Songs of Protest and Popular Nationalism in Dictatorship-EraBrazil

On March 25th, 2022, a handful of artists led a political demonstration at Lollapalooza Brazil, rallying crowds with “Fora Bolsonaro” chants which called for the removal of then-Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro––a far-right former military captain The following night, an electoral judge of Brazil’s Supreme Court officially banned what he called “political propaganda” in support of leftist parties during the international music festival, with an associated fine of up to R$50,000 (almost USD$11,000) (Phillip 2022). The aftermath of this ruling saw Brazilian artists and audiences alike denouncing the decision as dangerously reminiscent of the country’s previous dictatorial period of the 1960s and ‘70s, when censorship laws prohibited artistic expression that might have been critical of the military government (Phillip 2022). At the time, music festivals had also been a major rallying point for anti-authoritarian or leftist discourse which, without an outlet in the political stage, manifested itself through music and created a cultural and political movement through a new form of popular Brazilian nationalism

The come-and-go of Brazilian protest music genres contributed to the development of collective national identity by blending modern and traditional aspects of Brazilian culture and mobilizing popular art as a form of political action rather than passive entertainment Common, accessible language and spoken poetry were used to sidestep military censorship, acting as a rallying point for a new Brazilian national identity At the same time, this form of Brazilian nationalism interacted with the international scene as exiled artists came to influence and be influenced by political music and related movements in other Latin American and Western cultures The development of Brazilian music constantly interacted with foreign genres and political sentiments, especially as Rio de Janeiro became a major cultural capital of the world through its annual music festivals, which, for many years, functioned as a center for underhand political expression.

The 5th Institutional Act of December 1968 is often discussed as the final puzzle piece of Brazil’s military dictatorship (Rezende 2008, 7) It strictly prohibited any manifestation of political sentiment, public or otherwise, contradicting or criticizing Brazil’s military regime, while centring political power firmly at the head of state (Dushá 2017). This was the beginning of the end of Brazil’s international music festivals, which had begun to flourish shortly after the dictatorship itself in 1964 (Stroud 2000, 89). This was not coincidental Censorship laws had been put in place immediately after the military coup in April 1964, formally and informally (Perrone 2022, 71). As open political expression was increasingly stifled in the following months, a new movement grew as the Brazilian people turned to indirect means of expression through music

Until the early 1960s, popular Brazilian music was comfortably centered around Bossa Nova, a laid back style of music that relied on sparse guitar instrumentals and soft chorus vocals for an easy export to Western audiences abroad (Moreno 1982, 130) After the Coup of ‘64, a transitional second wave of Bossa Nova introduced more contentious topics of Brazilian politics to this easy-going soundscape as political frustrations were stifled in the general population (Treece 1997, 3) Music became a primary outlet for these growing fears and frustrations as state-sponsored violence became commonplace in Brazil (Rezende 2008, 8) As anti-dictatorship activists, and later sympathizers, were disappeared off the streets, these stifled sentiments grew (Perrone 2002, 67) However, the space for open protest diminished rapidly until the only safe avenue for a nation-wide wave of fear and repression was through art (Perrone 2002, 67). This is the setting in which second-wave Bossa Nova transitioned to Popular Brazilian Music (Música Popular Brasileira, or MPB), an inherently political, leftist-associated genre of music which actively sought to adopt native Brazilian soundscapes and modern Brazilian politics into artistic expression (Perrone 2002, 69) MPB music festivals became a staple of Brazilian culture as artists were able to perform strongly opinionated songs and audiences convened in the closest thing to an explicitly political setting as possible at the time (Stroud 2000, 89) Music became a medium not just for entertainment or foreign cultural integration, but for voiced and shared opinions that were otherwise prohibited Music was not the only means of underhand political expression that grew at the time, but it was by far the most important to the development of a new popular Brazilian nationalism—it made language infinitely more accessible. In Imagined Communities (1983), Benedict Anderson explores the birth of nationalism through the spread of print media, which allowed for the standardization of a common, accessible language across large groups of people (36) Print-capitalism, through books and newspapers, contributed to the formation of shared stories, news, and realities across widespread populations, creating a common national identity (Anderson 1983, 37) There is a significant discrepancy between Anderson’s theory and the reality of what happened in Brazil—rather than print media, the spread of accessible and common language and narratives was facilitated by increasingly cheap recordings of popular music through cassette tapes, vinyl records, and radio broadcasting (Turino 2003, 187). Interestingly, it was relatively rare for Brazilian music albums in leftist dictatorship-time genres such as MPB and Tropicália to be studio-recorded and distributed Instead, songs were often approved for release and recorded for the first time with a live audience in music festivals which were broadcasted nation-wide (Stroud 2000, 93) Recordings of these performances were available for relatively cheap in-store purchases, but listeners were also able to personally record these broadcasts at home (Stroud 2000, 93).

Literacy rates in Brazil were extremely low at the time, particularly across lower-income groups in the North, Northeast, and Southeast regions (Stroud 1997, 96; Leu 2016, 15). This had previously contributed to a form of cultural isolation between the five regions of Brazil when print media in particular reached only small populations in the poorest states due to widespread illiteracy (Leu 2016, 13). However, as audio technology became more accessible during the ‘60s and ‘70s it was able to reach audiences that could not have had the same exposure to print media (Treece 1997, 3) The popularization of language played an important role in the birth of this new nationalism, as Anderson discusses, but it did so even more rapidly as it relied on media that did not require formal education to be consumed

There was another reason why this standardized language became important to Brazilian nationalism: the need to bypass increasingly harsh censorship laws for the music to be approved for release in the first place. Initially, this was not too difficult. Lyricism and spoken poetry have been a significant part of Brazilian art since the pre-colonial years, with roots especially in Native and Afro-Brazilian cultures (Rezende 2008, 16) At first, it was a matter of introducing a few pointed metaphors into an otherwise harsh political message Caetano Veloso, one of the most significant musicians of the time and a pioneer of both MPB and Tropicália, has joked about rifling through synonyms of a particular word dozens of times to get a song approved for release—an annoying, but not necessarily crippling process (Calil and Terra 2020)

As the effect of lyrical protest became increasingly significant and apparent to not only the Brazilian public but also to the government, censorship laws related to art and music grew increasingly strict (Rezende 2008, 16). Artists were exiled or fled the country to avoid being blacklisted or disappearing Geraldo Azevedo’s Canção de Despedida (Goodbye Song), written in 1968, was one of many to be blocked entirely until the transitional years of the dictatorship in 1985 (Azevedo 1985) Artists had to become increasingly creative with their lyrics, which they did through audible wordplay, homophones, and disjointed verse structures that had to be scrambled to be made sense of.

The fact that songs were approved for release in written form and only later recorded and spread audibly was incredibly significant to their ability to bypass prohibitive censorship laws The most famous example of this is in Chico Buarque’s Cálice (Chalice), released in 1972 when censorship was incredibly strict, which, in written form, cites the Holy Bible: “Father, take that chalice away from me ” (Buarque 1972). Out loud, however, it uses the homophone “Cale-se” (Be quiet) to denounce the dictatorship’s oppression: “Father, get away from me and be quiet” (Buarque 1972; Rezende 2008, 21). In 1975, the federal police stopped a performance of Cálice, forcefully removing one microphone at a time (Perrone 2002, 71) The performance was recorded, and this poetic demonstration of the song’s message—Be quiet!— became anthemic to the anti-dictatorship movement nation-wide (Perrone 2002, 71).

The fact that performances in MPB festivals were recorded was incredibly significant to the development of a broader national political conscience Those who were unable to attend festivals personally still shared in the avid sentiments and reactions of live audiences through recordings which immortalized political moments (Stroud 2000, 93). What was recorded in festivals guided national sentiment in one direction or another. This is exemplified in the recordings of the 1968 FIC festival in Rio—these are still the versions one will find today in modern streaming platforms, audience reactions included—when Bossa Nova darlings Tom Jobim and Chico Buarque’s sentimental exile song, which lamented the loss of their homeland, was met with booing and profanities The song won the festival despite the audience’s distaste for its old-fashioned sound and soft political message (Buarque 1968; Stroud 2000, 89)

