{"product_id":"tropical-truth-a-story-of-music-and-revolution-in-brazil","title":"Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil","description":"\u003cp\u003eInadequately described as the John Lennon or the Bob Dylan of his country  Caetano Veloso has virtually personified Brazilian music for thirty-five years. Now  in his long-awaited memoir  he tells the heroic story of how  in the late sixties  he and a group of friends from the Northeastern state of Bahia created tropicalismo  the movement that shook Brazilian culture--and civic order--to its foundations and pushed a nation then on the margins of world politics and economics into the pop avant-garde.  Tropical Truth begins with a childhood in the Bahian hinterland  where Caetano (as Brazilians of all ages now call him) first heard not only the musical traditions of his own country and her Latin neighbors  but also the giants of postwar American song: Frank Sinatra  Ray Charles  Chet Baker  to name but a few. While teenagers in America would soon be enthralled by the primal (and commercial) beat of rocknroll  in Brazil it was bossa nova  that sublimely sophisticated music  that was to become the soundtrack of a generation. Inspired above all by bossa novas supreme master  Joo Gilberto  Caetano and his crew would set about creating a totally new sound. Tropicalismo would aim to cannibalize the extraordinary beauty and richness of Brazils musical past but at the same time to assimilate eclectically the most original elements of Anglo-American pop  an influence many rejected as yet another form of imperialism corrupting Brazils authentic character.  The birth of tropicalismo coincided with the wave of counterculture sweeping Western nations  but in Brazil that wave would hit the breakwaters of a brutal military junta. While supporting resistance to right-wing oppression (and the terrible social inequities it perpetuated) the tropicalistas nevertheless rejected the automatic connection to the Left and its unreflective nationalism  then the politics de rigueur of the artistic class. Their third way foresaw a Brazil open to free markets but likewise free in itself. It was a vision so subversive of both the political and musical status quo that before long Caetano faced imprisonment and was then forced into exile until the early seventies. But when he returned  it was in triumph: Brazil  no less than the state of her popular music  would never be the same.  Rich with the satisfactions of a novel  weaving the story of a country with that of its most idealistic generation  Tropical Truth recounts the odyssey of a brilliant constellation of artists: Caetano and his sister Maria Bethnia  the queen of Brazilian song; the black musical genius Gilberto Gil  Caetanos closest collaborator  with whom he was jailed and then banished; the great diva Gal Costa; the revolutionary filmmaker Glauber Rocha; the brothers de Campos  those luminaries of concrete poetry  who were among the tropicalistas learned mentors. Here is an unparalleled confluence of highbrow and pop  and with it the genesis of what has become one of the most wildly successful cultural exports ever produced by a nation other than the United States. By turns erudite and playful  dreamlike and confessional  Tropical Truth is an utterly unexpected revelation of Brazils most famous artist  one of the greatest popular composers of the past century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44986659373109,"sku":"ByrdShop_037540788X","price":39.32,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780375407888.jpg?v=1770912586","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/tropical-truth-a-story-of-music-and-revolution-in-brazil","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}