"# Brasil" "# Brasil... #" "Brazil's history has been expressed through its national passion for music." "Samba, the country's dominant musical style, was used by politicians in the '30s in an attempt to create unity and a sense of national identity in this vast multi-racial state." "Regional musicians fought back, determined to promote a more down-to-earth image of Brazil." "And in the '50s, bossa nova gave Brazil a new, sophisticated international identity." "But in the '60s, everything changed." "In an era of repression, music was to become a battleground in the new struggle to determine the identity of Brazil." "# Tall and tan and young and lovely" "# The girl from Ipanema goes walking" "# And when she passes" "# Each one she passes goes... #" "1964 was a strange year for Brazilian music." "Abroad, the country's image was defined by bossa nova and Astrud Gilberto's international hit," "Girl From Ipanema, with its promise of an exotic, romantic land, populated by beautiful women." "In Brazil itself, the mood was very, very different." "On March 31st 1964, the military seized power." "The man they overthrew, president Joao Goulart, had polarised the country by legalising the communist party and visiting Cuba's new revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro." "Goulart delighted the Brazilian left, but horrified many middle-class Brazilians and the Americans, who feared that Brazil might follow the same path as Cuba." "So there was relief in Washington when the soldiers took over, arguing they were saving Brazil from Communism." "Brazil would remain under military rule for the next 21 years." "The military strike in '64 was... the worst thing that ever could happen to this country, because until today, we have never recovered from that." "It was bad times." "It was bad times." "But at the same time," "I think that the opposite of that was that it was very creative." "The military coup split the Brazilian music scene." "Many leading Brazilian performers had left the country to take advantage of the continuing bossa nova craze in the United States." "Those who remained were divided between musicians who ignored politics and left-wingers, who argued that bossa nova should change to represent the realities of the new Brazil." "The form was OK." "But now we have to add something, and that was the content, some content in the..." "We just couldn't speak only about love and flower...and smile." "Bossa nova would only talk about the sea, and we thought that we should have more social content inside the lyrics." "Nara Leao, who'd been known as the muse of bossa nova, became the face of this new protest movement." "Instead of singing about love and the sea, she now chose songs about hardship or a lament written by a black singer from the northern farmlands." "The used to call her "the Muse"." "But that's wrong, she's not the muse." "She was a musician." "She could play, she could sing." "The left-wingers championed what they saw as authentic Brazilian music, music of the people, that came from the city slums, the favelas, or the countryside, and had no foreign influences." "During the '60s, these favelas doubled in size, as more migrants moved from the countryside to the increasingly industrialised city." "SAMBA MUSIC" "Modern samba was born in the poorer areas of Rio, and left-wing singers were inspired by the new samba do morro, samba from the hills, that dealt with the harsh realities of life in communities with few facilities to cope with the newcomers." "But a new and very different popular music was emerging in the working class areas of Rio, that would bring Brazil new international attention and infuriate the left." "Jorge Ben, who later changed his name to Jorge Ben Jor, made us of electric guitars, condemned by the left because of their association with America and foreign influences." "But his songs would transform Brazilian music, and have been continually re-recorded until the present day." "Jorge Ben had started out playing bossa nova, but his first major hit, Mas Que Nada, mixed samba with maracatu, a rhythm from the northern countryside." "Mas Que Nada became one of the most successful Brazilian songs of all time." "In 1966, it was re-recorded in America by Sergio Mendes, who'd moved there to take advantage of the bossa nova boom and developed a highly commercial new style by bringing two female singers into his band." "Mas Que Nada became a top ten hit, the first Portuguese language success in American pop history." "That song, Mas Que Nada, is magical." "I told Jorge Ben the other day, I saw him in LA." "And I thank him for writing that song, because there's not many songs like that." "I mean, a song that everybody can sing along with." "And it's so simply, and it's so catchy." "It's like..." "And it's all over the world." "You go to Japan..." "I go to Japan every year, and I play..." "Mas Que Nada is like the national anthem." "# Mas que nada... #" "Mas Que Nada has been re-recorded over 200 times." "It's been used as a football anthem, though the