by Scott Adams, Publisher
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It was a remarkable opportunity: A chance to spend a few afternoons with one of Brazil’s greatest songwriters. But Caetano Veloso is much more than that: a poet, a painter, an author and cultural warrior. And the timing could not have been more poignant. We met in 1989, just days before Brazil’s first democratic Presidential elections since 1960. The events of the day found Veloso is a particularly reflective mood.
Springtime in Rio De Janeiro. It’s a late Saturday afternoon, and I’m killing time before my interview with Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso by walking the beach at Leblon, just down the strip from Ipanema. It’s windy and warm and the clouds that envelope the twin peaks of Dois Irmãos have threatened rain, enough so that most of the beach-goers have headed for the restaurants or shops. There is a soccer game going on just ahead of me, and the vendors are still selling, but it is oddly quiet for such a day.
I’ll admit to being anxious over all of this, but honestly, the anticipation and difficulty in arranging a meeting with this man has taken a lot of the edge off my nervousness. Caetano Veloso is almost a legend here, and his fame worldwide seems to grow with each passing month. The success of his latest recording, “Estrangeiro” (Stranger) has kept him busy; city concerts in Brazil, a tour of Europe, then back home.
With a half world between us, we kept missing each other. He left for a 10-day promotional visit to New York just as I was boarding the plane for Rio, and so it went. But finally, we are in the same city at the same time, and I am wondering aloud about what people mean when they say that, “It’s a small world.”
For Veloso, the world is both too big and sometimes far too small. He is a slightly-built man with an impish grin and an easy-going personality. He carries himself in a casual relaxed way that hides his intensity. He is simple, unassuming, and almost shy.
He is, as he has written “…just an old guy from Bahia, anyone,…anybody’s brother.” But he is more than just “..a soft Brazilian singer…” In many ways he has grown to be the musical conscience of an entire nation, but he sometimes gives the impression of not knowing exactly how he got to where he is in life.
Before we go any further, a little background is in order:
In the Northeast of Brazil, set against the impossibly blue waters of the tropical Atlantic, rests the city of Salvador, or Bahia, as it is more commonly known. Bahia is the cultural center of the country, the soul of Brazil, heavily influenced by its African and South American roots. It has been home to some of the greatest musicians and artists Brazil has ever produced. It is the birthplace of novelist Jorge Amado, author of “Dona Flor and her Two Husbands” and “Gabriela” among others.
In the 1930’s, it was Carmen Miranda. Twenty-five years later it was JoãoGilberto, Baden Powell and Dori Caymmi who paved the way with the rise of Bossa Nova. Of course here in the States, we remember Bossa Nova as the last musical fad before the Beatles.
Brazil had the Beatles too, and while growing up in Salvador, Veloso along with his sister Maria Bethania, and friends Gal Costa and Gilberto Gil, soon built upon the “British Invasion” just as we did here, but with different results, and with greater impact. It was called “Tropicália.”
That Tropicália existed at all, however briefly, is a cultural miracle. Although it lasted for only a few months, it’s life might best be measured by its scope of influence. Conceptually, it drew its structure from the diverse platforms of 8Concrete poetry, the modernist writings of such challenging international authors as James Joyce, and the revolutionary Brazilian poet, Oswald De Andrade.
Musically,it blatantly re-defined the image of popular Brazilian music by incorporating Anglo-American rock and electric instruments with the traditional forms of Brazilian music to create a parody of Brazilian society. Tropicália exploited convention by presenting it as a spectacle.
