crazy joy No way for that sleepy nunca jamais nor "never more" Without saying yes to Cilu to Dede to Dadi and Do Crest of desire destiny unravels the borders of beauty: Other words other words other words other words (D 107)

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This opening shows linguistic hybridization within an alternation of syntactical and asyntactical expression, a structure that is present in each of the five stanzas. The functional idea of connecting diverse elements is suggested in the word "beam." Use of Poe's famous phrase "never more" carries an implicit poetics; Veloso's terms of negation signify a stance against negation or proscriptive aesthetic standards. In the second strophe, images of enthusiasm and optimism proliferate. This imagery can be associated with love, the conventional theme of most popular songs. A closer listening yields the presence of the joy of words, or "the pleasure of the text." All your bright all is heavenly all your blues and changing hues All my love my sweet all is love all is gold and all is sun On TV in words in small bits in a jiffy on the ground I've been wanting that woman just for me but much more: Other words other words other words other words No don't even come 'cause there's not come 'cause there's a trainsized heart fust as in the word word the word I am in me And outside me when it seems you will not do You say you say in silence what I don't want to hear: Other words other words other words other words The third stanza, in the original, begins with a chain of nasal vowels in a hyperbolic image of emotional intensity: Nem vem que ndo tern vem que tern coragdo tamanho trem. This verse alludes to "Pedro Pedreiro" by Chico Buarque, who is mentioned in the next strophe, and exemplifies Veloso's practice of phonic aglutination. The line that follows, italicized above, is the central one of the sung poem. With these words about words, the singer implies that his identity, or the plenitude of self, resides in his relationship to the word. The comparative construction suggests the interrelations of signified, signifier, and self, and it is understood that the poetic voice is one with himself, just as the word "word" contains the word-object "word." The poet has discussed the inspiration for this line. Veloso recounts Mallarme's statement to a painter friend, frustrated in his attempts to write poetry despite having great ideas, to the effect that poems are made with words, not ideas. The songwriter also cites concrete poet Decio Pignatari's riddle, "What flower is absent from all bouquets?" Answer: the word "flower." 11 In "Outras Palavras," Veloso has constructed a lyric principally with wordobjects, rather than ideas, and has given the very word palavra substance and preeminence. Like adding the word "flower" to a bouquet, he puts the word palavra in the central line of his poem.

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The fourth stanza brings together musical and literary interests, citing figures of MPB w h o m the composer admires and calling attention to his own baroque style: ornamental, expansive, rooted in gamesomeness: Almost Joao Gil Ben very well but baroque like me Cerebral machine words senses meanings hearts Hyperesthesia Buarque voild tu sais by heart I paint myself romantic but I'm a vagrant computer Just that I've suffered so but from here on out it's shouting: Other words other words other words other words The second and fourth lines above highlight the very tension of romantic and vanguard sensibilities that runs through Veloso's repertory. The final strophe below affirms the vanguard; it is the only one where the word "word" does not appear. Instead, there is a series of lexical inventions and combinations. Here, the poet actually creates "other words." To-ends and two friends alphalight sexified la warinpeace Hailucinate palaverbose splay ok cres' exspacial Tame-ense little project jealifedeath lifelif' Lickelling fruiture Logun orgasmarvels me Wonder wo-man-alive in the paradice of felicityzens: Other words other words other words other words This concluding stanza may seem to be a chaotic free association, but there are organizing principles: notably, the erotic fusion of opposites, as in "sexify the warinpeace" and "wo-man." Semantic intercourse is an important aspect of this sung poetic fantasy of joy, union, and happiness. The last line seals the notion of felicity through language with an allusion to Alice in Wonderland. In terms of literary sources, the songwriter has stated that his inspirations for "Outras Palavras" include Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" and Joyce's Finnegans Wake (D 107). Sources and influences aside, the song and the phrase "outras palavras" are an invitation to contemplate the artistic word, especially in the context of music. Literally, "other words" are something else to say or another way of saying, which Veloso certainly discovers in this song. The "other words" are also the verbal inventions and word montages that form the vertebrae of the text. This adventurous composition is a celebration of neologistics and of logos in song. In a sense, Veloso is voicing an apology for the poetry of song. "Other words" are the substance of vocalized poetry, melos or melopoeia in the primary sense of the rhythm of the melodic word. In a "pop" environment, "Outras Pa-

