HOW TO BUY
Tropicália
Brazil freaks out.
By John Mulvey.
The in sound from way out: Tropicália insurrectionist Gal Costa gets her freak on, 1969.
“SEJAMARGINAL,sejaherói!”That’s the slogan on a print by the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, emblazoned over the image of a“ political protestor knocked to the ground. Translated from the Portuguese, it reads, “Be an outcast, be a hero!”
Oiticica’s artwork became the banner of the Tropicália movement, a late-’60s musical uprising with real revolutionary impact. Over two brief years, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Os Mutantes and their co-conspirators plotted a radical but often playful response to Brazil’s right-wing military regime, while also challenging the left-wing guardians of their country’s culture. To do so, they mashed together Brazilian music with psychedelic rock, musique concrète and a voracious taste for the avant-garde. Imagine Sgt.
Pepper meets bossa nova and samba, with a side order of Hendrix, and you’re at least a first step on the way to understanding this whirlwind insurrection.
The campaign launched at a song contest in October 1967, when Gil and Veloso’s contributions were met with outrage from the left, their electric guitars treated as a capitulation to American cultural imperialism. By the end of 1968, the twin provocateurs had been arrested by the far-right government; by July 1969, they were living in exile in London. Tropicália was essentially over.
But the records they made in 1968 and 1969 remain masterpieces – key indicators of how the liberating currents of psychedelia could feed into diverse scenes far away from Haight-Ashbury and Ladbroke Grove. While the architects of Tropicália continued to make great music over subsequent decades, we’ve decided to be strictly doctrinaire for this month’s How To Buy selection, sticking with 10 albums recorded during those frantically creative two years.