Antropofagia

Tropicalismo was a music movement in Brazil in the 1960s and 70s. To use perhaps an objectionable analogy, if you combined Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Joan Baez together into a movement in the U.S., you'd have the equivalent of what became Tropicalismo in Brazil.

Except for one thing - the stakes and scale of Tropicalismo or Tropicalia as a political revolution were much higher than for Dylan, Hendrix, Joplin, or Baez.

At it essence, this musical movement combined rock, blues, samba, jazz, pop kitsch and psychedelic sounds with Brazilian and other Latin American influences. Like the expansively aware artists of the 60s and 70s, they combined all the musical elements of the day into a pop-rock sound set to the lyrics of social and cultural revolution.

In part, tropicalismo was an reaction against a conservative stodginess and comfortable coolness of high-minded bossa nova and bossa nova jazz that its musicians felt was not critical enough of the state of the oppressive martial law that had consumed Brazil.

The leading musicians of tropicalismo were Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Maria Bethania, Rita Lee, Arnaldo Baptista and Chico Buarque.

During the 1960s, once martial law had taken control, everything was censored. Newspapers refused to print the officially sanctioned and edited military propoganda and ran cooking recipes all across the front pages of their papers as protest.

At one time, while performing a concert, the police raided the auditorium and shut down the concert because the musicians on stage were openly critical and dissenting - their lyrics advocated resistance with love. Like the American civil rights movement, tropicalismo advocated a Ghandi-style civil disobedience and opposition to the ruling government.

Caetano, an unapologetic left-wing activist singer and songwriter often compared to Bob Dylan and Gilberto Gil were jailed in 1968 for "anti-government activity" and then exiled themselves to London. Veloso's songs were censored and some were banned in Brazil. Caetano called their songs the words of sweet barbarians from Bahia. He advocated to all the political artists of the time, "Even though many armies invaded Rome with force, Jesus did more to bring down the Roman Empire with sweetness, forgiveness and compassion."

Once while talking about the culture of our countries, Patricia used the word Antropofagia in discussing Brazilian culture. She said Antropofagia is a word that cannot be translated easily to English with all it nuance and complexity of meaning. Antropofagia in a word means cannibalism. A literal translation of antropofagia hardly does justice to a notion that’s driven much of Brazil’s best art, music and literature for the past seven decades. Symbolically, in ancient and classical literature a snake eating its own tail, is called the Ouroboros and it too embodies this notion of antropofagia. Not only does the snake cannibalize itself, the symbol represents continuous change and the cycle of life.

In his book about the tropicalismo music movement, Verdade Tropical Caetano titled one whole chapter Antropofagia expressed in the art and culture of Brazil.

Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão provided a graphic definition of antropofagia in her Estudo do ‘Tiradentes’ do Pedro Américo (Reflexo de sonhos no sonho do outro espelho)” a Study of Pedro Américo’s Tiradentes’ (Reflex of dreams in the dream of the other mirror). Varejão took a classic painting depicting the quartered body of a fatally unsuccessful 19th century Brazilian republican revolutionary, made a copy in her own style, and cut that into pieces. The piece bled with multiple layers of antropofagia.

Patricia, in trying to define this phenomenon in perhaps pedestrian terms, said it is as if the revolutionary movement was swallowed by popular culture and then spit back out. Befitting this image was the fact that in 2003 Lula de Silva appointed Gilberto Gil, one of Tropicalia's leading musicians the Minister of Culture of Brazil. From being imprisoned for "anti-gvoernment activty" to being appointed cultural minister, the radical tropicalismo got swallowed by the culture as a whole.

A more cynical person might use antropogagia to describe Bob Dylan doing Victoria Secret lingerie commercials.