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| 1969 |
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Happy old year: January began in a terrible way, not just for the tropicalistas, with Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil detained and incommunicado in a barracks in Rio de Janeiro. Barra 69.
It is in the midst of this climate that Gal Costa’s first individual record arrives at the stores, on the Philips label. The LP, which bore only her name and was recorded several months earlier, had its release date extended in the atmosphere of uncertainty and fear. The military had a firm grip on power, censorship, prisons. If everything was dangerous, could everything still be divine and marvelous? Perhaps. Risk in the air, risk on record.
The LP, meanwhile, maintained the freshness of the Tropicália spring: songs of urban themes, anarchistic, sweet reflections, observations, quotes, provocations, balance, non-identified objects, diversification of rhythms, and unbelievable arrangements by Rogério Duprat.
Gal, who since her performance at Festival da Record had succeeded in gathering a very new public ‘trópico-freak,’ now received an unexpected welcome: the record surpassed a hundred thousand copies sold – everything else paled in comparison on the record market of that era. The radios played Baby (the song was also entered in the trailer of the film Copacabana me Engana, by Antonio Carlos Fontoura), Gal starred in the documentary Bahia 2000, did shows at Fenit (Stravaganza, with Raul Cortez), appeared in articles in the magazine Intervalo, her name being mentioned as female icon of a turnabout esthetic of Brazilian standards. A woman who did not match purse with shoes, a woman who listened to rock, a woman with progressive costumes, a woman of the future.
And the future delivered: two American astronauts stepped on the moon, the Woodstock festival united 300,000 hippies, Julio Bressane launched Matou a Família e Foi ao Cinema, the gays of New York confronted the police at Stonewall, and the lines were enormous to see Midnight Cowboy. The writer Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize for literature, the weekly O Pasquim sprang up in Rio, Vera Fischer was chosen Miss Brazil, TV Globo broadcast the first Jornal Nacional and Macunaíma, with Grande Otelo, Paulo José and Dina Sfat, bringing renewed breath to the national film industry.
On the putrid side, sinister Costa e Silva, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was substituted by a military junta of frightening appearance, which soon passed the presidency on to another general, Emílio Garrastazu Médici – a name that still causes shivers. Cacilda Becker died, and Carlos Marighela was assassinated in the streets of São Paulo by a military commando. Mario Covas had his political rights thrown out, the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam happened, Richard Nixon assumed the presidency of the United States, the censors forcefully attacked the press, and Flávio Cavalcanti reigned supreme on television.
Caetano and Gil, three and a half months after being detained, are finally freed, with hair cut, frightened looks, and watchful steps. In Salvador, they performed in a resounding show at Teatro Castro Alves and subsequently departed for exile in London – the artistic and cultural epicenter of the sixties. Before, Gil records a compact with Aquele Abraço, a song that is transformed into an indictment of sadness, and principally against hatred.
Gal Costa, squeezed between the success of her first record and so many sudden happenings, begins to distill her anger by means of a supposedly aggressive posture. She had become, by no choice of her own, the standard-bearer for what remained of Tropicalismo. And, instead of taking the easy way with easy songs and saleable hits, she opts for strong experiences together with musician and then ally Jards Macalé. In a matter of months she would prepare her second individual LP, which to this day continues to be, decades later, the most radical entry produced in the history of MPB.
On eight cuts, conducted by Cinema Olympia, Gal enthroned herself as a muse of the hippies, of the abandoned, of the rebels, of the Utopians. Cries, dirty mixings, noises, frights, shots, and general roars of laughter: She no longer wanted the lazy afternoons, forgot the crystalline containment of bossa nova and shocked the squares. Roberto Carlos and Erasmo Carlos, tuned into what was against the mainstream, composed Meu nome é Gal, a song which translated the discourse, the attitude, the potency, and the artistic range of that voice, which did not want to sound like any other. Her name was Gal. Exclamation point.
Thus, 1969 would vanish among strange atmospheres. Or as the Novos Baianos sang on the LP, with which they débuted that year, everything was Ferro na Boneca. Nothing to look back at. The doll, Gal Costa, who was not made of iron, decides to travel to England to visit her friends of the faith, brothers, and comrades. There, Tropicalismo was already inoculated for ever and ever. Wow!
Eduardo Logullo
translation: Kirsten Weinoldt
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