Tropicália: Sonic Resistance, Relationships, and Reframing

Laura Robinson

In 1964, the military dictatorship in Brazil seized political power and extended their domain to many facets of Brazilian society. In this context of repression, artists and musicians created the powerful yet short-lived cultural movement called Tropicália. This paper examines the sounds of the Tropicália in response to the call to remap sound studies to include sounds of the “South” issued by Gavin Steingo and Jim Sykes in their edited volume Remapping Sound Studies. Concerning the terms “South” and “North,” they critically probe conceptualizations of the South not only in terms of geography but also as implicit bias in power relations. Significantly, they argue against the use of the “South” as an oversimplified binary that is contrasted with framings of the conceptual “North.” Instead, they argue that the terms are fluid and indicate both “empirical categories” and “ideological constructs” (Steingo and Sykes 2019: 3). Taking issue with the hegemonic influences along multiple axes of power, Steingo and Sykes argue for the fundamental need to examine sounds from the South as constituting an important but often neglected genre in the large field of sound studies. To fill this need, they make three proposals for the remapping of a new cartography of sound theory. First, in terms of sounds’ relationship to technology, Steingo and Sykes urge for exploration of the constitution of culture through techniques made possible by technological innovation. Second, they argue for sonic studies to move in a relational direction to illuminate the relationship between listener and what is heard. Third, they encourage scholars to unpack the elements of sonic studies that reveal friction and antagonism, particularly in terms of social relations, a shift that moves the field beyond the perceptual qualities of sound toward the emotional and relational constructions of sounds as they are interpreted by listeners.

Next: References

1. Tropicália as Sound of the South

2. Tropicália and Sound Studies

3. The Historical Context of Tropicália

4. Antropofagia: Cultural Cannibalization

5. Cannibalization as Critique and Creation

Synthesis of Sound as Resistance in Tropicália

In conclusion, this examination of Tropicália as a multi-layered form of protest speaks to the call for sonic cartography of the South raised by Steingo and Sykes, particularly the meanings ascribed to sounds in Brazilian cultural context. Examining the aural significance of the pandeiro samba tambourine and berimbau in two pivotal songs, “Tropicália” and “Domingo No Parque,” revealed how deep cultural knowledge is necessary to understand the sonic resistance generated by Tropicálistas Veloso and Gil that was heard by their sonically literate audiences in ways that would not be audible to the uninitiated.

In addition, the essay also uncovered the social and political legacies of the music-political movement at the third Festival International de Cançao. This festival was a key moment for the Tropicália movement in which it became both a medium of protest and the object of another kind of resistance due to the use of new sonic importation that the audience was not ready to hear. The friction unleashed by Tropicália at the FIC III illuminated latent understandings of what resistance “should” sound like to the ears of different audiences.

Despite its short duration, the Tropicália movement made incredible aesthetic and political contributions. Rooted in Andrade’s concept of antropofagia, the Tropicália artists imported new aural elements, primarily through the use of the electric guitar, and combined them with sounds from the berimbau and pandeiro. Tropicálistas cannibalized all of them, as well as their latent cultural associations signaling resistance through sounds. Resistance was heard by those listening and hearing the cannibalization of sounds, particularly the electric guitar, the pandeiro, and the berimbau. The movement’s devastating critiques and ultimately redemptive content was a sonically-driven condemnation of the military dictatorship via a new Brazilian aesthetics of resistance.

Yet Tropicália was much more than a critique of a right-wing regime. In addition to protesting the military government, the movement posed a much more radical form of protest that questioned aesthetics, political expression, and the segments of society implicitly supporting the status quo and the military coup. The movement also questioned traditional ideas of reform by reevaluating the role of audible aesthetics by incorporating the sounds of the electric guitar, the berimbau, and the tambourine samba together in new ways. For Tropicálistas, redefining Andrade’s antropofagia was a potent process of creative defiance powered by sound. In making these connections, the essay contributes to the literature on sounds from Brazil and thereby begins to fill the lacunae demarcated by the omission of sounds from the South from the larger field of sound studies. Studying Tropicália makes clear the role of sound in larger social processes that reveal patterns of power, contestation, and resolution.

“Tropicália” 6.

“Domingo no Parque” 7.

Sonic Innovation: Cannibalizing the Electric Guitar 8.

Synthesis of Sound as Resistance in Tropicália 9.

References 10.

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