Tropical Truth A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil. - book review

Whole Earth, Winter, 2002 by Steve Heilig

Caetano Veloso 2002; 338 pp. $24 Knopf

Brutality Garden Tropicalia end the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture Christopher Dunn 2001; 256 pp. $19.95 University of North Carolina Press

Imagine that Bob Dylan wrote a book recalling not only his musical career but also his personal life and views on modern American history, politics, and philosophy. It would be a major publishing event. Such was the case when Brazilian musical icon Caetano Veloso's Tropical Truth appeared in his home nation in 1997. Now its publication in English allows many more readers a first-hand memoir of a tumultuous time in Brazilian history, told by a central figure of the era.

Veloso, along with a handful of other Brazilian figures such as Gilberto Gil, was one of the architects of "Tropicalism," a widely analyzed but vaguely defined musical and cultural phenomenon of the 1960s which marked a watershed in Brazilian culture and politics. The traditionally conservative Brazilian musical world was turned topsy-turvy by the "cultural cannibalism" of these Young Turks who drew upon the foment of sixties British and American rock to create a striking blend of samba, psychedelia, and avant-garde theater. "We were `eating' the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix," recalls Veloso. Veloso and his cohorts took every opportunity to tweak staid Brazilian sensibilities, putting on multimedia "happenings" of confounding strangeness, appearing in drag on national television just to provoke viewers, and more.

This movement coincided with the most repressive period in modern Brazilian history. A military regime seized control in 1964. Veloso and his colleagues were attacked by dictators threatened by artistic freedom and by radicals who saw them as sellouts. Veloso and Gil were roused at dawn by federal police in 1968 and exiled to Europe--where, though homesick, they absorbed more of the culture of then-swinging London.

Allowed to return to Brazil, Veloso resumed his high-profile career, a bit more careful to stay out of trouble. He gives just enough details of his marriages, drug use, and struggles with insecurity to make this a most personal as well as political work.

Christopher Dunn is a professor at Tulane University and an expert in Latin American Studies. His Brutality Garden reads like the doctoral thesis it began as. He aims, for example, to provide "both a diachronic and a synchronic analysis of the tropicalist movement." Which, translated, means "I have been buried in academia so long I sometimes forget how to write real English for readers who might be outside of my department."

Still, Dunn provides a good counterpoint to Veloso's personal story, with much more historical and other background information and analysis for those who want it all. His title refers to "the cultural fissure between [Brazil's] image as a peaceful tropical `garden' and the daily brutality visited upon its citizens."

--Steve Heilig

"All Brazilians have the impression that the country simply has no practical sense. It is like a father with a good heart and an honest reputation who can't make money or hold a steady job, who wastes great opportunities, gets drunk, and falls down.--TROPICAL TRUTH

"Veloso would later claim that Tropicalia "was a way to create a public image while critiquing this image and knowing what was involved in the creation of a public image. In a way we made explicit the mechanisms of marketing and exposed the commodification of popular musicians." It was not always clear, however, whether they were critiquing these mechanisms or simply using them for competitive advantage.--BRUTALITY GARDEN