Text: Alegría, Alegría by Caetano Veloso (with translation)

Guides: Raiane & Peter

Place: Crown Heights

When Brazilian musician and political activist Caetano Veloso first performed Alegría, Alegría in 1967, listeners found in it a manifesto for the Tropicália artists movement and a veiled rebuke of the military dictatorship. The song depicts a Brazilian culture characterized by fragmentation and contradiction ("bombs and Brigitte Bardot") and, importantly, joy and possibility, rather than the violent high-modernist ambitions of the state.

Veloso was sent into exile two years later — a clear sign that his work was seen as politically dangerous. But the draw of Alegría, Alegría is its emphasis on joy and its refusal to speak in explicitly subversive terms. Perhaps this is what made it so threatening…?

In this Study, we'll listen to Veloso's masterpiece and think about the ways that music calls attention to the state.

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