In many ways, Tropicália reflected the urban transformations of Brazil in the 1960’s. Where JoãoGilberto might have sung of the Moon over Rio’s Guanabara Bay, Veloso would be more inclined to pays ironic homage to the neon lights that surrounded it. In his “Paisagem Util” (Useful Landscape), he observes the inter-action of nature and the urban lifestyle while passing through the heart of Rio de Janeiro. The journey ends with a satirical twist that is typically Tropicália:
“But now a moon comes and floats high in the sky a red and blue oval high in the Rio sky the oval moon of Esso moves and illuminates the kiss of the poor sad happy hearts of lovers in our Brazil”
Politically, Tropicália took up all of the popular issues, not by demanding change or reform, but by making fun of the progress of a society woefully out of touch with itself. “Tropicália,” recorded by Velso in 1968, is the definitive example of his vision of a contradictory Brazil. The song’s subject is a monument, much like a float in the Carnaval parade, erected in the form of a green eyed Brazilian girl, built of crepe paper and silver; a beautiful image, a testament to a brighter future, a better tomorrow, but hollow and dark with the reality of the poor, the socially estranged, the forgotten promise. It’s as if Veloso is asking: “What is wrong with this picture?”
* * * *
“For the leaf: green For the man: black For the fire: blue
For the sky: blue For the man: rose For the smoke: blue
For the rose: rose For the man: gold For the rock: blue
For the sea: blue For the angel: blue For everything: blue
Which are the colors that are your favorite colors?”
(“Rai Das Cores” (King of Colors), by Caetano Veloso (from “Estrangeiro”, Nonesuch, 1989.)
Caetano Veloso’s world is one of subtle shadings. Where many are happy to deal with the world in terms of black and white, ignoring the grey areas of life, Veloso has struggled to understand the meaning that exists within a rainbow of opinion, of thought, of action. This has caused many to hail him as a genius and hero, but he takes it all in stride, because sometimes he’s just not sure.
New York City. May 22, 1987. He hadn’t planned for it to happen this way, wasn’t quite sure that he could pull it off, just he and his guitar, alone on the stage at Town Hall. At the last minute, the percussionists who were to have performed with him bailed out, and Caetano considered cancelling.
In Caetano Veloso’s life there have been many such times. Times of confusion, times of uncertainty; “estrangeiro”. For most of his life, Veloso has woven his story through the tapestries of his county’s struggle to find itself, and it is no less revealing of the man.
But this Brazilian singer, colorfully dressed like some exotic bird of the rainforest, does what he has always done. He shrugs, picks up his guitar and heads to the stage. The warmth of the applause assures him. He begins to sing. It is not a question of language, or even the lyrics. Caetano Veloso sings, our souls listen.
* * * *
Sitting comfortably in his apartment just a few blocks off the beach in this relatively quiet suburb of Leblon, we talked about how it all began:
Are you a poet who happens to be a musician, or are you a singer who writes poetry?
“Uh… In fact, I am a painter and a film-maker who just became a pop song writer. I was never a poet. When I was a young boy, I did not write poems, or sing. I liked to paint and draw, and I was planning to direct movies.
“When I was 18, my mother got me a guitar because we had a piano in Santo Amaro, and had to leave the piano behind when we moved to Salvador. I missed the piano, because I used to play as a hobby, but I never thought that it would all come to this!”
What where your paintings like?
“Ummm. First they were just paintings from around Bahia. There is a church, from a certain angle, a certain view in Santo Amaro. That painting is still in my mothers house. She keeps it. Then I started painting Abstract, and soon after that I gave it up. I found that music was more vivid, and I felt nearer to the people who worked with music. The painters liked to be alone and then would come and talk in a different, remote way. I didn’t feel happy with that.
“I met Gilberto Gil in Salvador, and then my sister, Maria Bethania, began her singing career. and we got together with Gal Costa. They all wanted my help because they liked the way I viewed things; they wanted my advice. I thought I was going to be a good adviser. I would write two or three songs too, you know, to help the group, but I didn’t think I was going to become a professional in pop music.”
So you started off as friends; you liked them as people and they were interesting because of their ability to “paint” with music.
“Yeah, my songs are quite visual. But I am not very careful about writing songs, I write lots of songs; my sister will phone me and say, ‘I want a very romantic song!’ and I’ll write it for her.You know, they ask me—I write songs. Quickly. Some of them turn out to be very beautiful in the end.”
