{"id":107257,"date":"2013-02-28T13:10:52","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T16:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=107257"},"modified":"2017-03-06T15:24:47","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T18:24:47","slug":"explaining-only-to-confuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/explaining-only-to-confuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Explaining, only to confuse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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File photo\/ AG\u00caNCIA O GLOBO<\/span>Tom Z\u00e9 on stage in Rio de Janeiro in 1973File photo\/ AG\u00caNCIA O GLOBO<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI\u2019m explaining\/To confuse you\/I\u2019m confusing you\/To make it clear\/I\u2019m illuminated\/To become blind\/I\u2019m going blind\/To be able to guide,\u201d sings Tom Z\u00e9, somewhat out of tune, in \u201cT\u00f4,\u201d the fourth track on his 1976 album Estudando a samba <\/em>(Studying the samba). This refrain by the Bahian singer could have referred indirectly to the impact of the musical production by the artists selected by historian Herom Vargas, a full professor in the master\u2019s in communication program offered at the Municipal University of S\u00e3o Caetano do Sul (USCS) and the Methodist University of S\u00e3o Paulo (Umesp), as the focus of a research project entitled Experimentalismo e inova\u00e7\u00e3o na m\u00fasica popular brasileira nos anos 1970 <\/em>(Experimentalism and innovation in Brazilian popular music in the 1970s). In addition to Tom Z\u00e9, the Novos Baianos, Walter Franco and the Secos & Molhados, these comprise a disparate bunch, but this disparity tells a story about the creativity and experimentation that took place in Brazilian music during a period when the record industry in Brazil was expanding and becoming more concentrated in terms of ownership.<\/p>\n

In his 1994 paper entitled O berimbau e o som universal<\/em> (The berimbau and the universal sound), Enor Paiano, author of Tropicalismo: bananas ao vento no cora\u00e7\u00e3o do Brasil<\/em> (Tropicalism: tossing bananas to the winds in the heart of Brazil), published by Scipione, cited figures that demonstrate the growth in the Brazilian record market at the time: 444.6% between 1966 and 1976, in a period when cumulative growth in GDP was 152%. Among the companies that experienced the most robust sales was Continental, a Brazilian recording company founded in 1929 and based in S\u00e3o Paulo that had popular and regional artists in its portfolio of artists. \u201cContinental was the biggest Brazilian record producer of all time,\u201d emphasizes Eduardo Vicente, professor at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (ECA-USP). He is author of the 2002 research project entitled M\u00fasica e disco no Brasil: a trajet\u00f3ria da ind\u00fastria nas d\u00e9cadas de 80 e 90<\/em> (Music and disco in Brazil: the trajectory of the industry in the 1980s and 1990s).<\/p>\n

Around 1970, Continental decided to expand beyond its cast of regional artists and record new artists. Walter Franco, the Secos & Molhados, the Novos Baianos, and Tom Z\u00e9 had little to no access to the larger multinational recording firms, such as Philips, that were starting to enter the market,\u201d Vargas explains, in justifying his choice of names for analysis in the research project.<\/p>\n

But there were two other factors, in addition to market realities, that influenced the emergence of that experimental generation. \u201cThe military dictatorship was severely repressive in the first half of the 1970s. These artists, like others in popular music, were going to try to get around the issue of censorship. But unlike Chico Buarque, they had no declared political bias, they operated through the loopholes. They worked up the lyrics of a song as a means of provocation,\u201d Vargas recalls.<\/p>\n

Lastly, there is also the international context of the counterculture\u2014the term referring to the set of attitudes and new social, and artistic, relationships that began to take shape in the second half of the 1960s in Europe and the United States and reverberated in different ways in the rest of the world, from the May 1968 events in France to Brazilian tropicalism.<\/p>\n

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DOMICIO PINHEIRO\/AE <\/span>Walter Franco on stage in 1975DOMICIO PINHEIRO\/AE <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Speaking of this new generation, the researcher used the term \u201cpost-tropicalism,\u201d saying: \u201cThe term \u2018post-tropicalism\u2019 has been used with reasonably accurate insight to designate a segment of the musical production of the period that, in some way, followed some of its steps,\u201d he wrote in the article Categor\u00edas de an\u00e1lise do experimentalismo p\u00f3s-tropicalista na MPB<\/em> (Categories of analysis of the post-tropicalist experimentalism in MPB [Brazilian Popular Music]). Tropicalismo created its novelties within the context of televised music festivals, very often in a criticism of the Left itself. The Novos Baianos, for example, did that within its songs, in a more musical context,\u201d Vargas points out.<\/p>\n

