OS MUTANTES e a Revolução Tropicalista

 (LK)

When you think of Brazil there are probably one or two things that spring to mind, depending upon your age and geographical location. For much of the world a mention of the country will bring up images of the famous golden football shirts and world cups of the 1970’s and 80’s, of football played the way that so many wish it were still played and skills that have yet to be bettered. For others it is Carnaval with its huge street parades, magnificent ornate floats and of course scantily, if extravagantly, clothed women, or the miles of golden beaches with scantily clad women…I may be getting slightly off track here, but nevertheless these are images that come to mind at the very mention of the word Brazil. However, there is another thing that is so fundamentally Brazilian that it is intrinsic to the things mentioned above and that is music.Again, when you think about Brazil, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about music is probably Samba, the music that accompanies every Carnaval video and every film tracking along a Brazilian beach, but there is other music that has come out of Brazil. Bossa Nova, developed sometime in the 1950’s as a fusion of Samba and Jazz, became very popular for a short time and still has its fans today, but then in the mid-sixties came an art movement that gave rise to a new style of music that would reflect a much wider set of influences than those that were internal to Brazil.

The Tropicalia movement started, like so many it seems, as a small group of musicians and poets, amongst whom the most famous is probably Gilberto Gil, in the north-east of Brazil, before shifting the whole movement to Sao Paulo, where, through a series of connections, they would come into contact with a band by the name of Os Mutantes. Gil invited them to play with him at the 3rd Annual Festival of Brazilian Popular Music, which, the following year, led to them being invited to work with him in 1968 on his eponymous second album as well as featuring on the album Tropicalia: ou Panis et Circencis, a statement album for the movement as a whole, which would create a connection that would lead to conflict with the military government of Brazil. In the same year they would release their debut album, titled Os Mutantes, which would start their journey to becoming one of the most influential Brazilian bands to make themselves known beyond the borders of the country.

Listening to a band singing in a language different to that which you speak is always an interesting experience, the connections and clues that can be gleaned from the lyric of a song are missing which, as a result, means that a lot of room for nuance is also missing. The music on this album tends toward the whimsical, with the occasional delve into more serious, contemplative sounding tunes, but does the way the music sounds relate to what the songs actually mean? Anyone who has listened to music for any amount of time, particularly the era this album originates from, will be aware of a strong tendency of disparity between music and lyric in songs, the juxtaposition of cheery music with lyrics that tend toward the dark, menacing tone or the sad song which carries a message of hope are common tropes, but they depend upon an understanding of both elements to create their effect. So what do you do when one of those elements is obscure to you? Well, one suggestion would be to stop trying.

When you just sit back and listen to this album it becomes an enjoyable experience. The sounds that are put together, from fuzztone guitar and keyboards, distortion and what would appear to be environmental sounds, and the use of different forms and ideas of music, the obvious Brazilian influence, with both Samba and Bossa Nova playing their parts, as well as the obvious influence of The Beatles, are all amalgamated into a coherent and pleasing whole, whilst still having enough edges to keep it all interesting. They have also stayed relatively relevant, Kurt Cobain and Flea have both expressed a love of their work and The Bees covered A Minha Menina on their debut album in 2002, and that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise as this is an album that looks both backward and forward musically, taking in the musical influences of Brazil and mixing them together with psychedelic pop, jazz and soul to create a sound that, although very much of its era, was a strong suggestion of music to come in later decades.

(MS)

I remember Maite from Stockwell in those late 90’s. Studying towards a doctorate in Latin American studies. One October she speculated on how she was split between buying a winter coat or buying a ticket to Rio. Even then it was fantastic bullshit, but the previous year she’d been on a field trip in the Amazon and entertained us with tales of plucking fresh fruit and avocados from the foliage. That Autumn we saw Maria Bethania at Drury Lane and newly inspired I criss crossed the (now cleared) forests of the London record shop community in search of Brazilian music. Like the fruit, I picked out album sleeves on the strength of their colourful and exotic skins. One of the first was by Os Mutantes.

Os Mutantes. Mutants. Plant or animals that are different from other plants or animals of the same kind because of a change in the structure of their genes. A hybrid or composite entity. Something that has assimilated foreign bodies to create something else.

The indigenous Tupi Indians of the Brazilian central plains would eat their adversaries to utilise their power. The preference for strength ensuring only the bravest warriors were consumed in this way. Through time the Tupi were exiled to the outer coastal fringes of the South American land mass where they encountered the Portuguese Empire. Through the mass cultivation of sugar cane, an influx of more than 2.8 million West African slaves entered the mix. The burgeoning state gained its independence and in the late 19^th Century set upon on its path towards nation building. By the 20’s the modernist writer Osvaldo De Andres would define the cannibalistic culture of Brazil as both a unique and essential catalyst in the country’s evolving culture. By the 30’s this artistic intelligentsia would be absorbed into high office.

Film-maker Glauber Rocha’s “Terra Am Transe” reflects on this political turmoil. In his film a poet rides the wave of a newly birthed administration, enjoying the patronage of his cohorts on their rise to executive power. On the regime’s lurch towards tyranny he rejects the transformation and is shot.