So let’s go back for awhile. You were with Gal and your sister and Gil. That was in the early 1960’s; ‘63, ‘64, and eventually that group really became a “family” because you and Gilberto Gil married…
“Two sisters. Yeah, I married Dede’ and some years later, Gil married her sister, her older sister, Sandra.”
So it was like one big family.
“Yes, really.”
When I reflect about things that I would like to have in my life, it would be that I could have all of the people that I love around me, those who nurture me and help me along in life. I have found that to be very important, and it sounds like that is kind of the situation that you found yourself in during the ‘60’s.
“Yeah. That’s true.”
And then you all moved together in the same direction, and called it “Tropicália,” and it really opened the doors for popular music in Brazil.
“It was a very short period, but very powerful in terms of change. In 1966 and ‘67 we decided on a lot of things; to include electric guitars, which was unheard of. Tropicália was a reaction to everything that was going on around us: It was irreverent. We all had long hair and we dressed like Hippies and in one year we showed those things to everybody, and it became kind of a scandal in Brazil.”
* * * *
It is during this time, in 1968, that Veloso is disqualified from a samba competition for using an electric guitar, and the event soon triggers the revolutionary changes that hide beneath the music of Tropicália. Just a few months later at the International Song Festival in Sao Paulo, Veloso, wearing a plastic suit, performs his controversial “E’ Proibido Proibir” (Prohibiting Prohibited), the lyrics of the song based on the proclamation of a radical French student organization.
Shouted down by the angry crowd mid-way through his performance, Veloso stops, and delivers a scathing speech to the stunned audience. He attacks the close-mindedness of his society, challenges its direction, its acceptance, its failure to find itself. “If you are the same in politics as you are in music, we’re done for. I say no to no”, he shouts. “I say prohibiting prohibited….enough!”
* * * *
What did you think about that?
“I felt great. Although, I don’t know. In the end it was terrible because we were in prison and all that..”
* * * *
“Get out of town, before it’s too late, my dear.
Get out of town, I’m begging you please…”
“Get Out Of Town”, by Cole Porter (from “Caetano Veloso”, Nonesuch, 1986)
“Time is as weak as water. I’m kneeling on the shore.
World so wide, around my head, waiting. Later, I taught myself a lesson. I put myself to sleep.”
“Jasper”, by Caetano Veloso (from “Estrangeiro”, Nonesuch, 1989)
* * * *
It is 1969, and Brazil is in the 5thyear of dictatorship. The military had begun to stir from it’s drowsy slumber in the late 1950’s, and had cast a critical eye towards President Juscelino Kubitsehek as he pursued the “Brazilian Dream” of technological expansion. He builds a new Capitol city, Brasilisa, in 3 short years, and amasses a gigantic debt that in turn leads to spiraling inflation. In 1964, the military has seen enough, and casts out the republic in order to safeguard the welfare of the nation.
But within the “caretaker” framework of the military government, a struggle for political power ensues among its Generals, who each take their turn as leader of a country that is by this time, a Republic in name only. In early 1967 the strongest and most repressive of these, Artur de Costa e Silva, assumes the Presidency by staging a coup within a coup, and with the army’s supervision, eliminates the Brazilian Congress.
These are dark times for Brazil. The momentum that began in 1964, with the jailing of five thousand “enemies of democracy”, and the suspension of civil rights for 58 prominent Brazilian citizens, including two past Presidents, now continues unchecked. Juscelino Kubitschek, still the country’s most popular political figure, comes under suspicion, and he tactfully leaves for a three month lecture tour of Europe, which will last 6 years.
Others leave too. Singer Chico Buarque decides on Italy as his choice of residence in the wake of the uncertainty. Singers, writers, artists of all types are under constant government surveillance, and many bow to the pressure by choosing to relocate in a foreign country. Those who stay are careful not to draw attention to themselves. Art imitating Life.
