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“Tropicália”
Veloso’s treatment of Miranda was only one example of how the movement emphasized the combining of opposites and the unexpected, from kitsch to androgyny (Sovik 1998: 1). High and low cultural practices, aesthetically refined and vulgar cultural artefacts, national and international music genres: Tropicália re-constructed them all in order to critique the military regime and the complacency of members of the middle class supporting it. Most pertinent to this study, all sounds, including those of the electric guitar, pandeiro, and berimbau were grist for the cannibalizing mill.
“Tropicália” was a pioneering mix of percussion, rattle, and high-pitched electronic sounds. It opened with a montage of bird calls and twittering that call to mind the sounds of the virgin forests of Brazil (Veloso 2003). According to Perrone (1993), the novel instrumentation of bird sounds was the key foil to the subsequent voiceover reading from The Letter of Pero Vaz Caminha, a historic document describing the natural riches of Brazil just before colonization. This juxtaposition of bird twittering and human voice reading the document that presages the fall of the tropical paradise conveyed how colonization will devour natural resources and decimate first peoples. Bird calls and masculine voiceover signaled the demise of Brazil’s natural resources, acting as an allegory for the fate of Brazil under military dictatorship. The mixture of instrumental reproduction of natural bird sounds and references to colonization and subjugation signaled the corruption of Brazil’s natural patrimony that began with the arrival of Europeans in 1500. Significantly, Caminha’s letter was referenced in Andrade’s manifesto, indicating the degree to which antropofagia provided the theoretical underpinning of the movement.
“Tropicália” summoned the audience to recognize a threat posed to Brazil by the military dictatorship by calling to mind the threat posed by colonization signaled by the voiceover of The Letter of Pero Vaz Caminha. In addition, musically generated bird sounds signaled Brazil in its natural state in contrast to the dissonant sounds being created by the regime. To reinforce the contrast, Veloso sings “Viva a mata” (“Hail the forest”), paying homage to the beauty of natural Brazil indicated by the sounds of birds. Yet the birds and forest are quickly silenced as Veloso’s other lyrics take the audience along “an ancient road” to “o monument no plan alto central do país” (“the monument in the central plateau of the country”) that is a symbol of the military dictatorship’s seat of power: the new city of Brasília carved out of the jungle that serves as a metaphoric aviary of oppression. Although the construction of Brasília was not begun under the dictatorship, it was completed after the 1964 military coup. The new regime dismantled some of the original plans envisioned by architects Niemeyer and Costa to “purify” them of Marxist influence. In contrast to the bird sounds pointing to the natural abundance of the jungle, the jungle was being destroyed by the dictatorship when it took over the construction of Brasília.
Also according to Perrone, meanings encapsulated in Tropicália relied on a complex mixture of noises, harmonies, nonsense words, and nondiscursive language. Keeping this combinatory innovation in mind allows us to understand the importance of hearing the bird sounds, disjointed lyrics, and use of onomatopoeia. In “Tropicália,” as the bird sounds of natural Brazil fade, Veloso sang lyrics that cast Brasília as a “monument with no doors” inhabited by “uma criança sorridente, feia e morta estende a mão” (“a child smiling, ugly, and dead” reaching out his hand”). The juxtaposition between bird sounds and dissonant noises was purposefully used as a foil to the soft cadence of Veloso’s voice when describing the horrors of the regime in song. By interrupting smooth vocals with jarring noises and screeching sounds, Veloso confronted the audience with the perversion of natural Brazil into a corpse marked by death and corruption, smiling a ghoulish smile and beckoning its fetid hand from the lap of the dictatorship. In addition to the sounds of birds in the aviary of the dictatorship, Veloso employed onomatopoeia with the word “bang-bang.” Bang-bang communicated the violence of the regime and brought to mind gunshots against protestors, the armed struggle against the dictatorship, and even the faltering heartbeat of a languishing Brazil. These aural combinations pointed to a natural Brazil that was weak, dying, and bleeding out: “the bang-bang running through the veins very little blood.”
Most important, the next line in the song’s lyrics took up the motif of the heart and linked it to uniquely Brazilian sounds: “But the heart beats a tambourine samba” that “emits dissonant chords.” Invoking the tambourine conjured associations of overturned power relations and linked them to two cultural institutions at the heart of Brazilian identity: samba and carnival. To this day, carnival is famous for its samba celebrations, notably Rio’s elaborate samba parade competition at the Sambadrome. Significantly, both samba and carnival are still traditions in which power relations are overturned and the powerless gain the ascendency. This is particularly true of carnival (see Moreno 1982) when samba schools briefly become the center of national attention and cultural deification. Veloso’s reference to carnival thus signified the inversion of power between the Brazilian people and the junta, as well as the hope for Brazil’s future once the dictatorship ends. These meanings were signaled through the tambourine that is perverted from its natural state through the dictatorship’s dissonance.