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Quote by Caetano Veloso

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Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil

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Caetano Veloso
Caetano Veloso

Caetano Veloso is a renowned Brazilian composer, born on August 7, 1942. His musical career began in the 1960s, and he is one of the leading figures in the Tropicalismo movement. Veloso's musical style blends Brazilian traditional music elements with international genres such as rock and jazz, having a profound impact on music both in Brazil and around the world. more

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“I could not help remembering that I myself had uttered to a journalist in 1967, during the dawn of tropicalismo, a sentence that Tom Zé would soon use in a song resonant with the movement: "I am Bahian and I am a foreigner." In fact, we had understood that in order to do what we believed necessary, we had to rid ourselves of Brazil as we knew it. We had to destroy the Brazil of the nationalists, we had to go deeper and pulverize the image of Brazil as being exclusively identified with Rio.”

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Book:Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil
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“My idle dreams of leaving behind what I was already doing professionally in order to study, to direct films, or to write receded with the shock of prison and exile. I simply lacked the strength even to adumbrate an act of will. The bell that had rung as I was falling asleep that morning the police had come to take me away had so deeply left its mark that I was still trembling at the sound of the doorbell in Chelsea. So it was impossible for me to dare do anything I might wish. And insofar as there was growing receptivity to what I did among my fellow professionals in London, a simple instinct for survival bound me to the activity in which I was already installed. I would stay home listening to Gil play, at times playing myself, watching television, reading, and above all conversing with people who came by. I was always chatty, but my happiness did not last even until my head hit the pillow. There was always something to feel ashamed of. And I didn't know how to get out of this.”

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Book:Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil
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“The fact that MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) would come to concentrate the energy of this generation only confirms the power of the tradition that made bossa nova possible: in fact, MPB has been, for Brazilians as well as for foreigners, the sound of the discovery of a dreamt-of Brazil. [...] MPB proves to be the most efficient weapon for the affirmation of the Portuguese language in the world, when one considers how many unsuspected lovers it has won through the magic of the word sung in the Brazilian way.”

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Book:Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil
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“We should alco recall the music with which all education begins. We have seen how our civilization, from the musical point of view, still remains indebted to the "Dark Ages' that invented the scale! [......] Up until the thirteenth century, there was no separation between musical language and poetic language: there was no poetry without melody; the poet was at the same time a musician. It is important to remember that at that time, if not everyone learned to read, everyone did learn to sing.”

PoetryEducationMusicMiddle Ages
Book:Those Terrible Middle Ages[Debunking the Myths] [THOSE TERRIBLE MIDDLE AGES] [Paperback]
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“We should also recall the music with which all education begins. We have seen how our civilization, from the musical point of view, still remains indebted to the "Dark Ages' that invented the scale! [......] Up until the thirteenth century, there was no separation between musical language and poetic language: there was no poetry without melody; the poet was at the same time a musician. It is important to remember that at that time, if not everyone learned to read, everyone did learn to sing.”

PoetryEducationMusicMiddle Ages
Book:Those Terrible Middle Ages!: Debunking the Myths
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