Student demonstrations erupt in Universities across the country as the Government systematically interrogates and imprisons those who openly disagree, or who exhibit “leftist” tendencies. There are threatening phone calls in the middle of the night, letters sent to encourage voluntary “questioning”.
During this time, a college student is tortured to death while in the custody of the authorities in Sao Paulo, and the official version is suicide. When the same thing happens again only weeks later, an amazed public will watch with shock as it’s Government continues the political purge. The music, now competing with the voice of a nation, grows louder.
* * * *
The room at the Headquarters of the Military Police in Rio de Janeiro is probably like rooms of this sort anywhere. Perhaps there are empty walls coated with bland, forgettable paint. A desk, chairs, windows that look out to nowhere. We can only imagine. Surely the room personifies its function.
Decisions have been made. A government tribunal, fearful of Veloso because of his nonconformity, and his increasingly visible role as a cultural agitator, has offered him a choice. Leave the country or return to prison. Caetano Veloso is presented with papers that will lead him into forced exile, away from his country, his family, away from life. On this day, Caetano Veloso is 27 years old and scared. He also has seen too much. He signs.
“The first year was terrible, because I was depressed, I didn’t want to go. We were…invited to leave the country. They said, ‘Please leave, or…’. We weren’t tortured, we were just maltreated. I remember that I spent one week in a solitary cell, sleeping on the concrete floor, with nothing but a toilet in the room.”
My God, what was going through your mind?
“It was terrible for me. I was afraid and I suffered a lot. You must understand that I didn’t see Gil in the prison because we were separated, but he was better. He overcame it much better than I could because he was much stronger. We spent two months in prison, and then four months under home arrest in Bahia. Then they brought us to Rio where they said that they would arrange everything with our papers for us to leave the country in four days, or…”
Or?
“Or go back to prison.”
They left that kind of open, a veiled threat?
“Yes, a threat.”
Did they threaten to remove your citizenship? Did they tell you how long you were to stay away?
“No! They said: ‘Don’t come back. If you do, come straight to the Police, to save us the work of having to search for you.’”
* * * *
“My vagabond heart wants to hold the world in me.
It is an infant, not just a memory.”
“Coração Vagabundo” (Vagabond Heart), by Caetano Veloso (from “Caetano Veloso”, Nonesuch, 1986)
* * * *
But you did return in 1971. You recorded a television special with João Gilberto and Gal Costa, and you sang “CoraçãoVagabundo.”
“Yes, I received special permission to stay in Bahia for one month, under home arrest. The Police took me from the airport to my house and I could not leave the city at all. “I was there to see my parents because it was their 40th anniversary. I was going to be the only son not to attend, so my sister worked on it very hard. She talked with many authorities to get special permission. There were so many restrictions. I couldn’t cut my hair if I wanted to, I couldn’t shave. I had long hair and a beard at the time, and they didn’t want me to change because the gossip had gone around that they had shaved my hair while I was in prison, which was true, and they didn’t want people to think that they had done it again, you know. It was horrible.
“One year later, we were allowed to come back. We were becoming heroes; people were talking about us as idols. The Government didn’t really know what to do with us, so they let us come back.”
* * * *
When Veloso and Gil return from exile in 1972, they find Brazil in a state of change. Public sentiment has begun to sway the political path of the country. Costa e Silva has died of a cerebral hemorrhage while in office and his successor Emilio Medici begins to slowly institute reforms which will lead Brazil back to Democracy. He re-convenes Congress, and loosens the knot of censorship and repression. The military, shocked by the massive demonstrations and the violent reactions of the public to its leadership, grudgingly supports Medici’s platform of “national spirit.” Minor elections are being held, the social and political process have been altered. Tropicália has made its mark.
With his exile over, Caetano picks up where he left off, and although public awareness has shifted during his exile, he soon to finds that perhaps public acceptance had not:
Your record “Araca Azul”…
“Yeah…that was in 1972.”
