Anthropophagic Sounds

Panel 3: “Anthropophagic Sounds” at the International Conference “The other 68: Anthropophagic Revolutions in Brazilian Counterculture after 1968” at Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, 23-25 May 2018

Chair: Rembert Hüser (Frankfurt)

Christopher Dunn (New Orleans)
Tom Zé, or, Side B of Tropicália

This presentation will focus on experimental pop artist Tom Zé, a key figure in the tropicalist movement of 1968 together with Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Gal Costa, who all came from the northeastern state of Bahia. Although he enjoyed some early commercial success, Tom Zé pursued experimental/avant-garde musical practices (ie. the use of unusual time signatures, discordant harmonies and melodies, tape loops, street recordings, aleatory sounds, and invented instruments), constituting an alternative tradition within Tropicália, which may be understood as kind of “side B” to the more commercial “side A” on a vinyl record.

Detlef Diederichsen (Berlin)
Short Summer of Distortion

On first look it might seem as though the Brazilian popular music of the rebellious year of 1968 was in perfect sync with the creations of the colleagues from the northern part of the continent and overseas. The recordings of Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Mutantes were bubbling with psychedelic guitar insanities, sound effect overkill and exalted vocals. On a closer look we find that the distorted guitars of the Tropicalists were significantly different from the majority of the contmeporary psychedelic guitar players. This paper explores that difference.

Presented by:
The conference is part of the series “Tropical Underground” and is organized by the Cluster of Excellence “Normative Orders” with the Department of Theatre, Cinema and Media Studies at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt.