An Other Introduction to Brazilian Popular Music:

Tropes of Modernism and Postmodernism

Alvaro Neder
Palestra em curso de Rose Subotnik, Universidade Brown, 2004.
Obs. This is an unpublished paper, written especially and specifically for this class. It
shouldn’t be regarded as a rehearsed work, but as an invitation to dialogue. All
criticisms are welcome.

In this unpretentious introduction I’d like to discuss some issues related to

Brazilian music and culture, trying to keep under control the anxiety of detailing the
country in a few pages. At least the references of several fundamental authors and texts
can be useful to those interested in a deeper examination of this subject.
The first and more serious problem to be tackled here is the translation of songs.
As you know, a language isn’t just a vehicle for the communication of thought, is a way
of thinking. In the one hand, to discuss Brazilian culture through another idiom already
is in itself a severe limitation to the understanding of this culture in its own terms, but it
can be justified as a potential resource for exploring alternative views that can bring
insights to the process. On the other hand, the problem of language becomes an
unsurpassable obstacle when the object is song. The pleasures of understanding good
lyrics and their creative playing with the sounds, rhythms, rhymes are untranslatable.
Those of Brazilian popular music have reached an admirable sophistication at least
since the 1930’s (when radio became a mass media in that country), and they are
studied, many times, as poetry (regardless of the adequacy of such approach). Of
course, fortunately, there is also the immediate level of enjoyment of the sounds in
themselves. In an attempt to make a compromise in this introduction, I have provided a
version authored by Perrone (1989), one of the most capable professionals for such a
task; along with that, I’ve proposed another less brilliant version and my own very
precarious literal translations.
As it is understandable, Brazilian artists have always been dealing with the issue
of the relations between center and periphery. To embrace techniques imported from the

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center could be both a way of promoting the development of the country and the
perpetuation of its lagging behind by way of submission. Obviously this fundamental
problem wasn’t left to the artists alone, as the intellectuals always have been intimately
connected to this debate. Around this primarily aesthetic theme have been always
revolving others such as national identity, technology, politics, economy. In the realm
of this contention I’d like to discuss in this paper some delimited aspects of Brazilian
popular music and culture, in which they relate to the ongoing academic debate about
modernism and postmodernism (as artistic responses to the historic periods modernity
and postmodernity).
For the aims of this discussion I propose, somewhat arbitrarily, the utilization of
two of the most important genres of Brazilian popular music since the mid-60’s: MPB
(which appeared exactly in that period) as the representative of what it could be, with all
reserve, be called modernism, and Tropicália (1967-ca.1969), with the same reserve,
representing postmodernism. Around them will gravitate intellectuals, artists and
previous artistic movements and styles, without concern for chronological order but for
ideological and structural features.
MPB is short for Brazilian Popular Music, and as such the acronym can be
applied indifferently to any such kind of music; on the other hand, it has a little more
precise meaning as a genre that came out in the 60’s. In this paper, MPB will only
figure in the latter sense.
In this essay some criticisms will be addressed to ideologies embraced by
composers and writers, but this in any way pretends to deny their artistic merits: all the
ones mentioned here surpass by far their weaknesses with their talent. For example,
Villa-Lobos, in spite of the exotic conception of Brazil embedded in several of his
works, is justifiably considered one of the great composers of the 20th century, and also
was responsible in an important way for the blurring of the line drawn between “art”
and “popular” music: many of his pieces, notably his repertory for the guitar, in spite of
highly elaborated in the classical style and extremely complex in terms of technique,
have a distinguishable Brazilian-popular character (not only folkloric, but also
contemporary urban). Therefore, all effort is necessary to not condemn the totality of an

2
 artist’s works as a result of a somewhat schematic attempt of providing a quick
introductory view of Brazilian popular music and culture.
As an additional explanatory note, Brazilians generally address consecrated
authors or artists by their first names.

Modernism and Postmodernism: An Ad-Hoc Characterization

From The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism
(Childers et Hentzi, 1995):
Although it is very difficult to pin exact moments of conception and demise upon artistic
movements, it is safe to say that some aspects of modernism emerged in France in the last quarter of
the nineteenth century, while others linger in the writing and work of many of today's authors and
artists. Despite its fuzzy origins and stubborn refusal to die out completely, modernism is usually
defined as the predominant artistic and literary movement between 1890 and 1945, with its most
productive and innovative period being the 1920s and 1930s. Often seen as a reaction to the
stringent aesthetic formulas and moralism of the Victorian period, modernism is associated with the
AVANT-GARDE, bohemianism, experimentation with traditional genres and styles, and a
conception of the artist as creator rather than preserver of culture. For critics such as Harold
Rosenberg, modernist art participates in the "tradition of the new." Unconventional, often formally
complex and thematically apocalyptic, modernist literary and artistic creations typically emphasize
the artist's difference, even ALIENATION, from the masses. Thus, the artist occupies a privileged
social position, but the redemptive possibilities of art are not assured. Ezra Pound wrote, "artists are
the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists."

Most literary historians identify 1922 as the apex of "high modernism." It was in that year that both
James Joyce's Ulysses and T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland were published. Both texts were highly
experimental, relying on FRAGMENTATION and a sense of alienation to achieve their effects.
Joyce's novel is often singled out as the innovator of a narrative style, stream of consciousness,
which placed the reader in characters' minds without benefit of the usual explanations and frames of
Realist literature (See REALISM). This technique, which Joyce pushed even further in his later
work Finnegan’s Wake, was also used and experimented with by writers such as Virginia Woolf and
William Faulkner. In literary theory, the "practical criticism" of I. A. Richards, together with the
NEW CRITICISM, helped to emphasize the primacy of the text and to focus increasing attention on
writing itself, just as emerging literary styles insisted that increased attention be paid to the ways in
which a text can produce meaning.

The emergence of modernism as a dominant artistic and literary trend is often linked to the change
in thinking that seemed to come about as an effect of the First World War. Faced with the
dissolution of the outmoded political orders and the enormous casualties of the war, old ways of
explaining and portraying the world no longer seemed either appropriate or applicable. Increasingly,
alienation and isolation emerged as important themes, and even as techniques. Bertolt Brecht's EPIC
THEATER, for example, deliberately attempted to achieve "alienation effects" that would break
down the conventions of nineteenth-century realist theater---conventions that he believed
encouraged passive reception on the part of audiences. Franz Kafka, on the other hand, as well as
early existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre, focuses on the absurd and isolated circumstances of the
individual.

In recent years there has been much discussion as to whether modernism has been replaced by an
even more fragmented, but ultimately more "playful" aesthetic, POSTMODERNISM. For a number
of theorists and critics, the advent of atomic war and the horror of the Holocaust effectively ended

3
 modernism and gave rise to yet a new way of conceiving the world. Other critics have argued that
modernism has outlived its anti-conventional status, its major texts having become canonized in
anthologies and on syllabi and its major formal innovations having become the standard against
which younger artists now rebel. On the other hand, theorists such as Jürgen Habermas have argued
that modernism is the epitome of ENLIGHTENMENT thought, and that as long as we subscribe to
enlightenment epistemology and the primacy of reason, we remain in the throes of modernism. See
also CONSTRUCTIVISM, DADA, EXISTENTIALISM, FUTURISM.

In the case of Brazilian modernism, the movement constituted itself as a reaction

against the values of romanticism, whose aesthetics was understood as tired,
grandiloquent, subservient to European doctrine. Modernism represents, in a general
manner, the search for a new order through rupture with values like these. Behind the
search for the overcoming of aesthetic horizons shows a political hope, the expectancy
that, by way of new artistic grounds, a new social and economic order supervenes. Such
expectancy was shared both by those situated at the right of the political spectrum and by
the leftist activists. For that reason, a major category for the definition of modernism is
utopia. The movement would be tributary of the bourgeois revolutions of the 18 th. century
(e.g. the French one), as well as of the collection of ideas brought under the aegis of
Enlightenment, with its belief in the power of Reason and Knowledge to promote the
well being of humanity.
With the aforementioned constatation of the horrors brought by the 20 th century and
of what was claimed to be the powerlessness of Science, Arts and general knowledge
fostered by Enlightenment to protect humankind of such threats, in the mid-1950’s,
therefore after two world wars, gradually the appearance of a new historic framework is
perceived by some, and the term “postmodernity” was taken from previous usages to
refer to it (with “postmodernism” being the artistic response to it). From The Concise
Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Baldick, 1990):
A disputed term that has occupied much recent debate about contemporary culture since the early
1980s. In its simplest and least satisfactory sense it refers generally to the phase of 20th-century
Western culture that succeeded the reign of high MODERNISM, thus indicating the products of the
'space age' after some time in the 1950s. More often, though, it is applied to a cultural condition
prevailing in the advanced capitalist societies since the 1960s, characterized by a superabundance of
disconnected images and styles---most noticeably in television, advertising, commercial design, and
pop video. In this sense, promoted by Jean Baudrillard and other commentators, postmodernity is
said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and
promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning,
originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals. As
applied to literature and other arts, the term is notoriously ambiguous, implying either that
modernism has been superseded or that it has continued into a new phase. Postmodernism may be
seen as a continuation of modernism's alienated mood and disorienting techniques and at the same
time as an abandonment of its determined quest for artistic coherence in a fragmented world: in very

4
 crude terms, where a modernist artist or writer would try to wrest a meaning from the world through
myth, symbol, or formal complexity, the postmodernist greets the ABSURD or meaningless
confusion of contemporary existence with a certain numbed or flippant indifference, favouring self-
consciously 'depthless' works of FABULATION, PASTICHE, BRICOLAGE, or ALEATORY
disconnection. The term cannot usefully serve as an inclusive description of all literature since the
1950s or 1960s, but is applied selectively to those works that display most evidently the moods and
formal disconnections described above. It seems to have no relevance to modern poetry, and little to
drama, but is used widely in reference to fiction, notably to the novels (or ANTI-NOVELS.) and
stories of Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Italo Calvino, Vladimir Nabokov, William S.
Burroughs, and Angela Carter. Some of their works, like Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) and
Nabokov's Ada (1969), employ devices reminiscent of SCIENCE FICTION, playing with
contradictory orders of reality or the irruption of the fabulous into the secular world. Opinion is still
divided, however, on the value of the term and of the phenomenon it purports to describe. Those
who most often use it tend to welcome 'the postmodern' as a liberation from the hierarchy of 'high'
and 'low' cultures; while sceptics (sometimes dismissively referring to the postmodern enthusiasts as
'posties') regard the term as a symptom of irresponsible academic euphoria about the glitter of
consumerist capitalism and its moral vacuity.

Here, any expectancy of Utopian redemption in the future gives way to a somewhat
cynical disappointment, to hedonism, to the moment that escapes. Modernism, being
informed by the belief in Knowledge, would draw clearly cut lines between what would
come from the “high culture” and what existed as “low culture”, as the ideal of the well-
being of humanity was grounded in the urge artists and intellectuals shared, of leading the
people to arm themselves with discerning faculties to administrate their choices. On the
contrary, postmodernism evidenced repugnancy for any hierarchization of high/low; not
only for distrusting of the fixed reference points implied in the idea of Truth, but also for
attacking modernism’s point of view as monophonic. In an attempt to define the correct
cultural path, argue the postmodernists, the movement closed itself to other voices, which
were excluded from the debate.
Departing from Hassan’s checklist (1987, 91-2), some comments can be addressed
about the differences between modernism and postmodernism. Narrative, as teleology
(directed to an end), indicated a present, a past and a future obeying to a linear scheme
that would conduct from darkness to light, with the route being defined from top to
bottom. Against it was decreed, by postmodernists, the end of narrative. As opposed to
the totalizing metanarrative (Great History), with its apex in a new social order,
postmodernism proposes the Petite Histoire, the fragmented history that sought to
prioritize particular perspectives, such as the madmen’s, of family, of private life, the
women’s, blacks’, the homosexuals’, and so on. That is the reason for the postmodern
profusion of novels and movies dealing with the same event under the non-hierarchized

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perspectives of several of the participants in the plot. Thus, to the more or less closed,
conjunctive form of modernism was opposed the antiform (disjunctive, open) of
postmodernism, and the dissolution of the high/low divide was a consequence: while
modernism elaborated folkloric themes in such a way as to propose a narrative that
departed from the values of the people to reach the values of civilization, postmodern
production simply would mix elements of “high” and “low” culture until it would be
impossible to distinguish the difference between them. The importance of the mass media
for postmoderns stems from that, for which they are severely criticized by modernists.
For these reasons, while the modernist production is a drive towards a purpose,
postmodernism organizes itself around the concept of play; anarchy is substituted for
hierarchy; the opera aberta, the process, the performance, for the closed, finished work;
participation for distance (instead of mental contemplation, a direct, bodily involvement);
synthesis gives room to dialogue; deconstruction is substituted by the idea of
creation/totalization; dispersion by centering; text and its intertextual relationships by the
genre clearly defined and by the idea of influence; semantics (concern for the signified)
gives way to rhetorics (concern for the manner signifieds are built); syntagm and
metonymy (which demand a combinatory, inclusive activity) are substituted for paradigm
and metaphor (which demand a selective, exclusive activity); the interest in the signifier
(infinitely plural signifieds) is substituted for the interest in the signified; the readerly
(emphasis in the consumption of the finished work) is opposed to the writerly (emphasis
in the production of a playful reading).
In a certain way, the debate about postmodernity has contributed to bring
important elucidations and to ground political advancements for the peoples and
societies. On the other hand, hopes and optimism proved excessive. The case of the
alleged liberating aspect of the decline of the nation-states could be brought to light.
Appadurai, for instance, differentiates five dimension of global "scapes," flowing across
cultural boundaries: 1) ethnoscapes, the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting
world in which people live, 2) technoscapes, the global configuration of technologies
moving at high speeds across previously impermeable borders, 3) financescapes, the
global grid of currency speculation and capital transfer, 4) mediascapes, the distribution
of the capabilities to produce and disseminate information and the large complex

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 repertoire of images and narratives generated by these capabilities, 5) ideoscapes,
ideologies of states and counter-ideologies of movements, around which nation-states
have organized their political cultures. The result of these accelerated transfers would be
the overcoming of the concept of nation-state, bring the ceasing of wars for the
conquering and defense of territories, and the end of fundamentalisms, among other
things. As we know now, in spite of the evident transformations in the flux of the five
“scapes”, fundamentalisms are alive as ever, and also are lodged in unsuspected places.
In a certain way it can be said that postmodernists’ best intentions ceased to exist before
they have begun to.
Besides, if postmodernism was interested in giving voice to the disenfranchised,
the debates around it have an even more limited application for peripheric countries, as
they are construed predominantly under the perspective of the first world. Thus, if
postmodernity has been described as “flexible” (Harvey 1989), this “flexibility” would
have never arrived to the majority of the population of the poor countries, which goes
on subsisting on an archaic economic basis or, in the best of cases, on a fordist one
(while the flexibility is enjoyed by the elite of these countries). Even if theoreticians of
postmodernity acknowledge an extremely complex situation, which escapes from rigid
attempts of definition, where improvements coexist with retrogressions and
permanences  a multitemporality which is, in itself, detected by them  such
theoreticians, notwithstanding, go on talking from a privileged perspective, which is the
one shared by the middle class of the first world. Some approximation is possible,
though, provided it is understood that the exercise realized here isn’t that of hierarchize
the two terms as poles in a dichotomy, but that of clashing one against the other with the
aim of obtaining some perception of the Brazilian cultural and musical reality.

Mário and Music

Mário de Andrade, novelist, poet, researcher, profound knower of music theory and
of history of European concert music, one of the main leaders of Brazilian modernism,
elected folkloric music as the one that contained the true national identity of Brazil. An
international authority on ethnomusicology declares about Mario:

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 His essay on Brazilian music (1928) was the first perceptive attempt to delineate and analyze the
various sound-structural elements of Brazilian folk music. His concept of music was dynamic, as
opposed to the prevailing views of his time. In his studies of Luso-Brazilian, Afro-Brazilian and, to
a lesser degree, Brazilian Indian music, he conceived of musical dynamics as multidirectional. His
studies of the dramatic dances, which he labeled bailados (1959), and of 'witchcraft music' (1963)
remain the most stimulating of Brazil's ethnomusicological literature because, with his unique prose
style, he was able to combine sociocultural and musical matters. Andrade considered the
ethnographic basis and justification of musical-performance contexts, which made him a true
ethnomusicologist in concept, if not in actual method (Béhague, 1993, pp. 483-4).

This excellence in the folkloric field was mobilized by his utopic ideal: the
progressive conduction of the Brazilian people from a state of technological
underdevelopment until it is superseded — that would be presided by European norms
(from technique to culture). There we see a totalizing, teleological narrative, which
departs from the origins of Brazil to reach an evolutive point, which corresponds to a
national translation of the ideals and development achieved by Europeans.
A national art is already made in the people’s inconscience. The artist only must provide to the
already existing elements an erudite transposition that makes of popular music artistic music, that is:
immediately disinterested (Andrade, s.d., p. 16).1
Mário alludes here to the passage of functional music, that is, music invented and
realized by the very people for the accompaniment of religious rituals, of feast and work
(interested music), to the stage of “disinterested music”. This historic stage, according to
postmodernists, is a development which is connected to the constitution of the bourgeois
class, when music begins to demand, for several reasons (of which, they argue, it is not
impossible to imagine social control) an essentially mental activity (as opposed to a
bodily one, like dance), individual and contemplative, cutting its collective bonds from
religion, work and feast. This terminology (disinterested art) would hint at the philosophy
of German idealism, which was appropriated by the ideologues of the nascent
bourgeoisie of the 19th century in their drive toward rationalization.
At the simplest level, idealist and formalist notions of ‘art’ clearly performs the useful functions for
the bourgeoisie of removing the sphere of culture out of the immediate context of social meaning,
argument and struggle into the pure realms of the Absolute, while conveniently insisting on this
class’s ownership of the ‘highest’ values (Middleton, 1990: 107).

It is also necessary to say that Mário was an extremely progressist thinker of his
time, under several aspects. One of the most important considerations that oriented his
practice was the notion that the intellectual should dedicate a good deal of her or his time
1
“uma arte nacional já está feita na inconsciencia do povo. O artista tem só que dar pros elementos já
existentes uma transposição erudita que faça da música popular, música artistica, isto é: imediatamente
desinteressada”.

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to be where the people are. His body of work is really impressive, both in quality and
quantity, knowing that it was so important for him to be in the streets, in bars, in popular
parties, near the people, getting to know through the best way the soul of the Brazilian.
And above all, he had a project for Brazil, and a project deeply concerned with the
popular causes.
Thus Mário raises folkloric music to the condition of holder of the essence of the
national, while, in the other pole of the dichotomy, he puts “popularesque” music (as he
and many cultural critics of his age referred to popular-commercial music). The latter,
infiltrated by internationalisms, wouldn’t conduce to the realization of his Utopia, his
teleological project of overcoming Brazilian technological backwardness. His idea of
progress, therefore, depended upon an essence of Brazilian, untouched in the heart of the
folkloric cultural manifestations (which he called the “popular”). The music disseminated
by mass media, in opposition, being commercial (aiming at profit, instead of the other,
the pure one) and impure (also for admitting foreign influences), should be combated.
This dualism (popular/ primitive/ collective/ materialist on the one hand; and the erudite/
civilized/ individual/ idealistic on the other) brings serious consequences for the
understanding, in its own terms, of peripheric cultures in general, and of the Brazilian one
in particular. In this way it is reaffirmed and confirmed the duality civilization/culture, or
the belief still today quite prevalent that while the more technologically advanced peoples
hold a “civilization”, the others find themselves still in the stage of “culture”. According
to Richard Fox (1985), the anthropological term “culture” has been employed historically
to denote an essentialized category of identity similar to race or ethnicity, which is
congruent to Edward Said’s Orientalism (1979): culture is construed as organically
inherent to individuals and groups (and we’ll see how that works in the case of Brazil
with the still today prevalent myth of the three races). The term “culture” gained
therefore the common sense as supplanting race, blood or ethnicity as an essentialized
mark of the ethnic-racial difference. As Gilroy observes, “It is significant that prior to the
consolidation of scientific racism in the nineteenth century, the term ‘race’ was used very
much in the way that the word ‘culture’ is used today” (Gilroy, 1993: 8).
It is perceivable that this leads to the defense of that that the very Mário fought, that
is, “fun exoticism” (s.d., 15) for export. While artists of the “civilized” world have the

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freedom to absorb as many international influences as please them, those artists of the
“natural culture” must remain primitive (or to declare their inferiority face to an imported
model). Exotic scenes of an exuberant nature and widespread sexuality are part of this
ideology. As this constitutes a development of the lineage opened by Montaigne in his
Essays (On Cannibals, 1580), which brought forth the figure of the Noble Savage, the
acceptance of the fact that artists said civilized (therefore, according to Montaigne,
representatives of a world deprived of the “purity” of the natural world) can enjoy the
usufruct of profit and also to appropriate the “available” material of the artists of the
natural culture to themselves becomes its corollary; after all, cultural products of a
“natural culture” don’t imply in authorial property more than that what is brought up by
nature is a propriety of anyone. Thus we are here under the rubric of postcolonialism.

Popular Music and Brazilian Modernism

Several influences of modernism over popular song can be traced from the
categories of mimesis, parody and paraphrase, defined by Sant'Anna as "three types of
language that would constitute the initial soil of the movement" (1986: 14). 2 As it is
known, Brazilian modernism had its beginning with the Modern Art Week (Semana de
Arte Moderna) of 1922; Sant’Anna defends the idea that the three aforementioned
categories defined the ten first years of modernism, being that after this stage the main
artists of the movement already had developed their respective styles and languages,
escaping from this limiting mould. On the other hand, these categories remain operative
to understand many cultural productions realized ever since, including popular music.
Sant’Anna proposes a supplementary taxonomy for the three categories:
a) Poetics of centering: conscious mimesis (attempt to copy reality) and paraphrase
(repetition of the language and/or style of a previous author). They are referred to
as of “centering” because they attempt to reproduce dominant ideology. The
external referent is determinant. The language thus developed is the language of
the Same, which, for Foucault (in Les Mots et les Choses), is that which culture
acknowledges as “disperse and at the same time related, therefore demanding
recognition through marks and collection within identities” (Sant’Anna, pp. 20). 3

2
“três tipos de linguagem que constituirão o solo inicial do movimento”
3
“disperso e ao mesmo tempo aparentado, portanto a distinguir por marcas e a recolher em identidades”

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 b) Poetics of decentering: a) unconscious mimesis (or interior: the description of an
inner world, imagined by the poet, independent of the real; the poet finds himself
disinterested of the reproduction of an existing reality and concerned with the
creation of a possible reality; or sees reality in a drastically different way than that
imposed by norm); and b) parody (the ironic use of quotations from other
authors). In the two cases, the real, or external referent is submitted critically to
the will of the author, instead of dominating it. The poet takes dominant ideology,
or tradition, and departs from it “searching for a new syntax and ordering reality
in a different way. The language active there is that of the Other, of which that for
culture is at the same time interior and alien. “It is a language of exclusion and of
the excluded” (Sant’Anna, pp. 20-1).

Poetics of Centering

Conscious mimesis
Always following Sant’Anna’s reasoning, the search for understanding about the
present and answers about the future has been leading Brazilian artists and intellectuals to
an idealization of the past, to a search of foundational myths, or myths of origin.
Through the alleged reconstruction of our “primitive” life by means of the myths that
came to us by oral tradition, especially that of the Brazilian Indians (the first Brazilians,
or Brazilians avant la lettre), the poet put himself to recount legends and to transcribe the
oral tradition to writing. This way a new solution was created, both in the formal plane of
language and in that of the content. The specular representation of a mythic origin of
nationality such as was observed in Cobra Norato (1931, by Raul Bopp) and Catimbó
(1927, by Ascenso Ferreira), sought to explain to us ourselves our singularity, as a
country of gigantic proportions and at the same time immersed in technological and
intellectual backwardness. In such myths the idea of the “sleepy giant” who someday
awakens is recurring, being even present in the National Anthem. Since at least the
romanticism of the 19th century it was already attempted to explain and narrate Brazil
through the grandiosity of Brazilian nature, the mystery of our profound forests with their
unknown tribes, of mysticism. To this of much help was the ignorance about the most

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far-away places of the country  especially for artists and intellectuals, in their majority
originary from urban areas. The musical monumentality of many of our best composers,
from the classical Villa-Lobos (e.g. Floresta Amazônica) to the popular Ary Barroso
(especially his Aquarela do Brasil), can be understood under this rubric.
Aquarela do Brasil
by Ary Barroso

Brasil, meu Brasil brasileiro Brazil, My Brazilian Brazil

Meu mulato inzoneiro
Vou cantar-te nos meus versos
O Brasil samba que dá
Bamboleio que faz gingar
O Brasil do meu amor
Terra de Nosso Senhor
  Brasil, Brasil
Pra mim, pra mim
My trouble making mulatto
I'm going to sing of you in my verses
Brazil your samba
Puts some bounce in my strut
Brazil of my love
Land of our Lord

Oi! Abre a cortina do passado Open the curtain of the past

Tira a mãe preta do cerrado
Bota o rei-congo no congado
Canta de novo o trovador
À merencória luz da lua
Toda canção do meu amor
Quero ver a sá dona
caminhando
Pelo salões arrastando
O seu vestido rendado
Esse coqueiro que dá coco
É onde amarro a minha rede
Nas noites claras de luar
Take the Black Mother out of the savannah
Put the Congo King in the congado
The rhymer sings once more
The melancholy light of the moon
All the songs of my love
I want to see this woman walking
Through the ballrooms, trailing
Her dress of homemade lace
This coconut tree that bears coconuts
Is where I tie my hammock
On clear moonlit nights

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 E essas fontes murmurantes And these whispering springs
Onde eu mato a minha sede Where I kill my thirst
Onde a lua vem brincar Where the moon comes to play
Ô esse Brasil lindo e trigueiro Oh this Brazil, beautiful and bountiful
É o meu Brasil Brasileiro Is my Brazilian Brazil
Terra de samba e pandeiro Land of the samba and the pandeiro
 
Brasil Brazil
Terra boa e gostosa da morena
Good and lush home of the dark girl*
sestrosa
E de olhar indiferente With the indifferent eyes
O Brasil samba que dá Brazil, samba that
Para o mundo se admirar the world admires
O Brasil do meu amor Brazil of my love
Terra do Nosso Senhor Land of Our Lord
Lyrics translated by Arto Lindsay with a note by A.N.
*Obs.: not “girl”; sestrosa can be translated as sensual.

13
 Aquarela do Brasil, with its encomiastic and grandiloquent tone, gets close to the spirit of epopoeia.
Just like the Lusíadas, for instance, as it evokes the “Land of our Lord”, the lyrics of the song appeal
to the idea of the chosen people; and, following the line of the epic narrative, alludes to the past,
notwithstanding the fact that it doesn’t thematize, as does the epopoeia, deeds of the forefathers. . . .
Another epic procedure noted in Aquarela do Brasil is the construction of the roles without the help
of time. The “mulato inzoneiro” and the “morena sestrosa”, converted in national types, are figures
frozen in an eternal present, stereotyped and without density (Naves 1998, pp.161-2). 4

This romanticized and idealized notion of Brazil is also dependent on what was
discussed in regards to the nature/culture duality. The orchestral monumentality that
traverses the history of Brazilian music tries to connect us with the invented tradition of
the myths of origin.

Paraphrase
The idea of paraphrase indicates that of identity or recognition. It refers to the
intertextual and confirmative use of the same style and/or language of other artist or
period. In the case we are examining, of appropriation of the myths of origin by
modernist artists, the poet identifies him or herself with these narratives in such a way she
or he is the one who is appropriated by the dominant discourse, imagining to be an
emitter when, in reality, he or she is a transmitter. “He is thought by a language that
surpasses him” (Sant’Anna p. 28).5 Antonio Carlos Jobim could be mentioned.
Deservedly acknowledged as one of the most inventive of the Brazilian composers,
Jobim’s compositions, notedly those with lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes, could very well
be part of a chamber music recital, even if they figure naturally in a popular context in
Brazil. On the other hand, some scores Jobim has composed (e.g. some of the ones
presented in his CD “Matita Perê”) hint problematically to his enchantment by the magic
of the Brazilian myths of origin and constitute themselves  in spite of the inventiveness
of the composer  in a paraphrase of Villa-Lobos’s style, with the subsequent implicit,
involuntary and naive endorsement of the ideology of that composer  an ideology of

4
“Aquarela do Brasil, com seu tom encomiástico e grandiloqüente, aproxima-se do espírito da epopéia. Tal
como os Lusíadas, por exemplo, ao evocar a "Terra de Nosso Senhor", a letra da canção remete à idéia de
povo eleito; e, seguindo a linha do relato épico, alude ao passado, embora não tematize, como faz a
epopéia, feitos de antepassados [...] Outro procedimento épico que se nota em Aquarela do Brasil é a
construção dos personagens sem o concurso do tempo. O "mulato inzoneiro" e a "morena sestrosa",
convertidos em tipos nacionais, são figuras congeladas num eterno presente, estereotipadas e sem
densidade.”
5
“Ele é pensado por uma linguagem que o ultrapassa”.

