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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  "Tropicália" (Caetano Veloso)

domingo é o fino da bossa
segunda-feira está na fossa
terça-feira vai à roça, porém
o monumento é bem moderno
nã:o disse nada do modelo do meu terno
que tudo mais vá pro inferno meu bem
Viva a banda-da-da
Carmen Miranda-da-da-da
Sunday "O fino da bossa" is on
Monday is the pits
Tuesday on the farm, however
the monument is quite modern
you said nothing about the style of my suit
to hell with everything else my love
Viva a banda-da-da
Carmen Miranda-da-da-da

In 1967, the radical conceptual artist Hélio Oiticica exhibited an installation in Rio de Janeiro entitled "Tropicália." The work juxtaposed structures reminiscent of the favela shanties with emblems of modernity. After hearing one of Veloso's untitled compositions, the filmmaker Luís Carlos Barreto detected affinities between the song and Oiticica's work, especially in the way that it allegorized the uneven process of modernization in Brazil. A fragmentary montage of events, emblems, musical references, and literary citations, Veloso's "Tropicália" is often regarded as the principal song-manifesto of the tropicalist movement. The final stanza cited below alludes to the contentious field of Brazilian popular music during the 1960s with references to Elis Regina's TV program "O fino da bossa," folky protest music, and a hit song by rock idol Roberto Carlos. The song ends with the exultant celebration of Carmen Miranda, the Hollywood movie star and camp icon of Brazilian culture for export whose image so troubled the custodians of "good taste" in her own country. Veloso once remarked that citing Carmen Miranda in this song "was like Andy Warhol putting the Campbell soup can in his painting."

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