Tropicalia was a musical revolution in Brazil. Singer and journalist Monica Vasconcelos meets the key artists and contemporary champions of Tropicalia - from Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil to Marcos Valle and Talking Heads' David Byrne - and explores its enduring musical and political force. Burning brightly for only few years in the late 1960s, and politically inspired by the uprisings in Paris in May 1968, the Tropicalia movement electrified Brazilian music, combining the sophistication of bossa nova, samba and baiao with psychedelia, new Beatles-inspired electric sounds and orchestral experimentation.
It was a deliberately subversive mix that provoked the country’s military regime and led to the exile and imprisonment of some of Brazil’s star musicians. Tropicalia brought a new wave of liberation and energy into Brazilian music. Earlier in the decade, bossa nova had captured a mood of national optimism but, as the 1960s wore on, the national mood darkened.
This post was originally published on The Documentary Podcast.
