A true heavyweight, Caetano Veloso is a pop musician/poet/filmmaker/political activist whose stature in the pantheon of international pop musicians is on a par with that of Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, andLennon/McCartney. And even the most cursory listen to his recorded output over the last few decades proves that this is no exaggeration.
Born in 1942 in Santo Amaro da Purificacao in Brazil's Bahia region, Veloso absorbed the rich Bahian musical heritage that was influenced by Caribbean, African, and North American pop music, but it was the cool, seductive bossa nova sound of João Gilberto (a Brazilian superstar in the 1950s) that formed the foundation of Veloso's intensely eclectic pop. Following his sister Maria Bethânia (a very successful singer in her own right) to Rio in the early '60s, the 23-year-old Veloso won a lyric-writing contest with his song "Um Dia" and was quickly signed to the Phillips label. It wasn't long before Veloso (along with other Brazilian stars such as Gal Costa and Gilberto Gil) represented the new wave of MPB (i.e., musica popular brasileira), the all-purpose term used by Brazilians to describe their pop music. Bright, ambitious, creative, and given to an unapologetically leftist political outlook, Veloso would soon become a controversial figure in Brazilian pop. By 1967, he had become aligned with Brazil's burgeoning hippie movement and, along with Gilberto Gil, created a new form of pop music dubbed Tropicalia. Arty and eclectic, Tropicalia retained a bossa nova influence, adding bits and pieces of folk-rock and art rock to a stew of loud electric guitars, poetic spoken word sections, and jazz-like dissonance. Although not initially well received by traditional pop-loving Brazilians (both Veloso and Gil faced the wrath of former fans similar to the ire provoked by Dylan upon going electric), Tropicalia was a breathtaking stylistic synthesis that signaled a new generation of daring, provocative, and politically outspoken musicians who would remake the face of MPB.
Produced by Peter Scherer and Arto Lindsay, with a band that features significant contributions from Bill Frisell, Nana Vasconcelos, and Marc Ribot, Estrangeiro (in English it means foreigner) was Veloso's first American release. Adventurous, idiosyncratic, and frequently beautiful, it in many ways is Veloso at his most topical and artfully lyrical. The title track makes references to Paul Gauguin and anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (two figures not normally associated with pop music), Veloso composes some stream-of-consciousness dialogue recited by Lindsay, and the excellent band swings from bossa nova to rock to jazz without missing a beat. In many ways, Estrangeiro is the embodiment of what Veloso, Gil and others were trying to get at with tropicalismo, the removal of genre barriers and the wondrous results possible when all forms of pop were conflated into one artful, stylistic melange. A lyric fragment from the song "Branquinha (Little White One)" says it best: "I go against the grain/sing against the melody/swim against the tide." He does all this, and the results are extraordinary.
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