After yesterday’s white knuckle soccer match between the US and Ghana I needed proper time for reflection. Sometimes when a match like that occurs, I tend to miss important details. On second viewing I realized the importance of having a deep bench and having periphery players step up. Brazilian music after Tropicalia, much like our US team, could have sunk into a mire, but as musicians like Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso were exiled into England, or Nara Leão into France, others stepped up an more than filled the void. Pay special attention, if you have the time of course, to the following artists that appear in the Tropicalia documentaries I’m linking to; Jorge Ben, Chico Buarque, Edu Lobo, Tom Ze, Joyce and Milton Nascimento are a few. These would be some of the artists that would find ways to remain truly at the vanguard in Brazil, and music as a whole, in spite of losing their foundation.
The first video is part of a BBC series on Brazilian music, this section just touches on Tropicalia, the episodes that follow aren’t as well structured as this one, but the info is quite good and honest in my opinion. The second video, which is in Portuguese only, is so enlightening for a different reason its about the final day of the Festival da Musica Popular Brasileira, filmed in 1967. This was both the coming out party for Tropicalia, you can view its visceral reaction by the Brazilian crowd here, and features a lot of the peripheral artists who you could tell were already fashioning ways to live on beyond this Tropicalismo movement. My favorite part is around 15 minute mark, when Sergio Ricardo smashes his acoustic guitar and throws it into the crowd when the seriously uptight Jovem Guarda fans start booing his soccer song. Sometimes you just gotta be blunt in the presence of rude forces be it left or right. Tomorrow I’ll tackle the beginning of MPB, or Musica Popular Brasileira after Tropicalia…which in my opinion, held Brazil’s true golden musical era.
World Cup Predictions for the Day:
Belgium v. Algeria: Belgium (Winner)
Brazil v. Mexico: Mexico (Winner)
Russia v. Korea Republic: Russia (Winner)
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