The digestion of alterity in Brazilian musical Tropicalismo: Anthropophagy and decoloniality

ANA CAROLINA DA LUZ

Revista del CESLA: International Latin American Studies Review

CESLA

Lugar: Varsovia; Año: 2023

1641-4713

The artistic-musical movement Tropicalismo was born in São Paulo in 1967 with an aesthetic proposal that represented significant ruptures with the structures of art and culture in Brazil in the 1960s, sustaining opposition to the civic-military dictatorship (1964-1985) and also a critical stance in relation to traditional left-wing politics. By adopting an anthropophagic praxis of creation - legacy of Brazilian Modernism that completed its centenary in 2022 - Tropicalismo was characterized by innovative relationships woven between aesthetics and politics. The present study seeks to explain how it has digested the musical productions of an international scope, the cinematographic ones of Cinema Novo and the literary and artistic ones of Concretismo; in addition to demonstrating the decolonial dimension of the movement, connected with such an anthropophagic praxis of digesting alterity. For this purpose we analyze songs from tropicalist albums released between 1967-69, as well as letters and biographies of movement members. The discursive analysis performed is based in the theoretical-methodological framework of the philosophical discipline of History of Latin American Ideas.