Tropicalia
Ou panis et circencis

I must admit that I was a bit disappointed when I first listened to this album. Perhaps the expectations I had for a work considered an icon of Brazilian music were too high.

There are situations where simple enjoyment of the artistic object is not enough; instead, it must be framed within a specific historical and cultural context, and this is precisely the case with "Ou panis et circencis," not just an album but the official manifesto of a movement called tropicalismo.

We are in '68, a year that needs no introduction. The military dictatorship in Brazil is now in its fourth year. The country struggles to breathe new life into its culture; the exhaustive quest for a Brazilian identity, the strong nationalistic push, and the drive for the industrial development of the fifties close the pores to freedoms of contamination. In the music field, after bossa-nova, which managed to influence even Afro-American music, no other forms are found or sought that can innovate and/or rejuvenate the old paradigms.

These are the premises for the birth of the tropicalist movement, destined to last a few years but to leave its mark for an indefinite time.

The tropicalismo did not aim to shape a new way of composing and interpreting music like bossa-nova or even to surpass it, but to introduce a new attitude, a critical spirit that was more open to contaminations. The clearest example of this closure is how there was rejection, especially among the more radical, of the introduction of the electric guitar, considered tied to American rock and thus labeled as imperialist. Not that young people didn't listen to the Beatles; on the contrary, one of the concerns was to introduce those innovative elements characteristic of the four Englishmen, which could make national music attractive to young people. But not just that; tropicalists went in search of a complete syncretism among various genres, incorporating bossa-nova, samba, baião, rock, psychedelia, and thus pop with folklore, high culture with mass culture, popular with the avant-garde. And this was not only musically, but also, as can be seen from the cover, absorbing the characteristics of the hippie movements, especially in the way of dressing, long hair, and criticism of clichés.

(I take the liberty to omit here the anthropophagic references, a cultural heritage of modernism, and also to recount the episodes related to the music festivals of those years. For those who want to read something relevant on this site, I refer to the review of Cyro Baptista and another album.

Let's now move on to the album itself, starting with the lyrics, where in surreal situations, naive pictures of Brazil of those times follow, which hide in the background, in barely hinted tones, the brutality of repression, social differences (which will become increasingly exacerbated over the years), and the contrast between the illusion of miracles from industrial impetus and the real coexistence with a deep backwardness. Lyrics and music perfectly blend their moods and contaminations, pushing it to excess, touching on kitsch, in a deliberate saturation of forms and colors.

The music, as already mentioned, draws from various genres and places; for this reason, there isn’t a sense of fragmentation; on the contrary, there's a strong underlying congruence that is one of the keys to the success of an ambitious musical project. It is not always possible to ensure that a collaborative work with great artists results in a creation that matches or at least equals the capacities of the individuals, but the ideological drive and the beautiful arrangement work of maestro Duprat function respectively as glue and veneer for this immortal work.

Today, I willingly listen again to this album now and then, I reread the lyrics, and I reflect that in those years, when I was not yet born, on a land very distant from mine, there were people who wanted to change things, without rifles and without molotovs, but only with the courage and determination of those who are aware that art is a much more powerful weapon.

P.S. I also thought it would be nice to share some of my thoughts concerning the song "Bat-macumba" (also included in the first album by the Mutantes). The word macumba is popularly refers to Afro-Brazilian religious rituals, complete with animal sacrifices and spirit incorporation. This ancestrality is in total contrast with the name "Batman," which, as we all know, is a hero of Western imagination. Mario de Andrade at his time defined Brazil as "macumba for tourists." I don't know if Gilberto Gil wanted to highlight this, but the rhythmic and onomatopoeic result of the song is very successful. Finally, I discovered that by writing the text, a geometric figure resembling the Brazilian flag will appear.

Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba oh
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macum
Bat Macumba ê ê, Batman
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat
Bat Macumba ê ê, Ba
Bat Macumba ê ê
Bat Macumba ê
Bat Macumba
Bat Macum
Bat Ma
Bat
Ba
Bat
Bat Ma
Bat Macum
Bat Macumba
Bat Macumba ê
Bat Macumba ê ê
Bat Macumba ê ê, Ba
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat
Bat Macumba ê ê, Batman
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macum
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba oh
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá!