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capinan

capinan

Biographies

Poet and lyricist José Carlos Capinan is a Baiano of the town of Esplanada, where he was born in 1941. In 1963, after spending some time in Salvador, he moved to São Paulo, where he worked as an advertiser and started writing for music.

“tomara que um dia
de uma dia seja
que seja de linho
a toalha da mesa
tomara que um dia
de um dia não
na mesa da gente
tem banana e feijão
Gilberto Gil e Capinan

In 1967, Capinan won TV Record’s 3rd Festival of Brazilian Popular Music with “Ponteio”, written in a partnership with composer Edu Lobo. That year marked the explosion of Tropicalism, of which he was a key participant as lyricist. At the time, Capinan wrote the text of a great classic of the movement, “Soy Loco por Ti, América”, and of “Miserere Nobis”, both set to music by Gilberto Gil. In point of fact, Gil and Edu Lobo were his top partners during the 1960’s.

With Jards Macalé, another partner of the time, Capinan wrote “Gotham City, which had a controversial presentation at the 4th International Festival of Music at TV Globo, Rio, in 1969.

After Gil and Caetano’s departure into exile in London in 1969, Capinan, Macalé and Gal Costa carried on with the movement’s experimental atmosphere and its attempts to innovate Brazilian popular music.

Throughout the following decades, Capinan composed with Paulinho da Viola, Fagner, Geraldo Azevedo, Moraes Moreira, João Bosco, and many other musicians. With João Bosco, he wrote “Papel Machê”, a great popular hit. In 1976, alongside Abel Silva, the lyricist co-published the literary magazine Anima, which lasted only two issues. In 1996, Capinan published the book of poems Uma Canção de Amor às Árvores Desesperadas.