What, then, is a political song? A declaration of love for the Ideal, a social and/or racial denunciation, a simple conglomeration of insults and abuses directed at the opponent? A dear friend, more than thirty years ago, told me that for him, "Come è profondo il mare" is a political song in the truest sense of the term, much more than "The times they are a-changing" or "Giai Phong"… In Dalla's song, politics was discussed by talking about something else. Maybe it was an exaggeration. Maybe.
The political song, let’s say, “left-wing”, which was very popular in my country between the mid-sixties and the late seventies, never hesitated to precisely identify opponents and, consequently, to preach a “better” society, free from nationalist impulses, directed towards some internationalism, certain of a final proletarian victory for which it has never troubled itself to indicate a path, a means, always and only the end, never the means. Concepts that I feel like endorsing but no longer singing about, even though I did, truly, I did. And I was pleased when people started making political songs using new musical languages; the suffering bearded man with an acoustic guitar had had his day. Someone also had his money.
The “right-wing” political song, on the other hand, never strayed much from its origin as a republican slogan, it merely celebrated its martyrs and swore revenge, with arm raised, at the shaky democracy we stubbornly live in.
Abroad, aside from the protest and denunciation songs of oppressed, divided, crushed peoples by the colonizers of the day, American political song, in the sense of the USA, shines with its own light, where programmatic declarations almost always faded into prose aimed at interpreting reality directly and provoking empathy in the listener, even if slightly interested. And then there were the socio-racial implications and the musical intertwinements with blues, country, and so on…
In South America, they have had plenty of experience with political persecutions, and there the musical background of the political song leaned on Andean bases and native melodies instead.
In Brazil, then, came "Calice", a political song, indeed so, in the noblest and oldest sense of the word. And it spoke politically without shouting, without clamor, dressing words with meanings that only those witnessing governmental misdeeds understand, even if it seems to speak of something else. That’s how you have to do it, camouflaging oneself to ensure the right of reply, rarely does the political song there turn into ridicule, suffering and seriousness are the stylistic hallmark on which it is based.
Between the late '60s and mid-'70s, the Brazilian military government, which hadn’t distinguished itself for atrocities like the Chilean or Argentine governments, but, well, it had done its fair share of coup d'état government atrocities, had adopted slogans that went more or less like: "Brazil: if you don’t like it, leave it" (of these nice writings, the cities adorned themselves especially since it was there that hordes of artists, writers, poets, painters, and the like, who disagreed quite openly with the government's actions, hid, in the provinces everything was better controlled). Now, the brazenness of Pinochet, who didn’t distinguish intellectuals from unionists or "reds" in general and threw them from helicopters directly into the ocean was something Brazilian generals didn’t have. How to physically eliminate dozens of well-known figures worldwide, who made poetry and music known everywhere, from Rome to New York, from Nairobi to Tokyo?
So, come on, sign a declaration and get out of here as fast as you can. This is the fate followed by distinguished figures such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Vinicius de Moraes (who had even served his country for years as a diplomat), Maria Bethania, Edù Lobo and many others, some maybe after having swallowed months of prison, that prison...
Francisco, known as "Chico", was particularly disliked by the authorities, to use an elegant euphemism. Very well-known and appreciated everywhere, a courteous, almost soft-spoken performer of his compositions known across the globe, he used his fame even abroad as a shield behind which he hid after having expressed his indignation, his dissent, by singing his ideas, paraphrasing them with words that always seemed to refer to something else, to different concepts, to other realities. Of this technique, Cálice is the typical prototype. You talk about one thing and it’s easy to understand that you’re referring to another, and you still have to be careful, in Brazil they almost never talk about the disappeared but even here there have been some, especially among union cadres and left-wing parties, but still an incident is always possible, a fire at home...
After being arrested in 1968, after living in exile in Italy and France, Chico had the opportunity to return to Brazil where he was particularly adept at circumventing censorship, signing songs with the pseudonym Julinho de Adelaide and even moving around with two identity cards, one made out in this latter, fictitious, name.