14
support to the fascist dictatorship of Getulio Vargas. Villa-Lobos participated actively in
the elaboration of the cultural policy of that dictatorship, promoting the teaching of
patriotic anthems, folkloric tunes and music theory in the official basic education system
of the whole country. It is necessary to say in his defense, though, that he was already
internationally famous before such happenings; therefore, as it seems, the motivation for
such involvement was more the idealism around a project of musical education for the
masses (an hyperbolic Enlightenment-derived one: the didactic urge for teaching the
“correct” tradition to the people) and a certain misguided civism than properly
opportunism or an evilish character.
As interesting as it may be to pursue the connections between this great composer
and the dictatorship of Vargas, in the aspect of popular music it is best to look for Ary
Barroso in search for understanding of Brazilian music in the politico-cultural context.
In 1937, president Getúlio Vargas, who had been democratically elected with a
populist agenda, uses as a pretext a false plan of a communist uprising and becomes
dictator, dissolving the Congress and suspending the civil rights. Fully aware of the
power of media for the ideological control of the masses, Vargas creates the Department
of Press and Propaganda (in fact, in charge of censorship and the propaganda of the
central government).
Putting in practice a fascist dictatorship, similar to that that was being developed in
Italy under Mussolini, Vargas turns to nationalistic ideals (a necessary part of such
ideologies). In his government, all support was given to cultural productions that aimed
to promote the unity of the country around national identity. It was in that moment,
according to Vianna (1999), that samba, through an articulation among artists, politicians
and intellectuals, become the Brazilian genre par excellence, such as still today is
signified nationally and internationally. It is worth saying that Brazilian musical
diversity, unknown by the vast majority of the very Brazilians, remains virtually
untouched.
Taken aside this musical expression of urban and modernizing features, all
foundational mythology holds tremendous importance, and the moment invites a
profusion of images, legends and lexicon of Brazilian Indian origin. The crossbreeding of
myths of origin with the language of samba, in the context of Vargas’ dictatorship, gave

15
birth to the genre called “samba exaltação”, which had its counterpart in literature
through the genre “ufanista” (an overly optimistic, idealized and passionate account of
Brazil), through the work of authors like Cassiano Ricardo, Guilherme de Almeida,
Menotti Del Picchia, Plínio Salgado and others.
After the recording of "Aquarela do Brasil" (by Ary Barroso) in 1939,
professional composers, especially those of musical theater, found a new commercial
vein in this genre — which came as a present to Vargas dictatorship, given the excellent
quality of the propaganda that stimulated patriotic enthusiasm. It consisted of
compositions of monumental pretensions, extensive, orchestral (and many times
symphonic), whose lyrics describe in an ufanista tone the Brazilian glories. Following
"Aquarela do Brasil" came "Onde O Céu É Mais Azul" (Alcir Pires Vermelho/João de
Barro/Alberto Ribeiro), "Brasil, Usina Do Mundo" (Alcir Pires Vermelho/João de Barro),
"Brasil Pandeiro" (Assis Valente), "Exaltação À Bahia" (Vicente Paiva/Chianca de
Garcia), "Canta Brasil" (Alcir Pires Vermelho/David Nasser), "Brasil Moreno" (Ary
Barroso/Luís Peixoto), "Vale Do Rio Doce" e "Onde Florescem Os Cafezais" (Alcir Pires
Vermelho/David Nasser). The most important interpreter of the genre was Francisco
Alves, but other groups and artists also recorded sambas-exaltação, like the Anjos do
Inferno and Heleninha Costa.
Shall we take Ary Barroso’s songs “Aquarela do Brasil”, “No Tabuleiro da Baiana”
(1926), “Na Baixa do Sapateiro” (1938), “Os Quindins de Iaiá” (1940) and “Brasil
Moreno”. Through these compositions Brazil is imaginarily and metonymically construed
from a part of it, Bahia. Not by chance, the place where the first Portuguese colonizers
settled, the oldest part of the “civilized” Brazil, the place in which happened the Brazilian
originary scene, where the European colonizer lay with the Brazilian Indian girl on the
nuptial bed of the newfound country: not by random, the cradle of samba, before the
migratory movement of the Bahian blacks brought the folkloric genre to Rio de Janeiro,
where it acquired its subsequent features. These compositions, impregnated of a
schematic nationalism, employ stereotyped figures signifying the character and the soul
of the “Brazilian”, and were exported to the US and Europe, in the political context of the
Good Neighbor policy, together with Carmen Miranda and other efforts of propaganda.
Paraphrase is present not only in the verbal content of songs like “Aquarela do Brasil”,

16
but also in the formal plane, in the Parnassian and romantic images (some untranslatable):
the “curtain of the past”, Brazil represented as a “mulatto” (the mixture of all races, the
smiling, unproblematic conciliation, the dream of rulers who don’t want to be challenged
in their privileges); and also in the musical plane, with all references to monumentality
and the origin of the genre as aforementioned.

Poetics of Decentering
Parody
Parody, just like paraphrase, takes hold of texts and languages of other authors or
periods. Notwithstanding, the major difference between them is that, as parody dislocates
the historic text to a context in which it causes estrangement, the result is of ridicule, and
of ironic criticism. Parody was the common soil of all modernist poets in the initial
moments of the movement; after all, the latter was deflagrated in response to the
Symbolist-Parnassian model in the Brazilian letters; besides, modernism is in itself a
language that strives for rupture. After this first moment, almost all poets developed their
careers in varied and individual directions, with parody appearing occasionally in their
productions.
Oswald de Andrade was the quintessential parodistic poet/novelist. In his Manifesto
Antropófago (Anthropophagite Manifest, 1928), Oswald launched an important category
for the reflection about Brazil: anthropophagy.
As we have seen until now, Brazilian culture has created for itself a mythic,
romantic, heroic past, idealized on the figure of the noble Brazilian Indian, in the lineage
proposed by Montaigne. Brazilian literature of the romantic period (19 th century) strived
to invent this tradition and to build an imaginary that retroceded more than three hundred
years until arriving at the finding of Brazil, in 1500. In this ideal past, the Brazilian
Indian was noble and haughty, the Portuguese a patriarchal figure, and the Black the
strong-arm. From the unconflicting mixture of races (the fable of the three races, da
Matta 1981) came the Brazilian mestizo, enveloped by the conciliatory ideology of the
cordial Brazilian (Holanda 1936). According to these accounts, history is not made by
cultural and socioeconomic conflicts and negotiations, but with the “naturality” and

17
smoothness of the biologic flux. These myths are still today reflected in the musical
press, both national and international.
In the context of a critique of this idealized past, before the reality of colonial and
postcolonial exploitation, Oswald creates the category of anthropophagy to think on the
role of the Brazilian artist and intellectual. Parodistically evoking the idealized past, here
it is put in relief the habit of certain Brazilian Indian nations of eating parts of their brave
enemies, captured during battles (they didn’t know slavery). Certainly they wouldn’t do
that by gluttony, but to symbolically appropriate of qualities they respected in the enemy,
and that they thought to absorb by this practice. At the same time it evidences a certain
disposition of retaliation against the evil that the enemy had caused. In Freudian terms, it
is about the unconscious images of love and hate that surround orality. The
transformation of the taboo in totem. Synthesizing:
As symbol of devouration, Anthropophagy is at one time metaphor, diagnosis and therapy: organic
metaphor, inspired in the warrior ceremony of the immolation by the Tupis of the valorous enemy
caught in combat, comprising all that we should repudiate, assimilate and overcome to conquer our
intellectual autonomy; diagnosis of Brazilian society as a society traumatized by the colonizer
repression which has conditioned its growth… and therapy against the social and political
mechanisms, the intellectual habits, the literary and artistic manifestations… under the guise of
verbal attack, by satire and critique, the therapy would employ the same anthropophagic instinct
formerly repressed, now liberated in an imaginary catharsis of the national spirit (Nunes, 1978: xxv-
xxvi).6

In his poetry book Pau Brasil, Oswald demonstrates the uses of anthropophagy:
this work is constituted by phrases cut from texts by Caminha, Gandavo, Frei Vicente and
other foreign narrators, portraying in archaic Portuguese and in French what would be the
succinct history of the formation of Brazil. The phrases are literal transpositions of the
original texts; notwithstanding, the just taking them out of their original context, the
ordering of them in the desired sequence, and the pasting them back in the modernist
context was enough to convey the critical intention.
Anthropophagy has an especial interest for Brazilian culture. Among other things,
because it is a fundamental category to understand Tropicália. On the other hand,
6
“Como símbolo da devoração, a Antropofagia é a um tempo metáfora, diagnóstico e terapêutica: metáfora
orgânica, inspirada na cerimônia guerreira da imolação pelos tupis do inimigo valente apresado em
combate, englobando tudo o que deveríamos repudiar, assimilar e superar para a conquista da nossa
autonomia intelectual; diagnóstico da sociedade brasileira como sociedade traumatizada pela repressão
colonizadora que lhe condicionou o crescimento... e terapêutica... contra os mecanismos sociais e políticos,
os hábitos intelectuais, as manifestações literárias e artísticas... sob forma de ataque verbal, pela sátira e
pela crítica, a terapêutica empregaria o mesmo instinto antropofágico outrora recalcado, então liberado
numa catarse imaginária do espírito nacional”

18
Tropicália was not as interested in parodying Brazil as in putting in our faces the
country’s contradictions. For that central difference, and for other features, I believe that
this movement had peculiarly postmodernist characteristics.
As a counterpoint to the paraphrase exemplified in the 1930’s by Ary Barroso, it
can be mentioned in the same historic period the parody such as was realized, among
several others, by one of the genial Brazilian composers, Noel Rosa. Chronicler of the
country’s social life, Noel was an ironic and always well-humored critic of the
problematic behavior of Brazilians, of economic oppression caused by the country’s
peripheric positioning before the developed nations, of corruption, of politicians; of so
many subjects he occupied himself that he even parodied Auguste Comte, in his samba
“Positivismo” (1933). As it is known, the Comtean motto was L'Amour pour principe et
l'Ordre pour base; le Progrès pour but (Love the Principle and Order the Basis; Progress
the Aim):

Positivismo
by Noel Rosa/Orestes Barbosa
A verdade, meu amor, mora num poço The truth, my love, dwells in a pit
É Pilatos, lá na Bíblia, quem nos diz It is Pilates, over there in the Bible, who
says
E também faleceu por ter pescoço And also died for having a neck
O autor da guilhotina de Paris The author of the guillotine of Paris
Vai, orgulhosa, querida Go, proud, dear
Mas aceita esta lição But do accept this lesson
No câmbio incerto da vida In the unsafe currency exchange of life
A libra sempre é o coração The sterling pound is always the heart
O amor vem por princípio, a ordem por Love the principle (love comes first) and
base order the basis
O progresso é que deve vir por fim Progress is that which should be in the end
(aim)
Desprezastes esta lei de Augusto Comte You despised this law by Auguste Comte
E fostes ser feliz longe de mim And left to be happy far from me

19
 Vai, coração que não vibra Go, heart that doesn’t vibrates
Com teu juro exorbitante With your exorbitant interest
Transformar mais outra libra To transform another pound
Em dívida flutuante Into fluctuating debt
A intriga nasce num café pequeno
Que se toma para ver quem vai pagar
Para não sentir mais o teu veneno
Foi que eu já resolvi me envenenar

