Três trópicos da tropicália

nara’s lindonéia

(…) Nara Leão, who from the star was clearly and totally free of anti-tropicalismo prejudices, commissioned a song from Gil and me, the theme or inspiration of which was to be a painting by Rubens Gerchman called Lindonéia, a representation, in distorted lines of painful purity, of what looked like a photographic of a poor girl who had been given up for lost; it was framed, in the kitschy style of suburban sitting rooms, under glass, decorated with flowers. Gil did the music, a bolero interwoven with rock, and I did the lyrics, Gerchman’s painting, being a kind of melancholy chronicle of nameless loneliness done in a pop tone with metalinguistic overtones, was directly akin to tropicalismo music, and we imagined that the song would heighten its poetical charge.

(…)Yet even at the height of tropicalismo, our contact with painters was occasional and fragmentary. It was only in the seventies that Hélio designed an album cover for us ( Gal Costa’s). Nara’s suggestion forced us into a kind of interdisciplinary partnership without precedent in tropicalismo. The idea of including Nara on the group record seemed appropriate to met not only because she had established the bridge between us and Gerchman’s painting, but also because it meant the fulfillment of Gil’s initial dream that the movement would include the whole generation of musicians: Nara represented bossa nova and its origins. She had led the shift toward an engaged music and was therefore the personification of modern Brazilian music.