Foreign views

VIVA TROPICÁLIA!
A Radical Pop Movement

Ray Gun, janeiro de 1999

You can virtually run through o laundry fist of alternative rockers who are now giving props to tropicalia: Beck’s first single from – Mutatians is not coincidentally called “Tropicalia”: Sean Lennon experiments with Brazilian rhythms on his debut. Into the Sun; DJ Spooky went to Brazil to record with Nação Zumbi, the band that used to back Chico Science, for a song on his last album, Riddim Warfare; and Japanese electro-pop singer Kahimi Karie has cited Veloso as an influence. Why the sudden interest in o movement that just turned 30?

“There’s a lot of people outside of Brazil now who, thanks to reissues of a lot of the records and stuff gradually filtering out, realize that what was going on there at that time is remarkably similar to what’s going on here now,” explains David Byrne, the former Talking Heads singer who now runs Luako Bop. “It’s one of those things where you recognize like minds and say. ‘Hey, here’s somebody who was doing what I’m trying to do and look what they did with it. ’Musically, the results and what they’re mixing might be completely different but the idea of throwing all this stuff together is very similar.”