In the most superficial semantic layer, the poet addresses his beloved, who has
changed him by a better economically positioned rival. The song begins with a reference
to truth, which would be always concealed, as concealed always would be, to the eyes of
the self-seeking society, the morals of the woman who achieved a better social position
by exchanging lovers; next, the author warns his beloved about the dangers of being
betrayed in the same way he was. In the metaphoric plane, establishing a parallel between
the money-grubbing behavior of his girlfriend and the international financial market
(whose standard was then the English sterling pound), the song’s fictive voice sees itself
at the same time as an individual who fell victim of the woman’s greed (moral critique),
and as a Brazilian subjected to the international financial schemes (social critique). The
reference to “exorbitant interest” and “fluctuating debt” is not fortuitous. As he parodied
the Comtean motto, suggesting that his beloved would have put (material) progress
before love, Noel also ironized intellectuals and military of the Old Republic (1889-
1930), who had let themselves to be deeply influenced by positivism (the motto of the
Brazilian national banner, created by decree in 1889, is “Order and Progress”). Parody
would be evident by the choice of genre, as the samba was then a kind of music filled
with Bohemian and low-life connotations; the very fact of dealing through samba with
themes of the seriousness of a philosophic school, military and the national banner puts in
relief the irreverence and the ridicule of the situation. “[I]t is possible to establish a
parallel between parody  as a caustic and critic effect in Noel Rosa  and the parody

20
in Oswald de Andrade, Murilo Mendes and Carlos Drummond de Andrade” (Sant’Anna,
179).7

Unconscious mimesis
To exemplify this category with a song, it is first necessary to introduce and
contextualize its author, Elomar Figueira Mello, the Elomar.
Born in the Northeastern coastal green belt [zona da mata], Elomar absorbed the
peculiar traditions of his region and knew how to elaborate them with remarkable talent.
His experience was shaped by the historical fact of the Portuguese colonization in the
Northeastern hinterlands (sertão), a semi-desertic zone close to his place of origin.
Bringing medieval traditions and Moorish influences, the Portuguese settled in this
inhospitable region where agriculture was impossible and economy depended upon cattle
raising. For some reason, the Portuguese and Brazilian Indian crossbred descendants (the
blacks didn’t participate in this ethnic formation) managed to preserve in their isolation
the Portuguese spoken in the Middle Ages (obviously adapted by local use through the
centuries, which transformed it in a dialect called by Elomar the “sertanez”) and medieval
music, a strong presence in the regional modalism. Elomar’s music translates the dry and
harsh life of the Northeastern hinterlander, in which the hot and constant sun and the
archaic socioeconomic structure seem to have conserved alive medievalism; the mythic
narratives, empowered by the mysticism of the sertanejo, confound themselves with the
medieval Chansons, and, adapted to the local culture, produce a strange and beautiful,
always intriguing effect. In “A Meu Deus Um Canto Novo” (“To my God a New
Chant”), an allegory attempts to give account of the injustice of the life of the
Northeastern and to bring him awareness of the necessity of striving for a restart. The
symbols cascade, telling the story of a Gipsy (someone who has traveled everywhere,
therefore knowing well the human soul); the voyage is the theme used to deal with
earthly existence, and in its development the Gipsy faces a legless person who
nevertheless is the only generous human being he finds in the whole journey (both
characteristics apply well to the Northeastern, in the symbolic plane). Fatigued after
having known so much injustice, the Gypsy clamours for a fresh start. And in fact there
7
"[É] possível estabelecer um paralelo entre a paródia — como efeito cáustico e crítico em Noel Rosa — e
a paródia em Oswald de Andrade, Murilo Mendes e Carlos Drummond de Andrade"

21
happens the “resurrection”. It is then that “from the guts” of the land (and not from the
skies) it comes an event of tremendous proportions, a “splendor of glory”, a “huge light”
(both hyperbolic images to describe a new situation); after the happening, the Gypsy
follows his journey, while the four winds (the entire Earth) take the “new chant” to the
Lord. The song presents the harsh reality of the hinterlands from the singular point of
view of the poet, ungluing itself from the fatalist Catholic norm (with which the sertanejo
is deeply impregnated), of an award in the future life for those who endure their
existences in this one, to propose an immediate solution that should come from the
entrails of the Land, that is, from her sons and daughters. The Northeastern solution then
would be carried to all places of the world.
The characterization of the mimesis is given by the description of the reality of the
Northeastern hinterlands in the song, and deserves the classification of “unconscious”, in
the terms proposed by Sant’Anna (which are not the same of Freud’s) for presenting this
reality in a different and discrepant manner in regard to that experienced ordinarily and
also to that conveyed by the fatalist discourse.

A Meu Deus um Canto Novo (Elomar)

Bem de longe na grande viagem Coming from far away in the long journey
Sobrecarregado paro a descansar, Overburdened I stop to rest
emergi de paragens ciganas I came out from Gypsy lands
pelas mãos de Elmana, santas como By the hands of Elmana, sanctified as the
a luz light
e em silêncio contemplo, então And in silence I contemplate thus
mais nada a revelar Nothing else to reveal
fadigado e farto de clamar às pedras Fatigued and exhausted of clamoring to the
stones
de ensinar justiça ao mundo Of teaching justice to the sinner world
pecador
oh lua nova quem me dera O moon how I’d wish
eu me encontrar com ela To meet her
no pispei de tudo In the beginning of everything

22
 na quadra perdida In the lost age
na manhã da estrada In the morning of the road
e começar tudo de nôvo And restart from the scratch
topei in certa altura da jornada At a certain point I met
com um qui nem tinha pernas para Someone who didn’t have legs to walk
andar
comoveu-me em grande compaixão I was deeply moved, compassionated
voltano o olhar para os céus Turning his eyes to the skies
recomendou-me ao Deus He asked God
Senhor de todos nós rogando Lord of all of us
nada me faltar To not let me be in deprivation
resfriando o amor a fé e a caridade As I lost touch with his love, faith and
charity
vejo o semelhante entrar em I see the other men fall into confusion
confusão
oh lua nova quem me dera O moon how I’d wish
eu me encontrar com ela To meet her
no pispei de tudo In the beginning of everything
na quadra perdida In the lost age
na manhã da estrada In the morning of the road
e começar tudo de nôvo And restart from the scratch
bôas novas de plena alegria Good news of full joy
passaram dois dias da ressurreição Two days have passed from resurrection
refulgida uma beleza estranha The brightness of a strange beauty
que emergiu da entranha Which emerged from the guts
das plagas azuis Of the blue lands
num esplendor de glória In a splendor of glory
avistaram u'a grande luz They’ve seen a huge light
fadigado e farto de clamar às pedras Fatigued and exhausted of clamoring to the
stones
de propor justiça ao mundo pecador Of asking for justice to the sinner world

23
 vô prossiguino istrada a fora I go on my journey
rumo à istrêla canora Heading for the star
e ao Senhor das Searas a Jesus eu And to the Lord of the Lands I praise
lôvo
levam os quatro ventos The four winds send
ao meu Deus um canto nôvo To my Lord a new chant

Postmodernism
Pastiche
As opposed to modernism, which is founded on the three tropes studied below,
postmodernism doesn’t distinguish itself neither by paraphrase, nor by mimesis, nor by
parody, but by pastiche. According to the definition of the The Columbia Dictionary of
Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (1995),
[t]he concept of pastiche refers to the imitation of various styles without the sense of comic
discrepancy that one finds in parody. As such, pastiche is a peculiarly postmodern species of "blank
parody." The term has attained wide currency in discussions of postmodern culture, in large part
through the influence of Fredric Jameson's essay "Postmodernism and Consumer Society."
According to Jameson, pastiche is what becomes of parody in an age in which the idea of a self-
generated style has become a thing of the past. The great practitioners of modernism were all in one
way or another creators of distinctive personal styles, which could be imitated and thus implicitly
made fun of. In the postmodern age, however, social life has become fragmented to the point where
this previously avant-garde practice has become the condition of society as a whole; so with the
absence of a stable point of reference or concept of the normal, there can be no parody. In its place
is this new form of non-parody or pastiche.

Pastiche will be exemplified ahead. Now let’s expose a short historic frame which
can lead to the understanding of MPB and Tropicália as antagonistic but supplementary
propositions, faces of the same coin called Brazil. After that it would be possible to
comprehend the point of view adopted to demonstrate the modernist procedures of MPB
and the postmodernist ones by Tropicália.

MPB and Tropicália: Modernism and Postmodernism as Readings of Brazil

Bossa Nova, appeared in 1958, was a genre of tremendous significance that has
changed definitively the face of Brazilian popular music. Notwithstanding, quickly

24
drained by commercial exploitation, already around 1963 it evidenced signals of its
demise. It is even arguable that Bossa Nova has never existed as a cohesive movement.
The general aesthetic characteristics that were transformed in a commercial formula were
disseminated in the musical traits of many precursors from the period of the samba-
canção and in those of leaders Johnny Alf, João Gilberto and Tom Jobim, each one of
them distinctive enough not be confused between themselves or other followers of the
later style. By and by so-called Bossa Nova crystallized itself around a little varied neo-
romantic thematic, which quickly ceased to appeal to the Brazilian audiences, while the
mentioned leaders continued to follow their own individual styles.
Thus, already in the year of 1962, Bossa Nova had splitted in two: the proponents
of a stereotyped sugary style, and those who sought an engagé and regional expression.
The latter led to the movement which would be definitively articulated with the historic
show Opinião, opened in December 1964, therefore nine months after the military coup
of March, which instituted the dictatorship that would dominate until 1985. This show,
which counted on Zé Kéti (a disenfranchised sambista of the Carioca hills/slums), João
do Vale (an also deprived Northeastern who sang rural thematics and tunes) and Nara
Leão (a middle-class Carioca singer), tried a nationalist, populist and politically aware
synthesis of Brazilian music (hinting at an attempt of establishing a sociocultural
homology with the country as a whole, with its expected normative prescriptions).
After the Opinião, other composers and lyricists were influenced by these ideas,
some more, some less. And before that, some were already working on them. Almost all
composers of the period were to a some extent connected with these ideals: Carlos Lyra,
Edu Lobo, Chico Buarque, Geraldo Vandré, Sérgio Ricardo ("Zelão"), Vinícius de
Moraes ("O Morro Não Tem Vez", music by Tom Jobim), Gianfrancesco Guarnieri
("Gimba", music by Carlos Lyra) and others.
This Bossa Nova-derived style represented by a regionalist/ nationalist/ combative
intention, in spite of its sectarian approach presented several times excellent musical
results, like "Arrastão" (Edu Lobo) and "Disparada" (Geraldo Vandré/Téo de Barros),
among others. The message of conclamation to popular uprising or of celebration of the
people’s liberation is articulated finally as Canção de Protesto (protest song) only after
1965. Among the fundamental historic features of that period it can be mentioned: the