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lavras" embodies the poetic, metalinguistic, and phatic functions of language; it epitomizes the discourse of MPB that transcends banality, redundancy, and referentiality. From a strikingly different perspective, the theme of language is also explicit in Veloso's 1984 composition "Lingua" [Language], a samba-rap. Veloso takes the "rap" style from the form of speechsong developed by black youth in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. Minimal and simple musical accompaniment is used for this rhymed topical improvisation. Like the cantoha of Brazilian folk bards, of which it is reminiscent, rap often highlights braggadocio. Veloso's speech-song has, like the North American model, much topical commentary, but he takes the form beyond its common use and establishes a terrain for literary and philological discussion. "Lingua" is a good reflection of Veloso's art precisely because it brings into play multiple aspects of cultural expression, from North American to Brazilian, from so-called high to so-called low art. He adapts this North American form of popular expression to reflect on the evolution of Brazilian Portuguese in contact with other cultures and to assert his own experimental approach. The playful side of Veloso, the literary pop composer, is evident at the outset: I like to feel my tongue brush Against the language of Luis de Camoes I like being and to be And I want to dedicate my flush To creating confusions of prosody And a profusion of parodies That curtail pains And prevail colors like chameleons I like the persona in Pessoa The rose in Rosa And I know that poetry is to prose As love is to friendship And who can deny that it is superior? Let the Portuguese lie and languish "My country is my language" Tell it Mangueira! Tell it like it is! (D 110) Here, Veloso articulates some important aspects of his musical poetics. He pays homage to the recognized masters of Luso-Brazilian literature, Camoes, Rosa, and Pessoa, whose famous phrase is quoted in the penultimate line above.12 While these major writers are revered, Veloso expresses an ambivalent attitude toward the past, especially toward the mother tongue. He dismisses academic

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ideas of linguistic purity, frequently associated with continental Portuguese. Following his literary citations, Veloso quotes, in the last line above, a famous samba dedicated to a renowned samba school (Mangueira). The language of popular music is thus introduced as an affirmation of New World linguistic identity. The idea that Brazilian Portuguese has followed, and must continue to follow, its own irrevocable course comes in the melodic refrain: Flower of Latium Sambadrome Lusamerica powdered Latin What does this language want! What can it dot The first line cites a Parnassian poem about the Portuguese language known by all schoolchildren in Brazil (Olavo Bilac's "Lingua Portuguesa"), a text in which the mother tongue is called "the last flowering of Latium" (i.e., Rome). This classical reference is placed, satirically, next to a neologistic name created for Rio de Janeiro's new carnival parade ground, the "Sambadrome." The phrase "powdered Latin" suggests reduction of the original language of Rome to dust or linguistic splintering and dispersion. The new word "sambadrome" is central, for it is emblematic of the hybridization, vitality, and novelty of the Brazilian tongue. Veloso seeks to incorporate these qualities just as he absorbs literary sources. Indeed, the second part of his samba-rap brings into play diverse linguistic varieties and items: the "false English" of Brazilian surfers, "the choo choo diction of Carmen Miranda," the "his and hers of TV Globo," and such names as Scarlet Moon and Chevalier. Literary concerns reemerge in the third part, where the speaker includes among his desires "concrete poetry and chaotic prose / future optics." This statement comprises a vocalization of the vanguard spirit that inhabits the composer. Still, this expression of wants has an integrated perspective. Numerous vocal effects (grunts, groans, etc.), colloquial phrases, and regional references frame literary allusions, and the final focus is on the rap poets of Harlem themselves: We sing-speak like those who envy the blacks Who suffer horrors in the ghettos of Harlem Books, records, videos by the handful And let them tell it, think, speak "Lingua" makes explicit the poetics Veloso has often employed since 1967. While voicing admiration for the originators of rap, he brings this artistic concern home to Brazil. Like the Modernist mas-

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ter Oswald de Andrade, Veloso "devours" a foreign source and assimilates it into a framework of national expression. Using disparate referents, Veloso's text affirms the potential for adaptation, the creativity, and the flexibility of his language. His tongue is one of recreation and re-creation, one that fits the molds of mass media entertainment, as well as prose, poetry, and, above all, song. As Veloso says rhythmically in "Lingua": If your ideas are incredibly strong It's much better to make you a song It is possible it's been determined To philosophize only in German Among Caetano Veloso's "incredible ideas" are that song may articulate philosophical notions and that popular music may incorporate transformations of language wherever they occur, in urban neighborhoods and their street stages, or on the pages of the literary vanguard. And as the language of song may absorb such transformations, so too can the national and the international sound and resound in contemporary Brazilian popular music. In addition to "Lingua," two other compositions from Veloso's late 1984 collection Veld (anagram of love) merit close attention as reflections of and on his musical enterprise. "Podres Poderes" [Rotten powers] has some jazzy elements, but it is closer to trendy "technopop" rock. The composer avoids the blaring electric variety of rock that might interfere with listeners 7 reception of the text, which follows a unifying vocalic rhyme scheme in the original. The realist content of the declamatory lyric is unusual in the composer's repertory. Structural and performative features are particularly important for an interpretation of this song. The wry, perhaps mildly contemptuous, vocal tones heard in the singing of the stanzas contrast with the serious tones of the three-part refrain, seemingly invested with more conviction. The refrain is set off by transition stops, halftime execution, and fermatas. While men exercise their rotten powers Bikes and bugs run red lights And miss the green ones / We're a lot of uncultured louts I wanted to want to shout seven hundred thousand times How lovely they are, how lovely the bourgeois are And the Japanese / But everything is much more Refrain Could it be that we shall never do anything but confirm