…didn’t work too well.
“Ah, yeah. You mean as far as selling? Oh, well. They sold a lot, but people would bring it back. I had just made a record with Chico Buarque, “live” in ‘72, and it was very successful, it was enormously successful, and then when my record came out, everybody went to buy it, because they loved what Chico and I had done. They bought it without knowing what it sounded like, and then they would take it home and play it. Many people got angry and demanded refunds from the stores. It happened in such large numbers that everybody accepted the returned records.”
That’s unusual.
“Very unusual.”
What was on the record that people didn’t like?
“It was just different from what anyone expected. I used a real orchestra, but it was all very abstract. And I sang strange parts over it. I loved doing that record, and I thought that it was great that the people gave it back. They were waiting for me to come back as a political hero or something, and then I came out with this record. They got really angry with me for awhile but now they love it. This record now is recognized as a historical thing; it is highly different, an experimental thing that nobody else was doing here. Nowhere, maybe.”
* * * *
“My music comes from the music of the poetry of João, a poet who doesn’t like music.
My poetry comes from the poetry of the music of João, a musician who doesn’t like poetry.”
Outro Retrato (Other Portrait), by Caetano Veloso (from “Estrangeiro”, Nonesuch, 1989)
With the new decade, Caetano Veloso gives us these words to ponder. The poet and the musician are not one and the same, and the reference to his mentors JoãoCabral de Melo Neto, the poet, and João Gilberto, the singer, show us just one example of the unlikely influences Veloso still feels. For him, “time is as weak as water,” and we talked about his views concerning the present and the future:
Are you happy with how “Estrangeiro” turned out?
“Yes. I think it was a natural follow up to what I have been doing all along in Brazil. I’ve been mixing old-fashioned Brazilian and South American things with new rock and with new Brazilian things, mostly Bossa Nova, because Bossa Nova was the most sophisticated and well-done musical movement in Brazil. In my musical generation, we had a vision of the music from a Brazilian point of view, from our place on the planet. It’s been enriched year after year and because of this, I think that “Estrangeiro” comes off feeling reassured by its past, and that’s how I think of its continuity.”
The vision that you had in ‘67 and ‘68?
“Yeah, mostly that. This record is the most Tropicália-like record I’ve done since 1968. It’s an homage.”
Do you feel any frustration over what happened to you 20 years ago?
“Well, it’s not easy to talk about, because I can’t see it clearly. But I can’t deny it when you say that you see it because there is a feeling of anger when I think of Brazil as a country, as a nation. I feel the sweetness, too. It’s a great place, a fantastic, strange place, psychologically warm and colorful. It’s also culturally rich with its charmingly different shades of mixed cultures and races and everything…”
I understand that very well…
“It’s beautiful, you know. And it’s very imaginative. It feels creative. But our country is frustrated because its never been a really healthy society. We have never been able to become a mature, rich healthy nation. So basically, the frustration that you can feel behind the words and sounds in “Estrangeiro” may be coming from that recognition.”
In “Os Outros Romanticos” (The Other Romantics), you paint a very bleak picture of modern society. It’s very powerful.
“Yeah, that one’s the dark one…I like that one very much. It’s just statistics, you know. You’ve been here, in the streets of Brazil; you know what it is like. I think “Os Outros Romanticos” is my favorite. I have reasons for that.”
Why is that?
“Mostly because I worked on the arrangement, more on that track than any other. I wanted it to sound more like Reggae in a certain sense. It had to be Reggae-like, and after a lot of discussion we succeeded.”
Orwellian Reggae. It’s like George Orwell’s version of Reggae. It’s a very dark portrait.
“That’s why it’s my favorite. It was a bit difficult to convince Peter Scherer, my co-producer to go in that direction. And in the end, when I got the musical ideas to make him agree, it was beautiful for me, a great discovery, so I am very fond of that track. It is a very important song for what is going on in the world today.