25
military coup; the circulation of ideas in the university milieu (that, among other things,
would launch the university shows which would generate the very important era of the
televised festivals) informing an attempt of cultural articulation of civil dissent; and the
realization of the first of a series of festivals (I Festival of Brazilian Popular Music,
promoted during April 1965 by TV Excelsior, in São Paulo) which functioned as a
possibility of vocalizing (even of in a ciphered form) the discontent.
The appearance of MPB happened in that less demarcated period of the mid-
1960’s, in which reigned certain promiscuity among this new genre, Bossa Nova and
Canção de Protesto. The simple audition of the earliest albums of MPB, like “Chico
Buarque vol. 1” (the first LP by Chico, 1966), “Domingo” (the first one by Caetano
Veloso, together with Gal Costa, 1967), or “Travessia” (the first one by Milton
Nascimento, 1967), is enough to support that claim. Soon Caetano would establish his
own voice with the Tropicália movement, of which he was one of the main founders, and
which was frontally opposed to the aesthetic and political positioning of MPB, to which
Chico Buarque continued to be linked through his own personal style. This moment owes
much to the university environment, where were generated the critical tendencies that
influenced virtually all of the most expressive composers of the period: Carlos Lyra,
Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, among others, were university students.
On the other hand, already in 1967, with “Alegria, Alegria”, Caetano would shock
critics and audiences with the use of electric guitars in the III FMPB. With the launching
of the song “Tropicália” in 1968, announcing the movement of the same name, it became
evident the abyss which separated him from MPB. This abyss is very hard to understand
today, and it is easy to smile about the whole thing after more than 35 years have passed.
But, in that moment, with an extremely tense political atmosphere, the country dominated
by a violent dictatorship that was known to benefit from the logistic, economic and
technologic support of industrialized countries, partisanship was almost inevitable
between
1. on the one side, MPB, which proposed a nationalist-popular line of frontal
combat, through an Utopian project of socialist features, with subversive
lyrics calling (in between lines) to the overthrowal of the dictatorship; and
in the musical side, utilizing Brazilian traditional and urban-popular

26
 genres; in the visual presentation proposing seriousness, circumspection;
in dealing with media, the avoidance of commercialism and the attempt of
establishing a certain distance;
2. and, on the other, Tropicália, with its cosmopolite, relaxed, libertarian
attitude, its existentialist celebration of the body and pleasure, the
utilization of international genres and technologies, its enthusiastic
participation in the mass media.
In spite of such oppositive articulations of issues of authenticity, freedom, national
identity, political participation, behavior and, ultimately, life, a more rigorous
examination of each movement would demonstrate that any schematism is misguided 
in practice, the situation is much more complex. MPB wasn’t a solemn project, as the
feast is an important part of Brazilian imaginary, and samba is extremely strong as a
musical genre and as a social event to promote pleasure with all urgency. On the other
hand, Tropicália wasn’t, as it became evident afterwards, an alienated or manipulated
movement; its critical attitude was also sharp, but the form used to put it forward was
completely different from that proposed by the nationalistic movement. Similarly, MPB
artists like Chico Buarque wouldn’t subordinate other political struggles to the waiting
for the concretization of utopias: Chico is highly regarded by the rare sensibility with
which he dealt with the feminine universe. And MPB is not a xenophobic genre: to begin
with, it is not a “genre”, in a rigorous musicological definition; MPB songs are not closed
to any genre, both national and international.
In spite of all provisions, it seems to me that the proposed approach continues to be
valid. I believe that MPB holds enough features to be characterized as a modernist
project, and Tropicália as a postmodernist one. These characteristics, notwithstanding,
should neither harden analysis nor lead to hierarchization, transforming the two
movements in poles of a dichotomy. Both were fundamental to public, cultural, aesthetic
and politic life of Brazil.
For the examination of the proposals of Tropicália it was chosen the album which
launched the movement, “Tropicália, ou Panis et Circencis”. The album should be
listened to and understood in its totality, as the songs interrelate and refer to one another
in the building of a chaotic and fragmentary panel that represents Brazil. Beginning with

27
the cover: there, several temporalities and identities mix, offering a critical panorama of
Brazil. In the first plane we see Gilberto Gil in an Indian outfit, a reference to the
counterculture that was in its apex in that period as a mark of rebellious, iconoclastic,
cosmopolitan affiliation; but he embraces a graduation photograph, an anachronic relic
that used to be exposed in the living rooms of poor families, proud of the social ascension
of the offspring who succeeded in completing their secondary studies. At the same time,
avant-garde conductor/arranger Rogério Duprat, representing by his age and outfit a
head-of-a-bourgeois-family, holds a chamber pot as someone who sips his boring
afternoon tea (which remits us to the “persons in the dining-room”, of “Panis et
Circenses”). At the back, the Mutantes in Beatleresque fashion (“Sergeant Pepper’s”
exerted strong influence in the album’s arrangements, conception and aesthetics) show an
electric guitar and bass, symbols of the most advanced international-industrial musical
technology available at the moment. In the picture it is also not missing a reference to the
destitute, archaic and rude Northeast, symbolized by the rawhide bag.
Humor is an important part of the project, but not parody. Admittedly, the
reference to the bourgeois family is utterly modernistic, but all hints to the Brazilian
backwardness that implicitly refer to the disenfranchised Brazilians (like the “typical”
rawhide bag, or the old, unfashionable photograph) don’t have the same connotation. An
evidence of this is the inclusion in this album of the song “Coração Materno”, a hit by
Vicente Celestino recorded in 1937. The song narrates, in the most exaggerated terms, the
theme of the undying love of the mother for her son, which remains active even after he
assassinates her to satisfy his beloved. After the aesthetic revolution of Bossa Nova, such
song would never be executed by a Brazilian of “taste”. Here it is used to portray a
melodramatic, unsophisticated, corny Brazil, but nothing, neither in Caetano’s
interpretation, nor in the arrangement nor the execution of the song, suggest a parody.
The intention is not that of proposing a corrosive critique and the overcoming of the
exaggerated sensibility of the popular classes, but simply to put side by side, and in shock
among themselves, the contradictions of Brazil. In this country coexist archaic economic
forms, in forgotten nooks like the Northeastern hinterlands or the Amazon jungle, and
postmodern ones, like the production of ideas, software and technology, in some
university or corporative research centers of the richer regions. Cordel literature (short

28
popular narratives of epic character reproduced by artisan processes like xylography and
sold in popular fairs hanging from strings) and multimedia productions. Taste and
tastelessness. Oil lamp and neon. No coherence or linearity. In Tropicália’s postmodernist
project, against form antiform. Instead of the Utopian political project which, through
theses and antitheses would finally arrive at a final synthesis, denounce of Brazilian
reality; and the proposition of assimilating contradiction as an attempt to find a Brazilian
solution for the country’s problems, instead of trying to accommodate Brazilian reality to
the ways of thinking imported form the metropolis.
The whole album presents the most furious collage of musical genres and styles
which, reinforcing the lyrics, strive to allegorize this country of violent contrasts. Exactly
because of that Tropicália was harshly criticized by some leftist intellectuals, like
Schwarz (1978), who elaborated his position departing form Lukács’ theses. This
theoretician would have denied the possibility of historical progress through an artistic
representation by way of allegory, being this responsible for an abstract art cut off from
the perceptible reality. The Hungarian philosopher defended instead the symbol, through
which realist art could achieve its true expression, pointing towards the horizon of future.
For Schwarz, as it superposed the archaic (primitive, underdeveloped, native images) and
the modern (industrialization, international, developed), Tropicália eternized the situation
of Brazil in an allegoric, static situation, which didn’t allow for its overcoming.
Schwarz’s stance is indebted from the centering of rationality as the guidance of the class
struggle; under that perspective, the direction taken by Tropicália was irrational, being
not susceptible of resolution through Hegelian schemes, therefore approaching right-wing
fascisms. This is the key to understand how intellectuals like Silviano Santiago would
support Tropicália, understanding that it could be proposing a step forward for us to let
aside the Eurocentric theoretical solutions and to find our own answers, departing from
our own fragmented and contradictory identity.
The very keyword used by critics, the absurd, already betrays the difficulty they experiment in
understanding Tropicália’s attitude, as it is not that of perpetuating anything and even less the
absurd […] Absurd has been the category that traditional Western thought (if you want, centered in
Hegel) has been utilizing to embrace everything which it can’t think of, everything which it is
impeded from thinking by its logical premises. For instance: the contradiction in itself. Thus, for
someone to cling to a dialectic reason that could explain all facts and even would neutralize (in his
or her favor, of course) the potential of action of a new manifestation is to want also […] to isolate
him or herself in a theoretical, orthodox obscurantism of internationalizing character, whose only
perspective would be always that of a historic future already programmed according to the model. It

29
 is evident that we would be facing a much more European than properly Brazilian (or a New
World’s) rationalization (Santiago, 1977:11-2).8

As it would be impractical to analyze all the album’s songs, comparing them with
the Brazilian situation and the academic discourses, we shall be contented with “Geléia
Geral”, a prototype-song for the movement. With music by Gilberto Gil, the song had
lyrics by Torquato Neto, an internationally consecrated poet, important ideologue of
Tropicália and a composer of other significative songs. At November 10 th 1972, at 28
years old, Torquato killed himself leaving this note: “I miss just like the Cariocas the time
when I felt like and thought I was a guide for the blind. After that they began to see and
while I contorted myself the banana cluster would fall. Therefore I STAY peaceful
around here while it lasts. Enough! You there, I ask the favor of not shaking off Thiago
[his son, then two years old] too much. He can wake up”.9
Already since the title (taken from a phrase of concrete poet Décio Pignatari), the
song portrays the Brazilian “absurd” in all its forms.