The duo Luiz Galv\u00e3o and Morais Moreira is emblematic of that transition. Formed in 1969 in Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia, they moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1971. Under the influence of Jo\u00e3o Gilberto, they began to incorporate different elements of the samba into their rock music in albums such as Acabou chorare <\/em>(Ended up crying) and Novos Baianos FC.<\/em> \u201cTake their re-recording of Dorival Caymmi\u2019s O samba da minha terra<\/em> (Samba of my homeland). When Pepeu Gomes comes in with his guitar you hear riffs, solos, that use the language associated with rock. But the piece is still a samba,\u201d says Vargas.<\/p>\n

Counterculture<\/strong>
\nBesides music, the behavior of the group\u2014which for a while lived collectively on a small country estate in Rio de Janeiro\u2014was also important to the continuity of tropicalism. \u201cThe Novos Baianos introduced what we might call the \u2018Brazilian version of the counterculture,\u2019\u201d says Unicamp professor and researcher Jos\u00e9 Roberto Zan. \u201cLife in a collective, the drugs, the tropicalist habit of combining musical elements from international pop with Brazilian music (samba, and regional genres like the frevo<\/em>) make up a style that expresses the way that the counterculture resonates in our popular music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another group that expressed its disagreement via the physicality of its performance style\u2014and, inevitably, via rock music, was the Secos & Molhados. Mixing progressive rock and blues, incorporating Luso-Brazilian folk references (in \u201cO vira\u201d \u2013 [name of a Portuguese dance]) and by the constant inclusion of poetry\u2014by names like Vinicius de Moraes, Manuel Bandeira and Fernando Pessoa, among others\u2014the trio enjoyed a meteoric career, with two albums released between 1971 and 1974, and an enormous popular success driven by the visual appeal of their makeup and the sexually ambiguous theatricality of vocalist Ney Matogrosso.<\/p>\n

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Ronald Fonseca\/ Ag\u00eancia O Globo<\/span>The Secos & Molhados appear at Maracan\u00e3 stadium in 1974Ronald Fonseca\/ Ag\u00eancia O Globo<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The black-and-white makeup that marked the signature look of the group was chosen almost by chance. Prior to the success of the Secos & Molhados, Matogrosso had been an actor and, in a show by the group at the Casa da Badala\u00e7\u00e3o e T\u00e9dio, a club next to the Ruth Escobar Theatre, he arrived late, having come straight from a children\u2019s play in which he had been acting.\u00a0 In his haste, he took the stage still in full makeup. Jo\u00e3o Ricardo, founder and lead composer of the band, and fellow band mate G\u00e9rson Conrad were excited by the audience reaction and decided to adopt that style.<\/p>\n

That artifice was amplified by Matogrosso\u2019s stage and television performances themselves. Early in the 1970s, he had demanded a newly hegemonic role. In the article Corpo e <\/em>performance no experimentalismo do grupo Secos & Molhados <\/em>(Body and performance in the experimentalism of the group the Secos & Molhados), Vargas describes the singer\u2019s posture with precision: \u201cHis figure is arrogant (bulging bare chest, head held high), even with bare feet. His eyes are wide open, the shrill voice is remarkable, the exaggerated movements of his mouth emphasize the pronunciation of the words, hip movements insinuate other codes, feathers, beads and sequins jangle with his body, a series of dance movements or completely free movements on the stage become codes for freedom. These weren\u2019t rehearsed moves, that always stayed the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of driving away the public in a country that was still conservative, the effect was the opposite: sold-out shows all over Brazil, a tour in Mexico, hundreds of thousands of albums sold. \u201cThe two LPs by the Secos & Molhados were perhaps the biggest phenomenon experienced by the Brazilian recording industry in that period,\u201d Zan observes. \u201cI think the experience of that group set new standards for the staging of songs at a time when television was coming into its own as the principal medium of mass communication in this country. At the same time, the performances anticipated the invention of the video clip, a new component of the language of popular music.\u201d<\/p>\n

In contrast to those cases in which experimentation translated into popular success, Walter Franco provides an example of how the more aggressive radicalism found no echo outside the members of the vanguard, who were ultimately baptized, especially because of their confrontational posture, as \u201ccursed.\u201d The S\u00e3o Paulo-native composer began to gain attention projection with his 1972 appearance at the Seventh International Song Festival, sponsored by the Globo TV network, in which he introduced the song Cabe\u00e7a<\/em>\u00a0 (Head).\u00a0 A song without lyrics, the track was a collection of phrases and fragments placed over a layer of synthesized sounds. Despite being booed by the public during the presentation, the song was viewed sympathetically by the jury chaired by Nara Le\u00e3o, but to prevent the controversial work from receiving an award, the network dismissed the jury, heightening the controversy.<\/p>\n