Shortly after, as Geraldo Vandré came onstage to perform the crowd favourite Pra Não Dizer Que Não Falei das Flores (So that [they] don’t claim I never spoke of flowers), he pleads with the crowd to calm down, telling them that “life is bigger than festivals”— that ideas shared in festivals were meant to be applied beyond them—before leading the audience of thousands into a strong, emotional performance that would birth a symbol for political change in the dictatorship’s transitional years (Vandré 1979; Perrone 2002, 73). These two recordings reveal two significant shifts in Brazil First, the gentler sounds of Bossa Nova and MPB finally gave way to the much harsher genre of Brazilian Tropicália (Spagnolo 2020). Second, they marked the end of music festivals as a legitimate space for political activism as, after the passing of AI-5, the government intervened in the previously audience-led festivals to ensure such a strongly political song as Vandré’s could not win in the eyes of the Brazilian public or the rest of the world, as Brazilian festivals had by then become a global center for music and cultural exchange (Stroud 2000, 93)

Both of these points relate to the interaction of Brazilian protest music with the larger international system In particular, the chronological development of new Brazilian music genres is reminiscent of Anderson’s discussion of the interaction between popular and official nationalism—which seeks to emulate the effect of the development of a shared language in popular nationalism by introducing a state-sponsored unifying language instead (Anderson 1983, 86) The dictatorship held significant ties to the United States through a Western anti-Communist neoimperialist movement in Latin America as a whole and involved Western cultural imports into Brazil through music (Perrone 2002, 75). This was used as a way to push for a clean, state-sponsored version of popular music in Brazil in the Jovem Guarda genre, which strongly emulated popular Western rock sounds, steering clear of political messages, although it was associated with right-wing politics and a general support of the dictatorship (Treece 1997, 19) This process, as Anderson discusses, sought to create a new national language in music that became popular in its own right (Anderson 1983) This form of official nationalism came as an explicit reaction to the strength of the popular nationalism of MPB.

There was a similar reaction to official nationalism in popular nationalism, a second wave of protest music in Brazil that came about, rather controversially, in Tropicália MPB aimed to engage strictly with Native and Afro-Brazilian styles of lyricism, song structure, instrumentation, and language, openly rejecting the neoimperialist movement of Western sounds into Brazilian music for the sake of Western consumption, characteristic of Bossa Nova (Perrone 2002, 63). This became set in stone when Jovem Guarda began to associate more heavily with the military government (Treece 1997, 18-19). The first wave of popular nationalism found pride in its inclusion of a more authentically Brazilian soundscape and energy Tropicália, on the other hand, embraced Western genres and even languages in a differentially Brazilian way, adopting the principles of Oswald de Andrade’s “Anthropophagic [Cannibal] Manifesto” which advocated for an absorption and appropriation of the “ enemy ” (imperialist culture) into Brazilian culture for its own benefit (Andrade 1928; Golden 2022) When some of the same artists who solidified the MPB genre changed course to instead found Tropicália, it was seen as a betrayal not only of Brazilian culture, but of the antidictatorship movement as a whole

An immortalized recording of the 1968 MPB festival in Rio reveals this sentiment very clearly Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, who were both exiled to the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s, wrote and performed a song named after a slogan of the May ‘68 student protests in France: É Proibido Proibir (“It is forbidden to forbid”) (Veloso and Os Mutantes 1968) Veloso and Gil pioneered the genre with obnoxiously loud Western rock sounds, song structures reminiscent of The Beatles, and an intense appeal to homoerotic sexuality on stage (Dushá 2017; Blikstad 2021)

Veloso performed in Rio in 1968 and was met with one of the most violent recorded receptions in any festival The performance ended with food and glass threw at the stage as Veloso screamed at the crowd for minutes on end Eventually, however, the words he repeated in this performance—“God is on the loose!”—would become a slogan for the nationalist movement similar to those before it (Dushá 2017; Beta 2016) Tropicália marked a transitional period between the first decade of the dictatorship in its dwindling freedom and a much louder and aggressive nationalism in the 1970s and between the mild, sorrowful sounds of MPB and a thriving postdictatorship Brazilian Rock genre (Beta 2016; Areias 2011) It encouraged Brazilian national pride through an appropriation of state-backed Western music in Jovem Guarda, turning it on its head and destroying its purpose of official nationalism to become, instead, politically charged and firmly anti-dictatorship