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The incompetence of Catholic America Which will always need ridiculous tyrants! Could it be could it be could it be could it be Could it be that this stupid rhetoric of mine Will have to sound will have to be heard For a zillion more years! While men exercise their rotten powers Indians and fathers and gays, blacks and women And teenagers / Make carnival I wanted to sing in tune with them Be silent to respect their trance, in ecstasy But everything is very bad Or will every countryman and foreman Make so much blood flow with their stupidity In the lowlands, the cities / The brushland, the plains? Refrain Could it be that only paschal hermetics And tons, the miltons, the ingenious sounds and tones Can save us will save us from this darkness And nothing morel While men exercise their rotten powers Starving and killing for hunger, for anger and thirst Are so many times natural gestures I want to bring my vagabond song close To those who watch out for the joy of the world Going deeper / Tidbits goods and such (D n o ) This composition can be considered a "protest" song with a doubleedged message. Ambivalent vocal tones notwithstanding, there is a critical vein in the broaching of social issues such as corruption, exploitation, and the causes of violence. Yet in the parallel structure of the composition, carnival, music, and song appear as responses to harsh realities, as activities equally essential for comprehending the surrounding world. In this regard, the third refrain is particularly important. The verses allude to internationally acclaimed Brazilian artists, Milton Nascimento and Hermeto Pascoal, a leading exponent of free jazz. Contrasting with the cries against tyranny of the first refrain, the liberating effects of music are brought into play. This presentation ties in with the concluding stanza, in which the singer expresses humanitarian concerns. Beyond materialistic criti-

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cism, "going deeper" implies realization through artistic and spiritual means. The qualified expression of social awareness in "Podres Poderes" might also be taken as a response to critics of Veloso's work who have long tagged him as a purveyor of inconsequential intellectual games and as a politically irresponsible star who fails to use his status to raise the sociopolitical consciousness of the listening public. The late 1984 recording of "Podres Poderes" comes at a curious time. Veloso recorded the song during the later stages of abertura, on the eve of Brazil's transition to a civilian presidency, the crowning achievement of the military's redemocratization of the state. Veloso's wondering about future "incompetence" emerges as an ironic reflection on celebrations of change and sounds a note of skepticism. Veloso addresses issues of expectations and reconciliation in "O Quereres" [Your wanting]. Ostensibly a love song, the fictitious relationship delineated in the lyric of this carefully arranged rock piece also suggests the history of the composer's rapport with the Brazilian public and critics. With its sighing execution, the brief refrain affirms the song's emotive dimension and the theme of unfathomable love: "Oh, brute flower of desire / Oh, brute flower brute flower." Four of the six stanzas enumerate irreconcilable differences between two lovers as figurative contradictions, stated according to the binary formula "where you want X, I am Y" (for example: "Where you want a revolver, I am a palm tree"). The series of oppositions includes money:passion, romantic:bourgeois, act:spirit, home:revolution, political rally:video games, and novel:rock and roll. This multifarious nonmeeting of the ways leads to syntheses of the problem in the middle and final stanzas: I wanted to want you and to love love To construct the sweetest prison for us And to find the most just adjustment All meter and rhyme and painless thus But life is real and askance so far And look what a trap love set for me I want you (and you don't) as I am I want you not (and you don't) as you are Your wanting and always being after What is so uneven in me even by me Makes me love you well and love you badly

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You well, badly upon your wanting so Personally present participle And I wanting to love you endlessly And, loving you, to learn totally About the want there is and what there's not in me (D no) Elaborating on cliches of popular sentimental songs, Veloso transcends the conventions of complaint and lament. His is a rhetoric of conceits that attains a more sensitive contemplative plane. This song ponders the difficulties of love to reveal a desire for knowledge and self-discovery. As in "Outras Palavras" and a series of other songs, emotive expression is tied to the realm of language, with allusions to poetic technique and grammatical structures.13 These features, the level of abstraction and the exploration of the virtualities of language, distinguish Veloso's songwriting from the early days of Bossa Nova troubadourism to the present of "O Quereres." In the text of this 1984 song, the set of elements in opposition does not really constitute a closed binary division of contraries. Coming full circle, the initial "where you want a revolver" is very close to the final "I am a howitzer," and the first "I am a palm tree" becomes the last "where you want a palm tree." The list of qualities and wants in conflict certainly suggests the tension of the "popular" and the "erudite" in Veloso's repertory, the interplay of opposites in many of his compositions, and the polemics stirred by Veloso's everchanging contribution to MPB. This configuration also calls up an image of the songwriter's long-standing resistance of musical restrictions, proscription, and critical impositions. When traditional and nationalist sounds were highly prized, he emphasized the inescapable relevance of international trends. When musical militancy and activism were in vogue, he explored romantic and spiritual spheres. In the face of the appeal of musical sentimentalism, he has refocused on the development of mass media and consumerism in Brazil. When commercial viability has come into question, his experimentalism and sublime individualism have surfaced. "O Quereres," proposing to learn the fortunes and the virtualities of desire, is a reflection of seeming contradictions that emerge as syntheses and an image of an ever-expanding and unpredictable repertory.

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