lyrics have nothing to do with football." "And it's been given a hip hop treatment by The Black Eyed Peas." "With hip hop mix up with samba, with samba..." "Sergio Mendes remained in America, to become Brazil's most commercially successful musician of the '60s." "When the fashion for bossa nova finally ended, giving way to the English invasion led by the Beatles, he notched up another hit single with his own easy listening version of the Beatles' Fool On The Hill," "which he performed on The Andy Williams TV Show." "# And he never gives an answer" "# But the fool on the hill" "# Sees the sun going down" "# And the eyes in his head" "# See the wo-o-orld" "# Spinning round. #" "Sergio Mendes ensured that the international image of Brazil was still that of an easy-going, exotic paradise." "But back in Brazil, the reality was rather different." "Life was not easy." "The soldiers had inherited serious economic problems, but the early days of the military regime were not as repressive as many on the left had feared." "And there was a new form of mass entertainment - television." "In the '60s, sales of TV sets in Brazil boomed, and the most popular programmes included live music contests." "These festivals were organised by rival TV companies in Rio and Sao Paulo and were very different to Eurovision, for they featured the very best new singers in the country." "They were important because they coincided with a period when the military government was trying to open up Brazil to outside investment." "The military wanted to provide an image of Brazil that was progressive, that Brazil could take its part amongst the nations of the world." "For the moment, at least, there was no censorship." "The festivals included protest singers along with pop stars." "And a new wave of singer-songwriters, who were given the uninspired title MPB" " Popular Brazilian Music - and included musicians who would dominate the Brazilian music scene for the next three decades." "For the TV companies, the festivals were a massive success." "People used to gather around, in bars, on street corners, and watch the festivals in groups, because not everybody had television sets." "They were still quite expensive." "But people would gather and they would support their own particular performer in much the same way that they would support a football team." "In 1966, the co-winner of the TV Record Festival was Chico Buarque, who became an instant star with A Banda." "CLAPPING" "Buarque was praised by traditionalists as the heir to the great samba cancao writers of the 1930s, but would become a symbol of resistance to the military in the repressive era that was to come." "Today, he's recognised as one of Brazil's greatest lyricists." "The new singer-songwriters were predominantly male." "Female singers were expected to cover other peoples' work." "Elis Regina, Brazil's finest female singer of the '60s became famous for a passionate interpretation of bravely varied songs, that was very different to the cool approach of the bossa nova era." "She was a typhoon, that woman." "She was really something, you know." "She was unpredictable, she was a genius, absolute genius." "She was, I think, the best singer I've seen in my life performing live." "She also became famous for her wild lifestyle, and died of a drug overdose while still in her thirties." "Elis Regina shook up Brazilian music." "From 1964 to '67, she co-hosted a TV show which featured often controversial new songs and performers from the new MPB movement." "Her guests included Joyce." "Joyce was one female Brazilian singer who dared to write her own songs." "There were no women songwriters at all in Brazilian music." "So..." "The very first time when I appeared on stage," "I was booed of stage." "That was 1967, I was 19 years old, and it was a huge song festival with like 50,000 people in the audience." "The first line of that song said," ""I was told my man doesn't love me"." "And that was it." "When I said, "my man"... "Whoooo!"" ""Prostitute!" "Whooo..."" "That, I mean, it was 1967, but..." "The '60s arrived a bit late here in Brazil." "The television festivals became a battleground for supporters of the rival styles - protest music, pop and MPB." "At the TV Record Festival in 1967, the audience was dominated by left-wingers, demanding what they regarded as authentic Brazilian songs." "They even booed a protest singer, Sergio Ricardo, when he began to sing about football." "Ricardo furiously turned on the crowd." "This became known as the festival of booing." "Roberto Carlos, the most successful pop star in Brazilian history, and the host of a highly successful TV music show, was, of course, given a hard time." "And the winner, predictably enough, was a singer associated with the left wing, Edu Lobo, with the cheerful anthem Ponteio, that expressed hope for change." "The 1967 festival was most important for the emergence of Tropicalia, a brand new movement, determined to transform Brazilian music." "It was headed by Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, two friends who'd moved to Rio from the northern city of Salvador, but aimed to break what they saw as the stranglehold of Rio on Brazilian music." "They were opposed to the military dictatorship, of course, but also opposed to what they saw as the dogmatic elitism of the left." "They planned to create a new, distinctively Brazilian style, by mixing rock music from the west with different styles from right across Brazil." "Gilberto Gil was deliberately provocative, working with a rock band, Os Mutantes, who used electric guitars, hated by the left, for the first time at a song festival on Domingo No Parque." "Caetano Veloso was also controversial." "He upset left-wingers, who thought his song Alegria, Alegria sounded too American." "Though it became such a success that he acquired pop star status." "The main aim of Tropicalism was really shake the environment, the musical and cultural environment." "This small group from Bahia thought that the violence of our situation and the importance of mass culture had a lot in common, you know..." "Political violence and pop icons, you know, it had to do with rock'n'roll." "That's why we liked the Beatles, because they loved what had been, up to that moment, just commercial rubbish." "With rock'n'roll and with, you know, pop music, with the Beatles and everything, we thought that... we should just be... sounding national, sounding Brazilian, but sounding global as well." "Because of the dictatorship, we needed a strong reaction from the society, in terms of...uh... enduring for freedom, for liberty, for... freedom of speech, for circulation of ideas..." "The Tropicalia movement included Gal Costa and Tom Ze, also from Bahia, along with poets, film directors and artists, all determined to create a new Brazilian style." "Their philosophy involved cultural cannibalism, devouring different influences to create a new style." "Those influences included western pop, represented by the Beatles, pop art, the glamour and kitsch of Brazil's Hollywood star of the '40s, Carmen Miranda, music from the Brazilian regions and the country songs of Luiz Gonzaga" "to Bahia's Dorival Caymmi and the classic samba of Paulinho Da Viola, who sometimes appeared at Tropicalia events, as did yet another major Tropicalia hero and influence, the songwriter Jorge Ben." "# Take it easy, my brother Charlie" "# Take it easy meu irmao de cor... #" "He was the embryo of the very thing we were trying to do consciously." "He had started with bossa nova, and he had added... rhythm'n'blues and rock'n'roll to his thing." "And he had a new synthesis, that prefigured everything the Tropicalistas wanted to do." "The Tropicalia movement also had its own rock band," "Os Mutantes, who later developed cult status in the west." "We shot arrows everywhere." "No aim." "We were basically just having fun and we were kids, and we just wanted to play rock'n'roll." "Os Mutantes were amazing." "Because they were very young and... you know, we were beginning to love rock'n'roll through the Beatles." "And they sounded to me, at the time, not an imitation of the Beatles." "They sounded like something... almost just as creative in the same..." "..in the same line, you know." "I think we were playing exactly what the Beatles did, we were..." "We thought we were playing rock'n'roll, you know." "I think Brazil is such a kaleidoscope of information, especially then, there was no information, so we used to pick up music from...thanks to BBC, via the shortwaves." "And we used to get the Beatles, you know, because there was nothing available." "And so it was very hard to really understand what was going on." "So we painted it the way we saw it." "Tropicalia upset the military, the left, and survivors from the bossa nova movement, who regarded these newcomers as decidedly inferior." "I don't think there is a blossoming of culture like in bossa nova..." "I don't call bossa nova a movement, because there was no manifest." "There was no intention." "Everything was very spontaneous." "But Tropicalia was a movement." "They had a manifest." "They had an idea in their heads." "But the idea of Tropicalia never won anything, never went too far." "The left-wing artists and creatives, they reacted AGAINST us." "They thought we were selling out...becoming commercial, and approving the American imperialism through admitting mass culture, rock'n'roll, counterculture and all this stuff, you know," "Hollywood..." "So where did Tropicalia find an audience?" "Tom Ze argued that its followers came from a quite different section of Brazilian society, who were open to new ideas." "The timing was right for a new, internationally influenced musical movement." "1968 was a year of global upheavals, and rock music provided the soundtrack." "In Communist Czechoslovakia," "Soviet tanks rolled in to end Dubcek's experiment in Socialism with a human face." "In Britain, as in America, there were violent protests against the Vietnam war." "In France, student clashes with the police escalated into serious riots and even