GutterPutter

It was the First of April in 1964. While the day is now remembered as April Fool’s Day with all the light-hearted jokes and pranks, that day is seminal to the country of Brazil. President and notable socialist João Goulart is overthrown by the military in a coup d’état that’s backed by the United States. Just after the revolt from the sailors on March, the public tension between the military and the government has reached its tipping point as the CIA backs the former in changing the government to favour the US.

Before, the country is one of the numerous ideological battlefields in the Cold War with the US and the Soviet Union vying for influence over the country. Goulart had strained his country’s relationship with the US by calling out the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. However, he also criticises Cuba during the Missile Crisis of 1963 – agreed by many to be one of the closest we’ve been to nuclear war thanks to Cuba’s agreement with the USSR to host its nuclear arsenal. Maybe it’s only a matter of time before he’ll be overthrown by pro-capitalists or pro-communists given his preference for Brazil to be independent.

When the coup is done, the musical culture of Brazil starts to take on a different form. As the junta is backed by the US and the United Kingdom that’s on a musical boom in innovation, a lot of the Brazilian artists start to adopt some of the psychedelic, baroque, and rock-like elements of the scenes there. Mix that with the popular traditional genre in samba and that marks the beginning of what the military government called ‘national music’ – música popular brasileira or MPB as an abbreviation. The result is a big trend, one that is mostly exclusive to the country itself, which lasts for nearly as long as the military remain as the government.

MPB is made up of a wide variety of influences; one that makes it very hard to define in concrete terms. Some tend to describe it as a modernisation of bossa nova and samba music with Western influences. In my opinion, even that may come off as being a bit inaccurate given that a lot of the highlighted tracks is noted for pushing the artistic boundaries of Brazil’s music scene into the public ears. Instead, I prefer to describe it as being more alike to art pop. It respects the conventional structure that a lot of pop songs tend to follow, but it aspires to challenge the types of instrumentation and production that they always tend to adopt.

Thanks to the versatility of the genre, many of the albums can come under different forms. You might hear a bit of samba influence in them, but it’s very often that you notice signs of baroque pop or psychedelia in the records. Folk music, given its similarities with samba, is often found in MPB and artists would find their songwriting tied up with the socio-political circumstances throughout the 1970s. Jazz, on the other hand, would often be lumped together with bossa nova. Yet, many artist would often incorporate a lot more grander feel to their works which leads to the innovative tropicália subgenre.

One example of the genre’s tendency to push its boundary is Acabou Chorare by Novos Baianos where, influenced by Jimi Hendrix, a lot of the tracks happen to be upbeat, fun, and optimistic. With signs of samba rock being played by multiple vocalists and a strong sense of rhythm, the album subverts a lot of the cynicism that’s presented in much of Brazil’s music. Although it hasn’t received much critical attention on release in 1972, the years that followed have proved itself to be kind to the album and especially with its tackling of love and family, it would have its own following. Eventually, it would earn a reputation as being among the most important records in the country’s history with many scholars and academics like Marcos Napolitano praising its importance in helping to retain a positive atmosphere in a perilous time.

Another key example is Clube da Esquina by Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges, named after a collective that they’re a part of which experiments with numerous genres in their music. Its mix of lush instrumentation and dreamy production makes the whole record feel ethereal and with the presence of some of the best musicians in the whole of Brazil, the eloquence of the album is utterly apparent. Beloved by many as the apex of the genre, the album would receive flattering acclaim retrospectively with Spin naming the album as one of its top 50 Brazilian albums of all time. In addition, AllMusic grants the album 5 stars for its legendary status and Pitchfork hails the album for its diversity and its subtextual critique of the military junta.

This leads to an important aspect of MPB and that is its relationship with the circumstances of its originating country at the times of its peak. Singer-songwriters like Chico Buarque have often relied on expansive narratives and literary languages to help bypass any likelihood of being persecuted by the government with Construção being at the forefront of the critiques. Being placed third by Rolling Stone in Brazil, Buarque’s most critically acclaimed album helps to serve as a platform for more politically inclined musicians and artists to sing about the turmoil in their home country for decades to come.

After the 1970s, the baroque and creative styles of MPB would start to go slightly out in favour to the public eye as the military junta’s influence in Brazil wane. As more people opt to vote for civilian leaders to take charge of the government and mitigate the army’s control over domestic politics, the ‘national music’ fervour starts to decline as most people would start to see it as being contemporary Brazilian folk. The genre still enjoys a solid reputation in Brazil today, but its creative and artistic peak in the 1970s is yet to be replicated. Barring veterans like Caetano Veloso who won a Grammy award with Livro in 1997, it’s mostly left to its own device as more would opt to check music out elsewhere. Nevertheless, the impact that MPB has left is nothing short of immense and even now, music-related sites like RateYourMusic shares largely positive ratings on the records for their fun instrumentation and accessibly poetic lyricism which feels like listening to a time capsule.