Curiosities

When they were invited to debate Tropicalism at the University of São Paulo’s Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU), Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Torquato Neto had little idea of what was to come. But, on that June 6^th, 1968, when they arrived at the faculty’s auditorium to the sound of boos and firecrackers being let off, they could sense the trap that had been prepared to provoke and attack them.

Already at the entrance, students had distributed a pamphlet with an article by Augusto Boal entitled “Chacrinha e Dercy de Sapato Branco” – “Chacrinha and Dercy in white shoes”, heavily critical of the Tropicalists. They could feel the atmosphere of animosity that awaited them. And to complete the hostile scene, the organizers had chosen two hard-line opponents of the Tropicalist movement, the songwriter Maranhão and the journalist Chico de Assis. To counterbalance this and make the debate more equal, Guilherme Araújo, sensing the corner they had been backed into, invited a further two heavyweight Tropicalists, the concretist poets Augusto de Campos and Décio Pignatari.

Augusto opened the debate by saying that the Tropicalist incursions of Gil and Caetano were a veritable revolution against fear. Pignatari was the next to speak, but the audience was visibly agitated. The trigger for the revolt amongst those present occurred when Gil argued that it had not been them that had turned their music into merchandise, but that it only had an influence when it was sold. The confusion peaked when Caetano quoted Chacrinha. This was the signal for the already enraged audience, in addition to booing and letting off firecrackers, to begin throwing bananas at them. Even under assault from the insults raining down, Pignatari refused to be intimidated, but instead rose to his feet and alone booed back at the furious audience.