fears that the state itself was under threat." "While in Brazil, there was also increasing chaos." "The soldiers had originally promised that they would relinquish power in 1967, but they stayed on, with military hardliners determined to crack down on any form of opposition." "On June 26th 1968, a mass demonstration, the March of 100,000, was held in Rio, organised in protest at the killing of a student shot by police." "Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, Edu Lobo" "Paulinho Da Viola and Milton Nascimento were among the musicians who took part." "A song by Caetano Veloso expressed the anger of the times and became a Tropicalia anthem." "E Prohibido Prohibir, prohibiting is prohibited, a slogan taken from the student upheavals in France." "The footage of him singing the song at the 1968 TV Globo song festival has been destroyed, but a sound recording still exists of Veloso attacking the audience for their musical conservatism." "In December 1968, the confrontation between soldiers and protesters entered a new phase." "The military government published AI5" " Institutional Act Number 5- which suspended habeas corpus, allowing houses to be searched without a warrant and anyone to be jailed without a reason being given." "Torture became commonplace, and thousands simply disappeared." "The military didn't arrest left-wing musicians but instead targeted the leaders of Tropicalia," "Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil." "What scared, and what bothered the military, was basically behaviour, you know, the way we were...sort of..uh... dressing and manifesting and dealing ideas, you know, trading ideas, that sort of thing." "The behaviourist revolutionary element." "On December 27th 1968, Gil and Veloso were detained in Sao Paolo, and driven to Rio where they were held without charge." "I didn't think they would put us in prison, you know." "They told us, "the military authorities want to talk to you, to ask you some questions."" "I thought they were going to ask us, "Why did you join the parades?" ""Why did you do this or that?" "What does this mean?"" "And I was..." "I thought I would be able to answer all those questions without having problems, because we were..." "We joined the parades, but lots of other artists in Brazil did so, very well-known, with photographs." "And they were hand in hand with us, you know, and they were not being put in jail." "I was anxious to be out of there." "I was little depressed, I was little concerned about my future," "I was little worried." "I took it very personally." "I had no time in prison to think, "OK, when we out of here, we should...sort of...uh..." ""..connect, or we should sort of use this thing as a political background," ""to make the movement grow or something like that."" "I was not political at all." "I mean, being in prison," "I was..." "I was...totally human." "The two singers were questioned, and told they were considered more dangerous than those involved in straight-forward political activity." "After two months in jail, they were taken back to their home state, Bahia." "They brought us to Bahia and we stayed here for four months, we could not leave the town, and we had to report in every day." "And after that, they invited us to leave the country, and we decided to live in London." "# I'm wandering round and round, nowhere to go" "# I'm lonely in London, London's lovely so" "# I cross the streets without fear Everybody keeps the way clear" "# I know, I know no one here, to say hello. #" "Gil and Veloso arrived in London as exiles in 1969, and stayed for over two years." "They became actively involved in the London music scene, and they both wrote and recorded in English." "Caetano even praised the London police." "#..where to go #" "# A group approach a policeman He seems so pleased to please them" "# It's good at least to live, and I agree. #" "In London it was peaceful." "No policemen would, you know, harass you in the streets." "And music was very interesting." "You know, that's where things were happening." "We knew, we loved the Beatles from here, and the Rolling Stones." "We knew about Pink Floyd, we had heard Pink Floyd." "Other things!" "Pop, rock, British." "Especially Beatles and Stones and Traffic." "# You are the reason I've been waiting" "# So long, long" "# Somebody holds the key" "# Well, I'm near the end and I" "# Just ain't got the time" "# Well I'm wasted and I can't find my way home. #" "And then the reggae, the West Indian scene, sort of starting in Notting Hill." "We catched..." "We caught the first moments of that, you know, that thing happening." "So it was the right place to be..." "But still, the first year I was mostly depressed." "Even so, Veloso and Gil made the most of their time in exile." "In 1970 they were among the crowds at the Isle of Wight festival, where they were invited to make an impromptu appearance, accompanied by a group of naked friends, draped in red plastic." "We saw everybody who played there, from Bob Dylan one year, to Joni Mitchell and