After this episode, Franco won a contract with Continental, where he would launch two albums: Ou n\u00e3o <\/em>(Or not), in 1973, and Rev\u00f3lver<\/em> (Tossing and turning) in 1975. \u201cOne could draw a parallel between concrete poetry and Franco\u2019s work, especially in terms of conciseness,\u201d Vargas notes. \u201cHe uses only a few notes, a very limited melody, and most of his lyrics are short. But he demonstrates the meanings of the song in the arrangement, in the performance. Cabe\u00e7a<\/em>, for example, has no lyrics. It\u2019s just a phrase, but with each repetition in a live performance, he gives it a new meaning. Concrete poetry is like that: the message needs to be concise but at the same time, it has to contain a lot of meaning in order to be understood by the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

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File photo, Ag\u00eancia Estado\/AE<\/span>The Novos Baianos at a 1972 rehearsalFile photo, Ag\u00eancia Estado\/AE<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The preoccupation with words and the experiments with atonal compositions and with collages influenced a later generation of musicians, members of the so-called Paulistano Vanguard, at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. \u201cIt seems there was a dialogue going on,\u201d Zan notes. \u201cIt\u2019s worth listening to and comparing Franco\u2019s composition Cabe\u00e7a <\/em>with \u2018Minha Cabe\u00e7a <\/em>(My head) by Luiz Tatit and Z\u00e9 Carlos Ribeiro, who appear on the 1981 LP Rumo<\/em> (Direction).\u201d<\/p>\n

Another musician whose 70s work would later influence Brazilian music is Tom Z\u00e9. A participant a the very center of tropicalismo, joining the Mutantes and recording, in the 1968 manifesto-album Tropic\u00e1lis ou panis et circensis<\/em> (Tropicalia or bread and circuses), this Bahian musician, a disciple of Hans Joachin Koellreutter, had an especially creative phase\u2014but one of little immediate impact\u2014during the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Experimentation<\/strong>
\nIn albums such as Todos os olhos <\/em>(All the eyes) and Estudando o samba<\/em>, Z\u00e9 chose songs as his vehicle for experimentation and criticism. His aim was to redraft what he himself would later call the \u201ctacit agreement\u201d between artist and public in which there existed a preconceived notions of what a song is \u201cin fact\u201d and what \u201cis not music\u201d \u2013 an accusation he had heard from time to time from the audience as they booed at festivals any and all music that departed from that inscrutable \u201cstandard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Therefore, Tom Z\u00e9 looked for different resources with which to deconstruct a song from the inside. \u201cOne example is the use of the ostinato, a rhythmic and melodic motif that repeats during the entire song. He uses this in several compositions from the period, and with each repetition something new happens in the music. That use is not very common in popular music, which usually has a structure that is divided into first and second parts, refrain, solo, etc.,\u201d Vargas observes.<\/p>\n

In addition, Tom Z\u00e9 made extensive use of \u201cnon musical\u201d objects within his compositions, adapting proposals from the erudite vanguard. \u201cWhat saved me was that I am a terrible composer, a terrible singer, and a terrible instrumentalist. And so, for someone who\u2019s very bad, it doesn\u2019t make much difference whether I play the piano or a floor polisher!\u201d the musician said in 2006, explaining his choices.<\/p>\n

A third point that Vargas likes to recall in the work of the composer during that period is a certain mixture of signals, with Tom Z\u00e9 inverting, mixing, and appropriating features related to different popular genres. In Estudando o samba<\/em> that vocation appears with vigor and the artist analyses, decomposes, and recomposes \u201crhythmic structures, melodic and thematic features, instrumental timbres, and traditional forms of interpretation of the samba,\u201d as Vargas explains in his article As inova\u00e7\u00f5es de Tom Z\u00e9 na linguagem da can\u00e7ao popular dos anos 1970. <\/em>(Tom Ze\u2019s innovations in the language of popular songs in the 1970s). \u201cOn that record there\u2019s a version of Tom Jobim\u2019s and Vinicius de Moraes\u2019s Felicidade <\/em>(Happiness). He takes the song apart, it gets strange, he mixes the binary rhythm of the samba with a guitar in the three-part beat and introduces noises, recorded sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

That phase of music is bound to continue to spark new discussions. \u201cI want to study further the conditions under which those artists of the 1970s developed and talk more about Continental and the dictatorship, the recording companies, and the backdrop of the era,\u201d says the researcher.<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\nExperimentalism and innovation in Brazilian popular music in the 1970s\u00a0(n\u00ba 2009\/18261<\/a>);\u00a0Grant mechanism<\/strong>\u00a0Regular Line of Research Project Award; Coordinator<\/strong>\u00a0Herom Vargas \u2013 Methodist University; Investment <\/strong>R$ 11,587.00 (FAPESP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MPB found different ways to re-create tropicalistic experimentation","protected":false},"author":255,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[248],"coauthors":[567],"class_list":["post-107257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-music"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/255"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107257"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=107257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}