Tropicália

This comprehensive portrait of Tropicália, exploring everything from influences and results to context and main players, demonstrates how the genre helped reinvent Brazil's cultural identity in a post-colonial world.

While bossa nova nurtured a snobbish audience rooted in jazz and Música popular brasileira (MPB) spoke to a multicultural yet oppressed nation, Tropicália invested in a crossover instigated by the progressive youth who refused to glorify a past it didn’t identify with and whose outdated codes it didn’t intend to perpetuate. This portrait of Tropicália, exploring everything from influences and results to context and main players, shows how the genre helped reinvent Brazil’s cultural identity in a postcolonial world.

The genre’s core comes from a unique mix of native and foreign influences: Tropicália doesn’t reject the international pop panorama but is an undeniable product of it. The book sets the strangling military dictatorship and its resulting censorship serving as the sociopolitical backdrop of the genre. Tropicália propelled culture (and counterculture) forward, moving away from senseless niche intellectualisms in favour of a broader reach of Brazilian music.