Jimi Hendrix." "In fact, we sang." "It was very funny." "Somebody saw us, and invited us to sing, one of those afternoons." "In 1972, the Brazilian authorities finally allowed Veloso and Gil to return to stay." "By the following year, they were both on stage at a festival in Sao Paolo, where Caetano Veloso sang an experimental version of a song by the Tropicalia hero, from the Brazilian north-east, Luis Gonzaga." "We DID come back, because the authorities had made clear that we were not going to be bothered." "But there was censorship." "It was still the military government." "Concerts and recordings were only allowed if the songs had been cleared in advance by the military censorship board." "At the Sao Paolo festival, Gilberto Gil joined with Chico Buarque, who'd spent a year in Italy, and returned as a favourite target for the censors." "They sang a deliberately mumbled version of Calice, a Buarque song that had been banned, and which played on the similarities in the Portuguese words for "goblet" and "shut up" in order to attack military oppression." "As they were singing, Chico Buarque's microphone was suddenly turned off." "Hello!" "Hello, hello, hello." "Every major song-writer in Brazil now faced censorship." "It was really a very hard time to be a song writer." "On the other hand it was a very interesting time too because people had to find creative ways to...to...fool the guys." "And they did, we all did." "We became like the metaphor kings and queen." "Everybody wrote metaphorically." "Other people did it better than I did." "Like Chico Buarque, he was the best!" "And then they were totally scared about him." "But for those with money, life in the military era was good." "This was a time of repression, but also a boom period for the Brazilian economy." "There was a growing gap between rich and poor." "But for many Brazilians, this was still the country blessed by God, celebrated by Jorge Ben in his cheerful anthem, Pais Tropical." "And yet, amazingly, even this song was censored." "The musician who arguably suffered the most under the military regime in the '70s came from the mountainous region of Minas Gerais, to the north of Rio." "Milton Nascimento was one of the new singer-songwriters helped by Elis Regina, who'd first recorded his songs." "Milton came just after Tropicalism." "And he's very much a person from Minas." "Only somebody who grew up in Minas could be like that." "He already had the influence of the Beatles, and then modern jazz, and traditional Latin-American and black Brazilian things." "And all these things put in such a...uh...an original recipe." "Milton Nascimento had taken part in the March of 100,000 like Veloso and Gil, but he remained in Brazil throughout the military era, despite continual battles with the censors." "The military took their revenge by harassing Nascimento." "In the early '70s he was estranged from his wife and son who were living in Sao Paolo, and he was phoned warning of the consequences if he tried to visit his family." "Milton Nascimento never went to see his son." "He survived the military era to become one of Brazil's most successful international artists." "He's credited as one of the key figures responsible for popularising Brazilian music in America and around the world." "We owe it to..." "Carmen Miranda," "Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Milton Nascimeto, mostly." "Mostly." "These three." "Other musicians escaped censorship and harassment in the military era." "Among them, arguably the most famous Brazilian of all time, both at home and abroad." "Pele is celebrated for his genius as a footballer of course, but he's also a singer-songwriter." "In 1969 Pele was honoured by the military government for scoring his 1,000th goal at a special ceremony in Brazilia." "In the same year, he made his first record, a duet with the great Elis Regina." "Pele and Elis Regina's records were produced by the bossa nova star, Roberto Menescal." "Football songs are one of the great specialities of Brazilian music." "Most of the great singer-songwriters have written about the country's favourite game, from Chico Buarque to Caetano Veloso." "And in the military era, even football songs could be used to put over a message." "Jorge Ben's Ponta de Lanca Africano is one of Brazil's classic anthems, written in the early 70s in praise of a black football star, an African striker." "It appeared on the album Africa Brasil, which marked a new development during the military era - the rise of black consciousness, reflected by Jorge Ben's growing interest in mixing Samba with black American funk and African styles." "This was a period when black communities across the Americas were taking renewed interest in their African roots." "In the USA, it was the era of black pride and an emphasis on black history, while in Africa itself in the early '70s," "Guerrilla fighters in Portugal's colonies of Guinea-Bissau," "Angola and Mozambique were engaged in a bitter liberation war." "A struggle closely followed in the former Portuguese colony of Brazil." "All this had an impact on black Brazilians, particularly in Salvador, Bahia, which has the largest black population in Brazil." "While singer-songwriters in Rio fought the military by trying to beat censorship, musicians in Salvador reacted by stressing their links with Africa." "Playing a key role in this new movement was Gilberto Gil." "Getting back, that helped me to understand how African we were, and how important actual African music would be for us." "So that we could make the links, and link the history." "The exile helped me a lot to identify Africa in Brazil and Africa in Brazilian culture." "In Salvador there are reminders of African culture everywhere." "From the capoeira martial arts dance developed by the slaves to practice their fighting techniques without the Portuguese colonialists realising what was going on." "Through to the Candomble religion which is still widely practised in Brazil, especially in Salvador, where the rhythms used in Candomble ceremonies influenced the earliest forms of samba." "On his return from exile, Gilberto Gil sought out Filhos de Gandhi " "The Sons of Gandhi, the most colourful Candomble practitioners in Salvador." "They're a bloco-afro, a black group who parade during carnival." "They adopted their name when one of their founders saw a film about the Indian leader." "In the early '70s when Gil met them, Filhos de Gandhi were in a bad way." "They were the only bloco-afro in Bahia, playing the African afoxe rhythm at their ceremonies, but they had few members and weren't even taking part in carnival." "Gil joined the group and brought them new fame and popularity, with a song about them, that he performed with Jorge Ben." "The song helped Filhos de Gandhi win new members and a new following." "In the military era, the resurgence of a black religious carnival group like this was seen as a sign of resistance in Salvador." "The renewed success of Filhos de Gandhi led to the formation of a far more militant, directly political bloco-afro, Ile Aiye, also praised in a song recorded by Gilberto Gil." "Since the days of President Vargas back in the 1930s," "Brazil had prided itself on being a multi-racial state, but in Bahia, as in other black communities, there were continuing complaints of discrimination." "Ile Aiye started in 1974 with the aim of mixing music with a campaign to promote awareness of black history and links with Africa, and only black Brazilians could join." "The rise of black consciousness was matched by new musical styles." "In Rio the emphasis was on American soul and funk." "But in Salvador, the new fashion was for reggae, promoted by Gilberto Gil, who toured with the Jamaican reggae star, Jimmy Cliff." "# No woman, no cry" "# No woman, no cry... #" "We absorbed and then we adopted reggae as a national rhythm for us." "So we hardly consider reggae as a Jamaican thing or something," "I mean, it's our thing as well." "It's a Bahian, a Maranhao thing, a Carioca thing." "It's a Brazilian thing." "# No woman, no cry... #" "The Jamaican reggae hero, Bob Marley, also became a Brazilian hero." "A street was named after him in Salvador." "And in 1980, Gilberto Gil's version of Bob Marley's No Woman, No Cry became a massive hit in Brazil." "In the same year, Bob Marley himself came to Brazil for the first and only time." "Not to perform, but for a brief visit that included a football game in Rio with a team featuring the football obsessed, Chico Buarque." "In Salvador, reggae mixed with the local Samba styles to create a new fusion that would dominate the music of the region, the percussive samba reggae." "The band who can claim to have invented the style are the bloco-afro Olodum, who started in 1979." "The leader of the band at the time got the influence of the reggae," "Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, yeah?" "And he fused with the traditional Bahia samba." "And he make this samba reggae rhythm." "It's the rhythm of Olodum, yeah." "Now lots of artists play this rhythm, which is the fusion of the reggae from Jamaica and the Bahia samba." "Olodum became the most commercially successful bloco-afro in Salvador, and indeed Brazil, and have long outlasted the military era." "The soldiers who had ruled Brazil since the '60s finally stood down in 1985, giving way at last to a new civilian government, headed by President Jose Sarney." "Gilberto Gil, the singer they jailed and who would later become a government minister, started 1985 playing at Brazil's biggest ever music festival, Rock In Rio." "With the Tropicalia movement, he and his colleagues had set out to create a new music that would mix regional styles with international influences." "Now at the end of the military era, he had helped black musicians in Bahia break away from the cultural domination of Rio." "The censors had gone and Brazilian music became more varied and fragmented as musicians from the regions, the lawless Rio favelas and the smart international circuit battled for their visions of the now democratic Brazil."