Das, on September 21, Copacabana was the most beautiful and vibrant. I am suspicious when talking about the little princess of the sea, the most beautiful of the beaches, I who spent much of my childhood and youth at post 6-but who should deny that that political-musical Sunday, more than too much, was the superban?
We know that the first reaction of culture to the 1964 coup came with the direction of Augusto Boal and texts by Armando Costa, Oduvaldo Vianna Filho and Paulo Pontes, with the memorable stars Nara Leão (later replaced by Maria Bethânia), Zé Keti and João do Vale.
The drastic political change, with the seizure of power by generals supported by businessmen and sectors of the middle classes, was a great thud for the cultural area. Brazil came in the postwar with a series of bold and successful experiments in all branches, from architecture to theater, through cinema, the fine arts, the literature.
It followed on the scene a real outbreak of imagination and realization capacity, which had already given us concrete poetry, constructive art, bossa nova, Guimarães Rosa and the beginning of the new cinema, to name some examples. It was however popular music in this Brazil that may be absurd, but it is not deaf, which for a series of reasons eventually assumed the role of catalyst in the environment troubled by the military coup – and also for the aesthetic and political concerns that arose everywhere, with young movements, civil rights struggles, against racism and gender discrimination.
Bossa Nova, which had made a modern and admirable popular synthesis of our song, to the point of suggesting an idea of the country, suffered the change of winds, with its semantics of love, smile and flower, which lost meaning in the face of the brutality that was established.
The new generation, now in the 80’s, which was there, took the lead, in a context in which protest song, nationalism, experimentation and mass culture interacted richly and controversially.
In all vectors, from Geraldo Vandré’s exhortative hymns to the Bahian group’s tropicalism, through the mastery of Chico and Milton, and the talent of so many others, popular music has always been on the cultural front line of the contestation to the military dictatorship.
From 1964 to 1988, I lived from eight to 32 years under the authoritarian regime, stir and suffocation times. I came to know Caetano Veloso in 1977, in inviting him, with a friend, among some hesitation of some of our militant friends, to participate in a show with several artists to draw attention to the arrest of colleagues of the student movement.
After calls and a visit to the ground floor apartment at Leblon, he, to my surprise, appeared and sang, among others, “Leãozinho”. This despite a bad clock of the audience threatening him if he presented the classic today, which starts from the left of the time saw as alienation.
That these protagonists of culture and the struggle for democracy performed for old and new generations, against reactionary forces still present, was an emotion and a breath.
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