Tropical Truth

Damon Krukowski

What is this voice? Dylan, were he willing to write in complete sentences? John Lennon, drug- and irony-free? Mick Jagger turned introspective? Have we ever hear our pop music icons speak like this? Caetano's autobiography is revealing in a way that no kiss-and-tell book can ever be, because its excesses are of pride rather than ego.... The book is well-written, too; Caetano has a novelistic flair, especially for characterization... And he has musician's knack for anecdote.
—Bookforum

The New Yorker

Eleven years ago, when Serge Gainsbourg, the Gitane-puffing demigod of French pop, died, France came to a virtual standstill, and President François Mitterand publicly eulogized the singer, songwriter, and film star as "our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire." Hyperbole, perhaps, but, as Sylvie Simmons's biography makes clear, there was little about the aggressively louche provocateur -- born Lucien Ginsburg -- that wasn't hyperbolic. In the breezy Serge Gainsbourg: A Firstful of Gitanes, Simmons, a veteran British music writer, offers, at last, an English-language glimpse of the best of Serge: his boyhood escape from the Nazis; his understandable affection for tooling around Paris in a Triumph Spitfire with Brigitte Bardot; his porn-watching sessions with Salvador Dali; and his work itself, including the notorious "Je T'Aime, Moi Non Plus," a sweet, hymnlike ballad that featured Gainsbourg and his lover Jane Birkin in stereophonic flagrante delicto.

In the past decade, Gainsbourg's international standing has been enhanced by tributes from such indie-rock heroes as Sonic Youth, Luscious Jackson, and Luna. Likewise, the Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso has been embraced by a new generation of English-speaking aficionados looking abroad for new sounds. In Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil, translated from the Portuguese by Isabel de Sena, the erudite Veloso, championed by Beck and David Byrne, tells of the late-sixties rise of tropicalismo, an invigorating Brazilian pop music that combined bossa nova with everything from Ray Charles to Carnaby Street psychedelia. Veloso's memoir, like the mutant, border-crossing genre he helped to create, celebrates what he calls a "joyous participation in a universal and international urban cultural reality."

(Mark Rozzo)

Publishers Weekly

The Brazilian singer/songwriter most highly regarded by the First World intelligentsia, Veloso makes his U.S. publishing debut with a rambling, extremely erudite memoir focusing on his role in the late-1960s musical happening known as Tropic lia. While on the surface, Tropic lia and Veloso (often compared to Bob Dylan) paralleled the U.S. counterculture of the 1960s, the author explains the multilayered context of Brazilian politics and art that made the movement unique. From the innocence of his middle-class youth in the northern state of Bahia, to his stays in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Veloso vividly re-creates his formative years, which were immersed in French new wave cinema, progressive English rock and Brazilian letters, particularly concrete poetry. "What we wanted to do would be... closer to Godard's films," he muses. "Masculin-feminin [sic], with... its adolescent sexuality-I saw it as one more moment in our daily lives in Sao Paulo." That Veloso is well-read is not in question-he cites everyone from Wittgenstein and Proust to Deleuze and Andrew Sullivan, while at the same time introducing non-Brazilian readers to an unknown canon of authors such as poet Augusto de Campos and essayist Oswald de Andrade. If there is any complaint with the book, it is that Veloso can get caught up in a maze of sometimes unconnected ideas that obscure his lucid descriptions of the intricacies of Brazilian music and its often equally literate stars. However, this is a must for Brazilian music fans, as well as anyone interested in how the modernist age played out in South America. (Oct.) Forecast: Veloso's and Brazilian music's loyal fan base, as well as his highbrow appeal, will supply the book with early momentum. But it remains to be seen how well the memoir's detailed evocation of a relatively unknown (in the U.S.) cultural and aesthetic movement will translate into mass readership. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

An important book by one of Brazil's most famous songwriters and performers. Veloso has been a major force in Brazilian popular music since the late 1960s and a spokesperson for the vibrancy and optimism of Brazilian cultural expression. He was the cofounder, along with Gilberto Gil, of Tropicalismo — a Brazilian cultural movement that challenged the military regime as well as nationalist and Marxist orthodoxies. (Gil is now Brazil's new culture minister.) Caetano and the Tropicalistas wove together traditional Brazilian musical genres with influences from popular music in the Anglo-American world, the Caribbean, and Africa. In the process, they offended purists and bent the rules, but they succeeded in projecting Brazil to a huge international audience while retaining a passionate following at home. Part autobiography and part history, this book follows the turbulent story of Caetano and his colleagues over almost four decades. Caetano's story is well worth reading, despite its sometimes confusing byways and litany of names, because it provides a fascinating window into a Brazil that captivates more people internationally than any Brazilian politician could ever hope to reach. And it is a tribute to the resilience and generosity of the Brazilian counterculture, whose moment has finally arrived.

Library Journal

Singer/songwriter Veloso has virtually defined Brazilian music for the past 35 years. In his autobiography, first published in his native country, he exhibits a rare, vibrant erudition while tracing how in the 1960s he and his friends developed a post-bossa nova music and movement called tropicalismo (Tropic lia in English). Inspired by an impressive range of Brazilian political and cultural figures, as well as Ezra Pound, John Cage, Anton Webern, and e.e. cummings, Veloso aimed to blend his country's traditions with the best foreign influences (including Anglo-American pop) to produce a whole new sound. Paralleling this aesthetic was his opposition to political oppression from the Left or Right, and Veloso's railing against the junta led to imprisonment and a brief exile. Although the book truly fascinates, especially in its thoughtful explanation of his music in relation to Brazilian culture and politics, the English edition curiously excludes much of Veloso's activity since the mid-1970s. While this is probably because his work over the past 25 years is best known to Brazilians, American readers would have benefited from the information. That shortcoming aside, Tropical Truth is highly recommended, though Veloso's relative obscurity here probably dictates that larger academic and public libraries will find it most useful. Christopher Dunn's recent Brutality Garden: Tropic lia and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture covers much the same material, albeit in a more scholarly voice. [This book's publication coincides with the release of Veloso's new studio album, Livro, and a two-CD collection, Live in Bahia.-Ed.]-James E. Perone, Mount Union Coll., Alliance, OH Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.