By the 50s the country’s journey to the modern world found permanent expression in the vision of communist architect Niemoller’s new capital city of Brazilia, founded on the central plains of the Tupi. Turning into the 60’s this utopian vision became married to progressive socialist ideals. But comme toujours the progressive Left simply furnished a waiting room ready for the far Right to occupy. In 1964 a coup d’etat with US backing overthrew the progressive President Goulat and a temporary military regime was installed. Temporary for over 20 years.

Round about this time other rebellions were breaking out. Culture is identity and music is a highly important and emotive issue within Brazil. The raw material of samba from the Afro-American north-east was refined with gringo jazz into the exportable bossa-nova. The Left rebelled against the sun and sex banality of the lyrical content. There were rumblings that the white bleached transformation of the music had sacrificed something en-route to it becoming the emblematic sound of the Copacabana bourgeois. But across the world a million cocktail glasses clinked in easy listening ignorance. The closet influence of America and England influenced the working class Jovem Guarda (the ie-ie-ie equivalent of the French ye-ye) which in turn influenced the evolving Musica Popular Brasileira. Televised song festivals took on the fervor of football matches with partisan clans alternately singing along via printed lyric sheets or drowning out the music in loud opposition.

And then in 1967 with Che prowling the jungle borders
and the spirit of Simona Bolivar in the air, the rebellious

Tropicalistas from Bahia dropped an anarchist bomb into this highly charged atmosphere. Wrapped up in Sgt Pepper-imagery, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze and Gal Costa briefly turned contemporary Brazilian pop culture on its head. Putting the Dada into Carmen Miranda-da they shook a cocktail of bossa, samba, tango, psychedelia, bolero, hard rock, cumbia, chanson and rumba to revisit the ‘20s cultural cannibalism. And in only12 months they would alienate both Left and the Right acting as the primary catalyst for the State’s repressive lurch towards an oppression that would stretch into the 1970’s.

And Os Mutantes, the pop group? They were a sort of house band to this revolution. Alongside arranger Rogerio Duprat they would contribute to much of the music created by this incestuous collective, backing Gil’s landmark Beatlesque-Capoeira West Side Story “Domingo No Parque” and Veloso at his incendiary appearance at the 3^rd International Song Festival which resulted in a sort of Dylan at Newport type clash of cultures. Their own albums stand up well, with the opening two particularly fine examples of the movements aesthetic melting pot. Likes planets circling round the sun, when The Beatles shone at their brightest so the band’s they inspired found their radiant peak. By 1969 with Gil and Veloso in London exile they moved to more generic rock, their light increasingly diluted in the outer rings of the cosmos.

But the legacy of this period left us an abundance of wonderful music both before, during and after the Tropicalistas. Put on your new winter coat and take a walk through your local forest to pick out as many colourful consumables as you can.

(PS)

Occasionally you hear an album that grabs you by the lapels and demands that you snap out of whatever funk you’re currently in and just bloody smile, why don’t you.

Os Mutantes’s 1968 debut is ostensibly a pop album infused with psych and prog flavours throughout, like the stripes in Willy Wonka’s sticks of rock; it also has elements of avant-garde, but without the pretention that can sometimes go hand in hand with that. I don’t actually think they’re trying to be Art in any formal sense, this LP seems like a genuine desire to create interesting and diverting sounds, it’s sonic experimentation and exploration in its purest sense.

For parts of this LP I get a taste of contemporary Mothers of Invention works like Uncle Meat or Lumpy Gravy, but with less complexity and focus on musicianship. These guys didn’t have the Serious Chops that the Mothers had, but there’s certainly a fair helping of invention there – and there are still some non-standard rhythms, as in the alternating 3/4, 3/4, 2/4 pattern of the first part of Panis et Cirenses; and Baby is a doo-wop number that wouldn’t be too far out of place on any early Mothers LP.

I also get the lo-fi aesthetic of the first couple of Velvet Underground LPs, with Rita Lee in the Nico role, especially in the dreamy O Relógio - but there’s much less self-conscious cool imagery here, they’re clearly not taking themselves too seriously like the Velvets did. This to me is pure far-out entertainment... it also sounds like it was recorded on a cornflakes packet through a sock for 50p, which only adds to its innocent charm.

It still seems rooted in Brazilian musical tradition too, despite the freaky influences of contemporary overseas popular counter-culture; there are precious few (if any) Americanisms in there, and the instrumentation and harmonisation give an authentic feel to the sound, especially in the samba rhythm of Ave Genghis Khan before it meanders off in its various directions.

It’s joyous, liberating fun… even the hammy music hall sound of Senhor F grates less than usual for me, as it all seems to fit into the chaotic ‘everything including the kitchen sink’ aesthetic. It’s a glorious festival of the absurd, which evidently caused a few establishment feathers to ruffle in its year of release… 1968 was the yearof rebellion and protest, after all. Weird and wonderful stuff.