The Case of the Love Letter to Tropicalia

The Tropicalia movement occurred in Brazilian music in the late 1960s. Many of the musicians who began this movement went on to become the biggest stars in Brazilian music:  Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Tom Ze, and Os Mutantes were the central figures in the Tropicalia movement.

Musically, the Tropicalia movement was the product of 3 influences:  traditional Brazilian beats (samba, bossa nova, etc), rock and roll (especially The Beatles), and late the studio sophistication of producer Rogerio Duprat. This classically trained musician produced nearly every important album of this movement, providing arrangements for strings and orchestra... his influence is even greater than that of George Martin to The Beatles. 

Culturally, Tropicalia began as an avante garde movement in art and music. In time it encompassed a massively popular youth movement in Brazil, and also a political movement directly opposed to the military regime that governed Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

The central product of the Tropicalia movement was the "Tropicalia" LP of 1968, a collaboration among all artists named above. In the first hour this week we will hear tracks from that album, along with solo work from these artists in the late 60s.

The second hour this week focuses on the event that cut short the Tropicalismo movement:  the exile of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil from Brazil in 1969. Provocative lyrics in their music had angered the military government in Brazil (which had been installed by the US as a hedge against the spread of Communism in the Western Hemisphere). The musicians were flown to London, where they lived until they were allowed to return to Brazil in 1972. 

Both men recorded heartbreakingly homesick solo albums in London in 1971... we will hear tracks from those albums, and also some of the nuanced music they recorded when they returned to Brazil.