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Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil | 
 enlarge | Author: Caetano Veloso
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 816031
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 037540788X
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.640981
EAN: 9780375407888
ASIN: 037540788X
Publication Date: September 24, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: 1 Amer ed. 2002 Hardcover. Orders usually ship on or before next business day. May have highlighting. We send best copy available.
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Product Description
Inadequately 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 rock’n’roll, in Brazil it was bossa nova, that sublimely sophisticated music, that was to become the soundtrack of a generation. Inspired above all by bossa nova’s supreme master, Joao Gilberto, Caetano and his crew would set about creating a totally new sound. Tropicalismo would aim to “cannibalize” the extraordinary beauty and richness of Brazil’s 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 Brazil’s “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 Bethania, the queen of Brazilian song; the black musical genius Gilberto Gil, Caetano's 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 Brazil's most famous artist, one of the greatest popular composers of the past century.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Not sure what to say February 4, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is so painful to read. The sentences are so long and complex. It was like reading a philosophy book. I have to agree with a lot of the sentiment expressed in the other reviews that say this book is really inaccessible unless you're an intellectual. It's not like my brain is too stupid to understand complicated sentences, it's just that I wish he could say things a little plainer so I don't lose interest so fast.
I disagree with the reviews that say he's begging to be admired through writing this book. Even with the super-intellectual tone, this book didn't come off at all arrogant or snobby. And I don't say that because of the constant comments the author makes about being unable to play guitar worth a damn, but because he shares information about himself and his contemporaries in a way that shows he understands his place in it all--he's not arrogant about it but remember he and Gil were the founders of this huge movement tropicalia. He is a big deal!
I agree there was a lot of name-dropping going on, but this guy has led an exciting life, so any readers who were fans of these writers or musicians whose names he drops would be excited to see Caetano refer to them, and I think the author had this in mind when he chose to include so many people by name. I noticed he doesn't just include famous people or intellectuals, but he refers to a number of the prison guards and other unfamous people by name in the book (though he mysteriously doesn't remember the name of the one woman he truly loved... I don't buy it!). I think this is just meant to give these individuals the pleasure of seeing their name in print as well as knowing Caetano's gratitude.
I didn't know much about Brazilian history before reading this especially Brazilian music, and I was hoping to get a lot out of this book. I had to read it because Brazilian music from this period of time has touched me like no other music can, and I can't explain why since I wasn't there and I can't speak Portuguese. I thought this book would shed some light, but it didn't. I think this book would only be enjoyed by people who lived through this period of Brazilian history and would remember all these individuals and events by name and be able to sort through the author's lack of attention to important, necessary details like providing a direct timeline. He jumps back and forth to before, in and after prison experiences and memories. He knows he's doing it, too, as he mentions it early on in the book that his mind will wander as he writes and he makes no apologies for it. That's fine but it doesn't help me understand much of what's going on. Oh well I love the music of these courageous people and this brilliant, creative generation and even if this book does little to enhance that, it certainly doesn't take away from it.
Difficult to read in English June 29, 2006
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
The problem is the translation. Not knowing Portuguese though, I can only assume that Caetano writes eloquently in his native language. I base this on having watched the DVD Outros Doces Barbaros, the 25th reunion of Doces Barbaros (w/ Gil, Gal, and Bethania). Here, based on the English subtitles, he articulates his ideas very clearly.
BUT, this book is very tedious to read: long complex sentences that I suspect are a result of literal equivalencies i.e. word for word--instead of conceptual ones. I had to start the book 3 times before I could finally finish it. I am a musician who is a great admirer of Brazilian pop music and this book is a great resource and reference tool. If you can wade through the verbiage, it is a very rewarding read. All in all, kudos to Caetano. Just next time, he should hire a better translator.
The wrong writer gives us a much needed book May 3, 2006
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is a book that needed to be written. I am disappointed both in Caetano Veloso and in the English translation, however.
