Tropicália

O artigo faz uma análise do único registro em áudio (1968) do piauiense Torquato Neto, o qual aponta, em diálogo com o contexto experimental da Tropicália (Süssekind, 2007), um outro ponto de vista para repensar as criações e estudos ligados às culturas ditas populares, uma vez que tais manifestações são quase sempre circunscritas exclusivamente ao campo do Folclore. Partindo da relação entre local e global (Anjos, 2005) e do conceito de antropofagia como mecanismo de proposição de uma arte brasileira que incorporaria tanto os mitos estrangeiros quanto os nacionais, discute-se o projeto poético de, como diz Torquato, não folclorização do popular.

In 1971, during the height of Brazil's political repression, while left-wing intelligentsia ardently "sought to mobilize workers and students through 'revolutionary and consequential' art" (Dunn), filmmaker Nelson Pereira dos Santos directed a period-piece entitled "Como era gostoso meu francês" ("How Tasty was my Little Frenchman"). His film at first glance could appear anachronistic for the turbulent and engagé artistic climate of the time. However, the motion picture in fact incorporates the late 1960s Tropicália aesthetic into a cinematographic idiom.

Quando a Tropicália irrompeu na cena musical em 1967, Mário Pedrosa era um crítico de arte influente. Em 1966, ao constatar o esgotamento da arte moderna, Pedrosa afirma que um novo ciclo cultural se iniciava - o da arte pós-moderna. Reconstruindo esse conceito, investigaremos se a intervenção de Caetano Veloso e Gilberto Gil no III Festival de Música Popular Brasileira pode ser considerada uma manifestação do pós-modernismo. A hipótese é que os motivos da arte pós-moderna identificados por Pedrosa estão presentes na Tropicália.
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When Tropicalia emerged in the music scene in 1967, Mario Pedrosa was an influential art critic. In 1966, when he realized the burnout of modern art, Pedrosa claims that a new cultural cycle was beginning – the postmodern art. Reconstructing this concept, we will investigate if the intervention of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil in the III Festival de Musica Popular Brasileira (Brazilian  Popular  Music  Festival  III)  can  be  considered  a  manifestation  of  postmodernism.  The hypothesis is that the elements of postmodern art identified by Pedrosa are present in Tropicalia.
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DI CARLO, Josnei. Objetos não identificados: tropicalismo e pós-modernismo no Brasil dos anos 1960. Interseções, Rio de Janeiro, v. 21 n. 3, p. 742-760, set.-dez. 2019.

Este estudo tem como propósito discutir a tensão entre redundância e inovação na informação televisiva do movimento musical tropicalista. Epistemologicamente, adota uma perspectiva interdisciplinar entre a Ciência da Informação e a Comunicação Social. Mais especificamente, estabelece um diálogo entre a Teoria da Informação, de Abraham Moles, em sua apropriação por Augusto de Campos, no artigo “Informação e Redundância na Música Popular”, e a economia política da informação, da comunicação e da cultura. Nessa perspectiva, situa o debate em torno do componente estético-informacional da Tropicália no contexto da indústria cultural brasileira do fim dos anos 1960 e problematiza o modo como ela participa na conformação da informação midiatizada tropicalista. A problemática principal do trabalho se dá assim em torno da possibilidade do caráter de vanguarda ou inovação do movimento musical nos palcos dos programas de auditório da TV da época. A questão de fundo é saber como a indústria cultural, apesar de sua tendência dominante à redundância, possibilitou ampla circulação de informação inovadora na música popular brasileira no período analisado. Sem ignorar a autonomia relativa e, portanto, a agência dos artistas tropicalistas, trabalha-se com a hipótese de que seu caráter inovador terá sido favorecido pelo estágio liberal, concorrencial do capital midiático de então, mais aberto à inovação do que as fases subsequentes, monopolista e fictícia

This paper deals with the updating of Tropi­calia in the field of cultural policies with the arrival of Gilberto Gil at the Ministry of Culture in 2003. From the recovery of a tropicalista identity in his public stance, the musician­-manager did emerge reflections on a “tropicalista way” of thinking about culture. Thus, we intend to understand which elements present in Gilberto Gil’s management indicate a survival of Tropicalia in contemporary times. Without losing sight of the semantic instability of this Brazilian artis­tic and cultural manifestation, we prefer the path that points to the rupture character and to the utopian possibilities of this sign. We realize, finally, in this ap­proach, a notion of culture that takes into account the digital, the creativity of multitude, the difference, an­d also calls into the question a hegemonic and univo­cal model of Brazil.