Some may like a soft Brazilian singer, but I’ve given up all attempts at perfection.
“Yeah, that’s a quotation. From Bob Dylan. You can find that on the back cover of “Bringing It All Back Home”. You know the way he used to write his back cover texts, so surrealistic, and all of the sudden he says: ‘I happen to be one of the Supremes’, and then ‘Some may like a soft Brazilian singer, but I’ve given up all attempts at perfection.’ I think that was the most fascinating thing… He was referring maybe to João Gilberto, because he was the “Soft Brazilian Singer” at that time; Perfection! That’s João Gilberto! But for me, the quote works in a different way.
“I feel that it has a lot to do with the song “Estrangeiro.” You see, the feeling of being “estrangeiro” has a hint of irony to it. I assume that I am saying that not only am I a frustrated Soft Brazilian Singer, and a frustrated critic of that Soft Brazilian Singer, but also that I have the pretension of being João Gilberto and Bob Dylan at the same time.”
Okay…
“It’s very pretentious.”
Well, yes.
“But it’s just a joke, just a joke…It’s just poetry, anyway. Pop music is not serious poetry, it’s just a joke.”
I keep coming back to the feeling that you are once again holding up a mirror to the future of Brazil, just as you have in the past. Acting as the conscience for your nation. A cry of conscience, maybe?
“Maybe. Yeah…”
Tell me what you feel about that.
“Well, it’s not easy… I’ve been changing a lot because we’ve had all these feelings coming up because of the Presidential elections, and after so many years we’ve finally voted for a presidency. It’s amazing because you feel that the people have this craving for transformation, for renewal. It’s just like the reference of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ in “Estrangeiro”.
I think that Brazil is the “King” of a dream, of a new and better world, of all these things that have to be denied. Try to understand what the song is trying to say, that the King is naked, but he is more beautiful naked. “It’s more difficult to dream or to have good expectations, or good plans or good will. When it is shown to be difficult, almost impossible, then these dreams and hopes become more beautiful.
“It’s the bottom of the Well, and you are down there, and you realize that you have no arguments in favor of your causes, but still you have the faith or the feeling of a basic thing that is “there” naked and it’s more beautiful.”
There’s innocence, a vulnerability in being naked.
“Yeah…”
* * * *
On any night of the week, at 8:30, you will find most of the television sets in Brazil tuned in to TV Globo, the fourth largest television network in the world. It is not a Brazilian version of “60 minutes” that attracts these millions of viewers, but rather, a Soap Opera, or Novela, called “Tieta’” a one hour drama set in Salvador, Bahia and based on a novel by Jorge Amado.
“Tieta” has passion and intrigue, and commercials. And just as here in America, the program’s signature always precedes these interruptions. For “Tieta,” it is a wonderfully naked woman silhouetted against an evening sky, and wrapped in a computer generated ribbon as she appears to defy the laws of gravity. There is a theme song too. It is called “Meia-Lua Inteira” (Full Half Moon) and it’s sung by Caetano Veloso. It’s playful and happy. It’s the kind of song that you’d find yourself humming without even realizing it.
It’s a song about another Stranger from an earlier time; Saint Bento, who avoided persecution by slipping away into the dark of night. Caetano didn’t write this one, but he sings it as if he did, and for now, that’s okay. There will be other songs for him to write.
~ ~ ~
(Author’s note: In early January, Caetano Veloso’s residence in Salvador was bombed after Veloso publicly criticized the current Mayor and his political stance. No one was injured.)
So, there you have it – the first interview with Caetano Veloso to be published in a major US magazine. – a snapshot out of time from 20 years ago. As you may have guessed, the ‘Caetano’ of today is still growing, evolving, confounding. Perhaps it these qualities that have led to three more Latin Grammy nominations this week. The beat – and life – goes on.
What is your favorite Caetano Veloso album? Is he – as the NY Time states “the Brazilian Bob Dylan”, or is it perhaps the other way around? Add your comments to this story.
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