First, the translation of this book is incredibly annoying because the translator randomly decides to translate the names of some works of art into English and leaves other names in the original Portuguese. For example, I was confused by references to a movie called "Land in Anguish" until I realized Caetano was talking about Glauber Rocha's movie "Terra em Transe." Who in the world knows the movie as "Land in Anguish"? In other cases, song names were left in their originial Portuguese. Why the different treatment?
Besides the unpredictable translation, I admit that I read this book with bias. I have become disappointed and bored with the artistic directions in which Caetano has travelled since the mid-1980s. He has become increasingly self-indulgent, arrogant, and at times down-right condescending and snobby in his media presence and artistic performances, especially through the 1990s.
And so much of that sense of self-importance permeates Caetano's narrative memoir of his 50 year encounter with the Brazilian music industry... first as a fan and then as a music maker. So many events, stories, people, and performances are refracted through the lense of a narrator who feels no modesty at all. What kind of narrator would brag about having great philosophical and metaphysical insights as seven year old? Caetano does. It is interesting how Caetano remembers the origin of the name "Gal Costa." Apparently it was entirely a decision arrived by Guilherme Araujo over Caetano's objections. Over Caetano's Objections? Why does Caetano even think he had the authority to object or to speak for Maria da Gra?a Penna Burgos, either then or now. It is funny that nowhere in the account of the name does Caetano once mention how Gal Costa herself felt about her stage name. Did she like it quickly or was she uncomfortable at first? We don't know. Caetano doesn't care and apparently he doesn't think we should either... although he tells us how HE feels about it... that he now likes it even though it has taken him many years to get used to it... Please!!!
My judgment of Caetano was sealed by his accounts of his marriage to and relationship with his ex-wife. "Poor girl" was all I could think as Caetano describes how reluctantly he walked down the aisle - apparently just to make his future in-laws happy - and with what veiled contempt he holds for his ex-wife and his marriage to her: he subtly calls her "naive" at one point, and never talks about her as having been an intelligent woman or an intellectual, but rather as being "attracted to the literary and artistic milieu". Caetano sums up his wife when he says that his marriage gave him a "youthful happiness of social success (to have a girlfriend!)" and then adds that his wife "Ded? was the right person for that experience." From a historian's point of view, this book - or something like it - needs to have been written. Too much of the history of Brazilian pop music and pop culture from the 1960s is about to become forgotten. BUt it was very painful to wade through Caetano's arrogant, narcissistic dirty laundry just to learn about the history of pop music in Brazil.
 best if you know brazil well November 18, 2005
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I read this book in portuguese, when it first came out in Brazil, and i absolutely loved it. This book is not only about Caetano Veloso and his music. Caetano Veloso has a very unique way to see people and to write about them, and in his life he had the privilege to meet some of the most important people in Brazil's cultural scene. In his book he tells us many precious stories about Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Gilberto Gil, Nara Leao, Paulinho da Viola and so many others. Some important moments of his life and also of Brazilian history are also told from a very personal point of view: stories of Caetano and Gil's prison and exile during brazilian dictatorship were specially moving to me. And then there are some fabulous stories about the beginnings of Caetano's carreer, how it all started. Caetano has such an insteresting point of view about everything, it's awesome to be able to get inside his mind, and that's how i felt reading his book. I actually ended up reading it twice. I think though, that this book can be better appreciated by people who really know brazilian music and culture well. Another reviewer mentioned that Caetano talks about lots of "obscure artists", but i don't think this is a true statement. He talks about very important people in brazilian culture, including writers, film directors and musicians. The people he mentions are very known in Brazil,and he also talks about important european and american artists. The people he mentions in his book are not obscure at all. Probably, if you know who he is talking about it makes for a much better reading experience. So, if you have a curious mind and are interested in art, music, and Brazil, this is certainly a wonderful book to read. And, like me, you may want to read it more than once...
An entirely Excellent Book May 10, 2005
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Despite another reviewer's shallow "Gas Attacks" about this work, this is an excellent book that depicts the realities of the revolution intertwined with the cosmos of Brazilian music. Kudos to the writer!
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