Analytical categories of post-tropicalist experimentalism in Brazilian popular music

Authors

  • Herom Vargas Universidade Municipal de São Caetano do Sul - USCS

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4013/fem.2012.141.02

Abstract

This article discusses the limits of some conceptual categories used in the analysis of the language of post-tropicalist experimental songs from the ’70s in Brazilian popular music. As all of these categories are based on the repression and censorship exerted by of the military dictatorship, it seems difficult to generalize this influence and to link all avant-garde popular music in Brazil directly and entirely with that political context. A careful examination of the experimental production of artists such as Walter Franco, Tom Zé, Secos & Molhados and Novos Baianos reveals, besides the influences of the state of exception of that time, other features in their creative exercises. The category “critical song” used by Santuza C. Naves will be the starting point to understand the experimentalism of Brazilian popular music in that period.

Key words: post-tropicalism, experimentalism, Brazilian popular music.

Author Biography

Herom Vargas, Universidade Municipal de São Caetano do Sul - USCS

Doutor em comunicação e semiótica e professor do Programa de Mestrado em Comunicação da Universidade Municipal de São Caetano do Sul (USCS), SP.

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Published

2011-12-09

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1 (2012): January/April

Section

Articles

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