On this work, I propose an analysis of the “tropicalista” song recording “Não identificado” [“Unidentified”] by Gal Costa (1969), focusing on the dialogue between the sung words and the musical arrangement by Rogério Duprat. A reverent parody of ballads by Brazilian rock singer-composer Roberto Carlos, the song presents itself as a platonic love message transported by a disc, which is launched simultaneously as a LP and a flying saucer. Traveling through an idyllic Brazilian sky, as it is described on traditional romantic Brazilian popular song, this unidentified flying object blurs the limit between physic-objective and metaphysic-subjective realms. Aware about the ambiguity of an “unidentified” song, Duprat dilutes the boundary that separates music arrangement and soundscape, introducing sounds heard on American sci-fi movies from the 1950s. This sonic trip, however, goes beyond soundscapes inhabited by aliens, simulating at the same time a psychedelic flight that suggests a fusion between the self and the world, as it is experienced in the late 1960s by LSD users. Through this analysis, I aim to discuss the importance of the arranger and of the musical arrangement in the definition of recorded song meanings, recognizing, the symbolic power of music and sound in a specific historical and cultural context.

In this article I propose to conceive music as a sonic object that, different from visual art forms, has its own ways of moving through time and space. Through the analysis of the song “Aquele abraço,” written in 1969 by the Brazilian musician and performer Gilberto Gil, I will focus on how he narrates an experience, which, I argue, is affectively diasporic. This means that the sense of alienation from the homeland is not exclusively related to a physical separation, but also to the affective induction of this experience. Departing from the notions of Brian Massumi and those of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari about the nature and the experience of affect, I will explore how affect also emerges as an intensity circulating between bodies, which I relate to resonance and harmonic musical representation. This allows me to reflect on the dwelling in multiple worlds that is presented in the song’s narration, as well as on its layering of performative characteristics that interact with the listener on an affective level.

In this dissertation, I examine the work of Rogério Duprat as arranger for tropicalista songs and the way some of his musical arrangements dialog with the melodized words with which they were recorded in the late 1960s. As a mix of orchestral sounds, film music cliches, and sound effects, Duprat’s arrangements give an audiovisual character to tropicalista recordings. As an experienced composer of serial, electroacoustic, computer, and advertising music, as well as theater and cinema soundtracks, Duprat employed his broad knowledge of Western concert music and Brazilian popular music in order to make audio references to diverse works and music styles interwoven into his arrangements. As a craftsman, he sought to understand and to answer the demands from song composers, singers, the record company producer, recording technicians, and other professionals that became collaborators of his arrangements. His arrangements were also influenced by agents such as John Cage, The Beatles, the concrete poets, and the composers, conductors and musicians of Música Nova, a São Paulo avant-garde group that was integrated by Duprat and the other arrangers for tropicalista songs.

Based on the idea of contemporary cultural manifestations as hybrid cultures, this article aims at understanding how a sense of brazilianity is structured being equally hybrid, and uses Hélio Oiticica's work Tropicália (1967) for visual and aesthetic example. Interpreting popular culture as the result of the double movement of resisting and containing, and considering the changes suffered by the most traditional aspects of culture as well as the transformations resulting from them on the globalizing world and its technical and scientific environments, the legitimacy of the referred work of art as popular art is not approached. Instead, the installation is seen here as part of popular Brazilian culture, a manifestation able to reveal symbolic, political and cultural issues as well as illustrate a hybrid brazilianity under construction.
Keywords: brazilianity, Hélio Oiticica, popular culture, hybrid cultures, Tropicália.