Geleia Geral (Gilberto Gil/Torquato Neto)

Um poeta desfolha a bandeira A poet unleafs the banner

E a manhã tropical se inicia
Resplandente, cadente, fagueira
Num calor girassol com alegria
Na geléia geral brasileira
Que o Jornal do Brasil anuncia
And the tropical morning begins
Shiny, cadent, joyful
In a heat sunflower with happiness
In the Brazilian general jam
That the Jornal do Brasil announces

8
A própria palavra de ordem usada pelos críticos, o absurdo, já trai uma dificuldade que experimentam em
compreender a postura da Tropicália, pois esta não é a de perpetuar nada e muito menos o absurdo [...]
Absurdo tem sido a categoria que o pensamento ocidental tradicional (se quiserem, centrado em Hegel) tem
utilizado para abranger tudo o que não chega a pensar, tudo o que está impedido de pensar por suas
premissas lógicas. Por exemplo: a contradição em si. Apegar-se, pois, a uma razão dialética que explicaria
todos os fatos e inclusive neutralizaria (em seu favor, é claro) o potencial de ação de uma nova
manifestação é querer também [...] isolar-se num obscurantismo teórico de cunho internacionalizante,
ortodoxo, cuja mirada única seria sempre a de um devir histórico já programado segundo o modelo. Claro
está que estaríamos diante de uma racionalização muito mais européia do que propriamente brasileira (ou
do Novo Mundo)
9
“Tenho saudade como os cariocas do tempo em que eu me sentia e achava que era um guia de cegos.
Depois começaram a ver e enquanto me contorcia de dores o cacho de bananas caía. De modo q FICO
sossegado por aqui mesmo enquanto dure. Pra mim chega! Vocês aí, peço o favor de não sacudirem demais
o Thiago [seu filho, então com dois anos]. Ele pode acordar”.

30
Ê, bumba-yê-yê-boi
Ano que vem, mês que foi
Ê, bumba-yê-yê-yê
É a mesma dança, meu boi
A alegria é a prova dos nove
E a tristeza é teu porto seguro
Minha terra é onde o sol é mais limpo
E Mangueira é onde o samba é mais puro
Tumbadora na selva-selvagem
Pindorama, país do futuro
Ê, bumba-yê-yê-boi
Ano que vem, mês que foi
Ê, bumba-yê-yê-yê
É a mesma dança, meu boi
É a mesma dança na sala
No Canecão, na TV
E quem não dança não fala
Assiste a tudo e se cala
Não vê no meio da sala
As relíquias do Brasil:
Doce mulata malvada
Um LP de Sinatra
Maracujá, mês de abril
Santo barroco baiano
Superpoder de paisano
Formiplac e céu de anil
Três destaques da Portela
Ê, bumba-yê-yê-boi
next year, last month
Ê, bumba-yê-yê-boi
it’s the same dance, my bull
Happiness is the proof of the pudding
And sadness your safe harbor
My land is where the sun is cleaner
And Mangueira is where the samba is purer
Percussion in the wild jungle
Pindorama, country of future
Ê, bumba-yê-yê-boi
next year, last month
Ê, bumba-yê-yê-boi
it’s the same dance, my bull
It’s the same dance in the living-room
At Canecao, at TV
And he who doesn’t dance doesn’t speak
Sees everything and shuts up
He doesn’t see in his own living-room
The relics of Brazil
The sweet wicked mulatto
A LP by Sinatra
Maracuja, the month of April
Bahian baroque saint
Superpower of the common people
Formiplac and anil sky
Three high figures of Portela
31
Carne-seca na janela
Alguém que chora por mim
Um carnaval de verdade
Hospitaleira amizade
Brutalidade jardim
Corned beef at the window
Someone who cries for me
A real carnival
Hospitality friendship
Brutality garden

Ê, bumba-yê-yê-boi
Ano que vem, mês que foi
Ê, bumba-yê-yê-yê
É a mesma dança, meu boi

Plurialva, contente e brejeira

Miss linda Brasil diz "bom dia"
E outra moça também, Carolina
Da janela examina a folia
Salve o lindo pendão dos seus olhos
E a saúde que o olhar irradia

Ê, bumba-yê-yê-boi
Ano que vem, mês que foi
Ê, bumba-yê-yê-yê
É a mesma dança, meu boi

Um poeta desfolha a bandeira

E eu me sinto melhor colorido
Pego um jato, viajo, arrebento
Com o roteiro do sexto sentido
Voz do morro, pilão de concreto
Tropicália, bananas ao vento

Ê, bumba-yê-yê-boi

32
Ano que vem, mês que foi
Ê, bumba-yê-yê-yê
É a mesma dança, meu boi

The song opens with a baião, a Northeastern genre which brings all connotations
of hardship, rude, dry life; the flutes emulate the traditional genre, in which archaic
wooden flutes (pífanos) are generally present; though the electric instrumentation brings
estrangement and the unexpected note. The narrative begins by locating the listener in a
typical Brazilian day amidst this contradiction. The music is vibrant and energetic, and
the images put forth by the lyrics evoke a cinematic language, with its abrupt cuts: “Num
calor girassol com alegria” (“In a heat sunflower with happiness”) synthesizes with great
economy a variety of termic, chromatic-visual, psychological sensations. While the
reference to the banner relates to the emotive patriotism characteristic of the Brazilian
(and to a long literary tradition), the mention to the Jornal do Brasil (one of the most
widely known Brazilian dailies) inserts mass media into the “Brazilian general jam”. It
follows the refrain, in which the bumba-meu-boi (ancestral folkloric dance and spectacle
which ritualizes the rural life of the destitute Northeastern around the owner’s cattle
raising) is juxtaposed to iê-iê-iê, or the Brazilian genre copied from the English neo-rock
(because of “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah”). The rhythm, until then propulsive,
directed for the future of the song, here is completely dissolved by its unexpected accents,
and the effect is that of a suspension of time, not felt anymore as continuity or flux. In a
perfect symbiosis with the music, the verses “Ano que vem, mês que foi” (“next year, last
month”), “É a mesma dança, meu boi” (“it’s the same dance, my bull”) and “Ê bumba-
yê-yê-boi” (a mixture of “bumba-meu-boi” with iê-iê-iê) promote the fusion of present
and past and future, indicating a situation where the historic and causal reference is lost.
This characteristic, described as symptomatic of the schizophrenic thought, is central for
the understanding of the postmodern construction, in opposition to paranoia, described as
fundamental for the modernist thought (Trotter, 2001). Schizophrenia represents the loss
of the idea of the subject’s unity, accompanied by hallucinations or meaningless mimetic
behavior. This category is fundamental for the understanding of the historic situation
described as postmodernity, in which the subject is seen as a precarious succession of

33
identifications, which has been theorized (problematically) in terms of the “death of the
subject”; whereas in the case of the paranoid, the idea of an unified ego is an essential
condition for the deliriums that involve some self-aware creators.
The second stanza goes on to describe what is to be a Brazilian while it speaks of
joy (the proof of the pudding of the Brazilian, as described by Oswald de Andrade in his
Anthropophagite Manifesto) and sadness (melancholy, the safe harbor, the protection that
avoids the standing up to the cause). The “Canção do Exílio” (“Song of the Exile”, by
Gonçalves Dias), a 19th century poem of the ufanista kind, is critically brought to a(n
absurd) dialogue into the song through the verse “Minha Terra é onde o sol é mais
limpo” (“My Land is where the Sun is Cleaner”). The reference to Mangueira and to the
purity of samba also fits into this contradictory view of Brazil embedded in the context of
nationalistic discourses. The final verses of this stanza oppose the exotic elements of
batuque (native wild percussion session) and the postcard jungle to Pindorama, the
matriarchal Utopian country construed by Oswald de Andrade’s unconscious mimesis:
“Against social reality, dressed and oppressive, catalogued by Freud  the reality without complexes,
without madness, without prostitution and without the prisons of the matriarchy of Pindorama” (1928).
The allegory of the chaotic country is reinforced with the return of the next stanza.
Here Gil no more intones a melody, but adopts the oratory of a presenter of popular fairs
or of TV or radio live programs (these being the extension of the former), pointing to the
ubiquity of mass media, and to their tacit acceptance in a new cultural and technological
order; as he speaks of the “mesma dança na sala, no Canecão, na TV” (“the same dance
in the living-room, at the Canecao, at TV”), the narrator gives us news of a disseminated
usage, and indicates with subtlety that “dance” can be a symbol of something more than
the act of dancing. Those who don’t dance are the saddened, the melancholic, the grave,
the depressed ones, and who ultimately can’t help in the process of redemocratization.
Those who dance would be the Tropicalists, the youngsters in general, the suburban
people (in Brazil, the disenfranchised are the ones who live in the suburbs) and other
people who would be reacting with awareness but joyfully to military rule, avoiding the
idealization of the country, seeing it, understanding it and accepting it in the muddiness
of its contradictions, in search of freedom. Thus, “quem não dança não fala” (he who
doesn’t dance doesn’t speak”), “assiste a tudo e se cala” (“sees everything but shuts up”),

