Brutality Garden:
Tropicália and the
Emergence of a
Brazilian Counterculture

Christopher Dunn

276 pp., 12 color
and 18 b&w illus.

$55.00 cl

$19.95 pb

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  "Parque Industrial" (Tom Zé)

bandeirolas no cordão
grande festa em toda nação
despertai com orações
o avanço industrial
vem trazer nossa redenção
touch up the blue sky
streamers on a string
a great national festival
rise and hear the orations
industrial progress
has brought our redemption

A satire of developmentalist zeal, Tom Zé's "Parque Industrial" pokes fun at the unbridled faith in the redemptive powers of industrialization during a period of authoritarian rule. The blue sky is reduced to a polluted artifice that needs "touching up" for the grand occasion. In the recording, a brass band and crowd ambiance evoke the pomp of a military parade. The tropicalists maintained an ambivalent relationship to the process of industrial modernization in the 1960s. They were suspicious of patriotic notions of "progress," especially as a justification for authoritarian rule, yet also rejected the pre-modern, folkloric ideal of national culture advanced by certain sectors of the opposition. Another cut from the Tropicália concept album, the recording "Parque Industrial" featured vocals by Gil, Veloso, Costa, and Tom Zé.

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