This text was written on the occasion of Deleuze’s death in 1995.
Tropicalism was a cultural movement of the late 1960s, which revolutionized popular Brazilian music, then dominated by the aesthetics of Bossa Nova, by making use of derision, irreverence, and improvisation. Spearheaded by musicians such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil (the current Minister of Culture in Lula’s government), Tropicalism reactivated the ideas found in Oswald de Andrade’s “Anthropophagic Manifesto”—particularly the way in which elements of foreign culture are included and fused with Brazilian culture, mixing fragments of erudite, popular, and mass culture, without any reverence for dominant hierarchies. Tropicalism manifested itself in other artistic realms as well, such as the Oficina Theatre, directed by José Celso Martinez Corrêa, which staged Oswald de Andrade’s play O Rei da Vela (1967), among others. Indeed the very name of the movement comes from visual artist Hélio Oiticica’s 1965 installation Tropicália. The movement was brutally interrupted in December 1968, when the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) was decreed by Brazil’s military dictatorship, allowing for any action or attitude considered subversive to be punished with imprisonment without recourse to habeas corpus. Caetano and Gil were sent to prison and subsequently freed only on the condition that they leave the country. They went into exile in England in 1969.
A dictatorship came to power in Brazil in 1964 by means of a military coup. The regime became much more rigid and violent from 1968 onwards. A succession of generals remained in power until 1985, and the first direct presidential elections were held in 1989.
Tuzé de Abreu, “Passarinho,” recorded by Gal Costa in India (Phonogram, 1973). The lyrics are “Cantar como um passarinho de manhã cedinho... lá na galha do arvoredo, na beira do rio … abre as asas passarinho que eu quero voar … me leva na janela da menina que eu quero cantar…” (“To sing like a little bird early in the morning … up in the branches of the trees by the river bank … open your wings, little bird, ‘cause I want to fly … take me to the girl’s window, ‘cause I want to sing ….”). The Brazilian singer Gal Costa was part of a group of friends from Santo Amaro (Bahia, in the Northeast of Brazil) that included Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethânia. In the 1960s, they formed an important element of the Tropicalist movement’s driving forces.
Translated from the Portuguese by Rodrigo Nunes