The interaction between Brazilian nationalism and international movements went both ways. The 1965 International Song Festival (FIC) in Rio was the first music festival to encompass such an international scope of performers (Stroud 2000, 91). Going forward, the annual FIC was split in two parts: first, MPB festivals where audiences would choose the Brazilian song that would compete with other countries; second, an international competition between artists of different cultures (Stroud 2000, 98) Meanwhile, artists such as Veloso, Gil, Buarque, and many others had left Brazil to create music safely away from an increasingly violent police state regime (Stroud 2000, 104). Although there was some introduction of Brazilian music, and therefore the Brazilian nationalist movement and its politics, into Western music through artists such as Beck and David Byrne, there was a more explicitly political exchange of nationalist, leftist, and anti-authoritarian sentiment within Latin America (Stroud 2000, 91).

Brazil shared with many other Latin American countries at the time a struggle against a US-backed military regime which was harshly anti-left. Throughout the postwar 20th century in Latin America, right-wing regimes were implemented in a domino-like effect across the region, leftist movements in different countries became increasingly reliant on each other not only for an ideological basis to rally people around but also as points of reference for resistance against similarly oppressive governments (Dulitzky 2019, 426) Methods of oppression were common among different dictatorial regimes—for one, the forced disappearances in Brazil had been pioneered in Argentina, and later emulated across the region (Dulitzky 2019, 429) Methods of resistance were similarly shared across sympathizing movements, which were increasingly self-referencing and interwoven as popular leftist leaders—of both guerrillas and music—moved across countries to escape persecution

This shared experience of resistance was exemplified in music in the exchange of messages and sounds between movements such as Brazilian Tropicália, Chile’s Nueva Canción, and Argentina’s Rock Nacional The Nueva Canción functioned as a pioneering genre of Latin American protest music as a response to oppressive governments (Neustadt 2004, 129; Lopez 2017) It developed alongside MPB and second-wave Bossa Nova with a similar traditionalist interest in reintroducing Native South American soundscapes and structures to modern Chilean music while introducing stronger political, anti-imperialist messages into otherwise soft styles (Moreno 2022) This style of music spread across Latin America, and Hispanic countries in particular, in the late 1950s and early ‘60s.

Throughout the 1960s, as the military dictatorship in Brazil cracked down on artistic expression as a means to control national sentiment, Hispanic dictatorships followed suit, and remaining artists of Nueva Canción began to adopt MPB’s underhand, wordplay-based style of political expression as Brazil transitioned into Tropicália (Turino 2003, 172) Similarly, Tropicália’s introduction of Westernstyle rock and sexuality to Brazilian music functioned as a jumping-off point for the wider acceptance of a Latin American cultural cannibalism movement, such as in the development of Argentina’s Rock Nacional (Lopez 2017; Neustadt 2004) The development of different and interwoven genres of Latin American protest music held similar political and popular significance as those in Brazil. Thus, Brazilian protest music genres, and the popular nationalism born from it, interacted and influenced the wider international political sentiments and forms of protest in Latin America

Throughout the dictatorship era, Brazilian protest music became a primary form of national political expression and cultural development as it moved continuously across genres. This was the first time in Brazilian history when music became primarily a medium for politics rather than pleasure, while simultaneously allowing for a centring of root Brazilian styles to flourish and serve as a unifying force in an otherwise sprawling and disparate culture The development of popular Brazilian nationalism through protest music genres such as second-wave Bossa Nova, MPB, and Tropicália facilitated the spread of a common language—in more than one sense of the word, through spoken poetry and wordplay, a common cultural and political context, and mainstream political and entertainment media—which functioned as resistance to state oppression. At the same time, it interacted with and influenced a wider leftist antiauthoritarian movement in Latin America, informing and informing by simultaneously musical and political movements This time period set the stage for what would become not only mainstream Brazilian music but also a larger Brazilian national identity.

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