The Office of Censorship feared every one of his songs, even if openly about love, they would sift through his texts, after "Apesar de Você", released in 1970, declared in a whisper: "Today you are in charge, your word is an order, there is no discussion, my people, today, speak with lowered eyes, you see, you who invented this state and all this darkness, you who invented sin forgot to invent forgiveness. Despite you, tomorrow will be another day…” Under the guise of a frustrated love for a ruthless woman, there is a full-fledged political song. And it circulated in hundreds of thousands of copies.
Then came, we are in 1973, a concert organized in Sao Paulo, full of bossa nova stars and the second wave of that genre, organized precisely in open defiance of the regime's choices in the field of censorship… Bossa was followed by tropicalismo, it hybridized it with beat and rock, other meanings loaded onto a music born first as the blues of Brazil and then universally digested as dance music, sensual and a bit sad, often as elevator music in skyscrapers. "Phono ‘73" is the name of the event and leverages the notoriety of the names of the artists who have come together, those are the ones mentioned above, plus Elis Regina, Jorge Ben, Ivan Lins, and many others, the cream of the new wave of the nova canção brasileira.
Gilberto Gil and Chico Buarque composed a piece, "Cálice", many were already humming it, the governmental censorship was aware of it, knowing full well that the two would sing it. In the original, they each sing a verse, here they decide that Gil will sing the verse and Chico, in a pedantic and monotonous way, will repeat the word “Cálice” exploiting its perfect assonance with the exclamation “Cale-se” ("Be silent!"), to underline that the atrocities committed by an authoritarian regime are such not only when they hit dissenters physically, with imprisonment and torture but even more so when they interfere in the innermost part of the consciences and behaviors of ordinary people, habituating them to the everyday misdeeds of the ruling class.
So Chico exclaims “Be silent!” at the beginning of every verse while Gil articulates: “Father, take this chalice of red wine of blood from me, how to drink this bitter beverage, swallow the pain and distress? So much falsehood, so much brute force...”
The audience understood, applauded, listened eagerly to the words, and whistled in disapproval when they heard the order to be silent, knowing well what the two friends on stage meant...
The political police already knew the lyrics of the song and no one was unaware that again Chico spoke of one thing and meant another, which was his way of passing through the mesh of censorship. He cites the Gospel in the text, the night of Jesus in Gethsemane, and directly refers to the washing of consciences that every dictatorship exercises on citizens, not limiting itself to repressing ideas and voices “against” but going as far as to wash the hands of the apathetic, letting them think that this is the reality and nothing can oppose it….
Two plainclothes police officers displaced the sound technicians from the mixer and disconnected Chico's microphone. People saw him sing and could not hear the words, they immediately understood and whistled loudly, and whistled in solidarity with him… The cops laughed, thinking that the audience was whistling against Chico who opened his mouth and they couldn’t hear him and showed from the mixer the detached cable to Chico, and he continued, shaking his head, Gil continued and said them all, the words everyone was waiting for: “The sow is too fat and no longer walks, the knife is too used and no longer cuts, how hard is it, Father, to open the door, this word imprisoned in the throat...”
Now people were crying in rage, everyone now understood that not only could a song, a play, a film be censored, but even a microphone could be cut off for those who sang dissent, who denounced without violence. Whatever you might expect from that state, it contained violence anyway, and not just the violence of cutting off a microphone while someone sings things unwelcome to the regime, but the violence done to those who listen and can no longer hear. A dictatorship does not live by physical violence alone.
Many present declared, years later, that they left the concert with a lump in their throat, on the street, every day, they saw the regime's arrogance, and that evening they had also witnessed the regime's scorn. "Fucking communists, you had the music, did you want the words too?", whispered the policemen to the youngsters dispersing and commenting aloud.
What do you say, is this a political song?
P.S: Connoisseurs will greatly appreciate the version of "Cálice" that Maria Bethânia, sister of Caetano Veloso, sang in 1978, with her voice full of fire and wind, imagine that.
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