34
“não vê no meio da sala as relíquias do Brasil” (“doesn’t see in his very living room the
relics of Brazil”) is a criticism against MPB, in the figure of Chico Buarque’s hit
“Quando o Carnaval Chegar” (see p. 36). As he speaks of the “relics of Brazil”, the
narrator is criticizing those who don’t see the Brazilian contradictions, therefore don’t
know their own country. From then on, the music isomorphically presents such “relics”:
Carlos Gomes’s Italianized opera, a cultural treasure of the 19th century, symbol of
exoticism and of European romantism in Brazilian music; “All the Way” in Sinatra’s
rendition, one of the Brazilian “popular classics”; a “typical” samba of the hills/slums. At
the same time, the lyrics enumerate Brazilian commonplaces in opposition to imported
elements: the “doce mulata malvada” (“sweet wicked mulatta”), “LP de Sinatra”
(“Sinatra’s LP”), “maracujá” (a typical fruit), the religiousness and dependence upon
faith, “formiplac” (industrial, synthetic, foreign imagery, as opposed to “anil sky”, natural
and national), “três destaques da Portela” (a reference to Carnaval), “carne-seca na
janela” (“corned beef hung at the window”, a Northeastern popular habit),
sentimentalism, friendship, and the final synthesis: in this “Edenic” garden blossoms
brutality.
The stanzas continue to follow the same expressive plane designed until now,
deserving special attention, though, “Carolina”, who “da janela examina a folia” (from
her window examines the festivities”). This is an explicit reference to Chico Buarque’s
song of the same name, being evident that the lyricist reaffirms Chico’s criticism to
passivity in the several songs in which he uses the recurring theme of the girl who
watches the world through her window; what it seems to suggest besides that is that
Torquato extends that criticism also to Chico and to other proponents of musical
nationalism.
It is then admissible to suspend the analysis at this point due to considerations of
concision and to appreciate, by contrast, a MPB composer/composition with the aim of
comparing the previous song with the modernist language.
Chico Buarque is one of the most representative composers of MPB. In spite of
his central activity in the resistance and denounce of the military dictatorship of the
period 1964-1985, his music and poetry can’t be limited to this aspect. Chico translated
musically some feminine souls with a rare delicacy (including that of prostitutes, like in

35
“Joana Francesa”, “Folhetim”, “Geni e o Zepelim” or “Ana de Amsterdam” [with Ruy
Guerra]), talking about the condition of submission of the Brazilian women (“Sem
Açúcar”), the melancholy of the abandoned woman (“Maninha”), or simply about
feminine passion (“Teresinha”); dealt with the feast and the people in a vibrant language
(“Feijoada Completa”), was a chronicler of his time (“O Casamento dos Pequenos
Burgueses”), a critic of social unjustice (“Vai Trabalhar Vagabundo”, “Pivete”, “Bye
Bye, Brasil”, the humored “Homenagem ao Malandro”), a wise reader of the character of
the Brazilian (“Vai Levando”, “Até o Fim”), lyric poet of high density (“João e Maria”,
“Pedaço de Mim”), erotic poet of high voltage (“O Que Será [À Flor da Pele], “O Meu
Amor”), ecologist (“Passaredo”, com Francis Hime), sensitive to the mysteries of the
fecundated land (“O Cio da Terra”, with Milton Nascimento) and to the bonds with the
Latinoamerican brothers (“Canción por la Unidad Latinoamericana”).
In Chico’s works it is evident the tenderness and love directed to the popular cause
and culture. But as much as this love is evident, there is a clear line dividing his
sensibility from that of the subaltern classes. Chico departs from a popular soil, from
where he harvests the themes of his poetry and the genres of his music, and elaborates
both ingredients in a sophisticated, erudite way  a modernist composer (who
nevertheless has contributed enormously to erase the already blurred line between the
“popular” and the “high” culture in Brazil).
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. . . . Buarque’s mature songs are
notable for ingenious structuring, for variety of personae, and for ambiguity and plurisignification,
especially as strategies for making social commentaries (Perrone 1989, pp. 1-2).

Evidently, “modernism” applied to popular music find its limits. It is not about
hermetic, atonal, dodecaphonic, polytonal experimentations (which, nevertheless, were
done by Arrigo Barnabé with some commercial success). Notwithstanding, in spite of the
limits, the general features of Chico’s poetics seem to authorize the understanding of his
work in the realm of modernism.
As a good popular composer, Chico understood as few others that a good song isn’t
made with a good musical composition and good lyrics, but with a complementary set of
music and lyrics. The interdependence thus created by the two universes avoids that the
music be free as in the instrumental composition:

36
 … That work made it clear to me that melody and lyrics should and can form only one body. Thus I
attempted to brake the pride of the melodies, marrying them, for instance, to the phrasing and
repetition of “Pedro Pedreiro”, to the longing and expectancy of “Ole Ola”, to the anguish and irony
of “Ela e sua Janela”, to the joy and naiveté of “A Banda”, etc. (Hollanda, 1966). 10

For Sant’Anna (p. 102), the carnival in Chico’s work symbolizes the rite and the
myth. “It is a time-space in which the community frees all its repressions, taking on its
masks and disguises its true identity. The non-carnaval is the silence and repression: I am
only seeing, knowing, feeling, hearing and I can’t speak / I am saving myself for when
carnaval arrives [“Quando o Carnaval Chegar]”.11 The music/sound amplifies the
semantic field of carnival, and Sant’Anna understands that, for Chico, music creates this
mythic time-space (the king has arrived and already ordered that the bells rang
throughout the city / we must sing the anthems [“Ano Novo”])12, restoring the faculty of
seeing (“and he who is blind, see at once!”)13 and freeing people of their adult
frustrations (“and I who am a boy”)14. In another words, Utopia is the imagined solution
to repressive reality; and Music is given the role of producing Utopia. Like in “Olê, Olá”.
The music of this song has a narrative structure. The A section always consists of
the announcement that the poet will play and sing, and of his invitation to the implicit
listener, his girl friend, to sing along with him. The bridge represents the moment in
which the music really begins in the imaginary space of the song, and the section is
marked by the changed instrumentation: from a guitar-accompanied singing to a small
group backing the vocalist. Here the lyrics/music intertextual play is translated into a
tense harmony and, melodically, into an equally suspensive ascending move; when,
apparently, the resolution is reached (olê olê olê olá), it is only to restart the tensive
trajectory. A partial release is reached when the fictive voice urges the girl not to cry,
which would make the music to cease. All the way through the song there’s an oscillation
between the tension of approaching Utopia, in the anxious expectancy of definitively
10
. . . Aquele trabalho garantiu-me que melodia e letra devem e podem formar um só corpo. Assim foi que,
procurei frear o orgulho das melodias, casando-as por exemplo, ao fraseado e repetição de “Pedro
Pedreiro”, saudosismo e expectativa de “Olê Olá”, angústia e ironia de “Ela e sua janela”, alegria e
ingenuidade de “A banda”, etc.
11
“É um tempo-espaço em que a comunidade liberta todas as suas repressões, assumindo nas máscaras e
nos disfarces a sua verdadeira identidade. O não carnaval é o silêncio e a repressão: estou só vendo,
sabendo, sentindo, escutando e não posso falar / tou me guardando pra quando o carnaval chegar
[“Quando o Carnaval Chegar”]”.
12
“o rei chegou e já mandou tocar os sinos na cidade inteira / é pra cantar os hinos” [“Ano Novo”].
13
“e quem for cego veja de repente”
14
“e eu que sou menino”

37
setting the state of general happiness, and the poet’s frustration for the failed realization
of his desire. Finally, before the disinterest of people in regards to change, the poet lets
himself to be defeated by exhaustion and gives up: this moment coincides with the end of
the song.

Olê, Olá

Não chore ainda não Now don’t you shed a tear

Que eu tenho um violão I have a guitar here
E nós vamos cantar Together we can sing
Felicidade aqui Happiness may come this way
Pode passar e ouvir And hear what’s going on
E se ela for de samba And if she feels the samba
Há de querer ficar She’ll surely want to stay

Seu padre toca o sino Father ring the church bells

Que é pra todo mundo saber For everyone to know
Que a noite é criança The night is still young
Que o samba é menino And samba is a child
Que a dor é tão velha Pain is under age’s spell
Que pode morrer She’s old and may die
Olê olê olê olá Olê olê olê olá
Tem samba de sobra There’s lots of samba
Quem sabe sambar Those who know how to dance
Que entre na roda Should come to the circle
Que mostre o gingado And show their swing
Mas muito cuidado But beware
Não vale chorar Don’t you cry

Não chore ainda não Now don’t you shed a tear

Que eu tenho uma razão That I have a reason

38
Pra você não chorar
Amiga me perdoa
Se eu insisto à toa
Mas a vida é boa
Para quem cantar
Meu pinho toca forte,
Que é pra todo mundo acordar
Não fale da vida
Nem fale da morte
Tem dó da menina
Não deixa chorar
Olê olê olê olá
Tem samba de sobra
Quem sabe sambar
Que entre na roda
Que mostre o gingado
Mas muito cuidado
Não vale chorar
Não chore ainda não
Que eu tenho a impressão
Que o samba vem aí
E um samba tão imenso
Que eu ás vezes penso
Que o próprio tempo
Vai parar pra ouvir
Luar, espere um pouco
Que é pro meu samba poder chegar
Eu sei que o violão
For you not to cry
Girlfriend forgive me
If I insist in vain
But life is good
For those who sing
[A universal dimension is pursued:]
May my guitar be strong
To awaken the whole world
Don’t talk about death
Nor about life
Have mercy of the girl
Don’t let her cry
Olê olê olê olá
There’s lots of samba
Those who know how to dance
Should come to the circle
And show their swing
But beware
Don’t you cry
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
Moonlight wait a little
So my samba can arrive
I know that the guitar
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Está fraco, está rouco Is weak, is hoarse
Mas a minha voz But my voice
Não cansou de chamar Hadn’t wear itself out of crying
Olê olê olê olá Olê olê olê olá
Tem samba de sobra There’s lots of samba
Ninguém quer sambar No one wants to samba
Não há mais quem cante There’s no one to sing anymore
Nem há lugar mais lugar Nor even a place
O sol chegou antes The sun arrived earlier
Do samba chegar Before the samba could arrive
Quem passa nem liga Those who pass by never care
Já vai trabalhar They’re going to work
E você, minha amiga And you my girlfriend
Já pode chorar Now you can cry
(Trans. by Perrone/A.N.)

The choice of so old a song by Chico Buarque, besides the fact that it is only one
of a very extensive corpus, wasn’t the outcome of a selection realized under rigorous
criteria. As a matter of fact, the song was chosen according to the available material for
research. All of the mentioned composers, and not only Chico Buarque, deserve a deeper
investigation before one can advance any judgment about their works. The scope of the
present introduction is limited to the discussion of its central thesis, namely whether
Brazilian musical production can be also classified  along with several other ways 
between modernist and postmodernist; this classification could be useful, maybe, to
evaluate the impact and reflexes of aesthetic proposals when compared with the search by
Brazilians, old and filled with anxiety, of ways of understanding their country and
proposing a project of future to it.

40
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