Tom Zé

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Before we get started, let me do a kind of brief survey here. I’m assuming there are fans of Brazilian music here, right? Sixties and ’70s Brazilian music particularly. My man right here is looking at me and laughing because he knows exactly what I’m talking about. How many fans here? OK, that’s good. I’m assuming that we got some working knowledge on people like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Os Mutantes, bands like this? Working knowledge, raise your hands. Oh, this is good. How about tropicália? How many people of you have heard the term? Look at that, waving for attention over there.

Tom Zé

Go ahead, go ahead.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

OK, the maestro said speak, so I speak. This is Tom Zé, so why don’t we start by giving him a warm round of applause, he came a long way to be here [applause]. The reason why I was asking all those questions is to get a sense of how deep this man is going to have to go. The difference between what he is going to be talking about in regards to the scene which he helped build in Brazil, and between that of Jagari Chanda, who spoke last week about the Zamrock scene in Zambia is that there have been countless people who have offered their opinions and philosophies about the scene that occurred in Brazil in the late ’60s and early ’70s, about his peers and about himself. In Jagari’s case there was nothing, nobody had said anything about what he hand his compatriots had done, it just didn’t even register as a blip on the radar. So, Jagari has started from scratch. Whereas with this man he is actually going to be explaining to you in his own words something about which you probably know something, but you probably haven’t heard it from, as we say, the horse’s mouth. So rather than me giving some sort of grand introduction, where I possibly add to errors that were caused by people before me, I think it is more fitting that Tom is giving an introduction himself, as to this movement which we all know under a variety of different names, and for which we have different terms. Let him speak in his own words about it and we start from there. He has had a tremendous career that has stretched more than 40 years and he’s continuing as you have seen, for those of you who had been at the performance, to innovate today. But before we get into that, we have to have a basis for discussion. So, with that in mind I think it is appropriate to ask him to begin this lecture.

Tom Zé

I’m not quite sure about what you would like to hear, about what I should talk about. I want to know a little more about you guys, how old you are. Who among you are here from Madrid? Nobody? Hah, very good. [Inaudible] She is a very good translator. When I started working in the United States several magazines complained that the translator understood me just as bad as the journalists themselves. Yesterday, she was walking with me and she is a very good translator, a very intelligent woman. Would you like to destroy a lie about the creation of tropicalists, which was said to be a mixture of international rock, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and concretist poet from Brazil Oswald de Andrade? How many minutes did I just spend already? The tropicalists were not born in the Aristotelian world as we all know. [shows a piece of paper] It’s like a tropicalist nursery. They were educated without knowing Aristotle, so he called themselves “Analphototeles,” an analphabet [illiterate] Aristotle’s. A mixture of both terms. Have you ever thought about acting under a new perspective, seeing the world from a new cosmogony and interacting with it in a different way? Has anyone an experience to share? Does someone know how to construct a civilization and work culturally without Aristotle’s?

The tropicalists were born from within a distance of maximum 25 KM away from each other and were educated with the cultural roots of Spain, and I call it a historical trap. When Spain was invaded by the Arabs by the seventh century after the decay of Rome and the whole Roman civilization, Europe was ruled by the Barbarians. But here in the Iberian peninsula, the Portuguese and Spanish were living under the cultural siege of the Arabs, which were the highest evaluated civilization at that time when they invented the idea of zero. All civilizations up until that point developed governmental budgets without the zero. All civilizations that lived before the Arabs didn’t have the concept of zero. The Babylonians, the Greek, Romans, and the Arabs brought the concept of zero. War has always been a friend of science, it’s something curious. During a war the scientific life gains a lot of input, just like you guys get a lot of input thanks to Red Bull. [Turns to Egon, the interviewer] Please control the minutes, I [have so much to say].

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Easier said than done.

Tom Zé

The Arabs were all over the Iberian peninsula, where we are now and they were higher educated. They had a very developed medicine, a very developed architecture. They were here for eight centuries, since the seventh century until the 15th century. The last Arabian possession here was Granada until 1492. After the Arabians had left, the Spanish and Portuguese barely had time to cut the trees and make the boats to sail towards the renaissance in the Americas. Now, what does this have to do with tropicalism? We are at the nursery. The only thing a child has to do in a nursery is to be quiet as possible – that’s what I have lived. Alain Resnais, a French director, has this theory when we are from zero to two years old we have this mental board in which they record all of their experiences. It is the time in our lives where we learn the most, where we get the most input of experiences. It’s like a chair of nurses who give input, because these were the origins of our thoughts. Our nurses, our maids, were our professors. During the time the Arabs were here during the 12th and the 13th century the poets from Provence took a lot of influence from the Iberian culture. Ezra Pound said it’s impossible to treat the poetry either in the United States as outside without mentioning the poetry from Provence of that time, from the 11th and 12th century. Dante Alighieri used to say that Arnaut Daniel was the most skilled worker of the language. After eight years of Arabian domain in Portuguese, when the Portuguese came to Brazil they were more Arabic than Portuguese themselves. Now enter the tropicalists. There was a treaty between Portugal and Spain when they were discovering America and traced a line throughout the continent that east from this line it is going to be Portuguese possession and west of it Spanish. It’s called [Treaty of] Tordesillas. The one who can assure my theory is a Brazlian writer called Euclides da Cunha. When Brazil was about to be explored by the Portuguese, groups of people who explored the countryside left from São Paulo, but they used to come back with everything they discovered. In this case, some of the explorers stayed at the region where I was born and stayed, they didn’t go back to São Paulo. The Portuguese got together with the [Indians] and the [African people] for four centuries. The result was this kind of skin [pulls up sleeve from his shirt], this kind of color and this kind of way to think, this kind of… A lot of things. The principal professors became our nurses because the people becomes illiterate. The people from the area where he was born, even though the people were illiterate, they conserved the culture from their ancestors orally. They were cultivated in the sense that they knew everything about their history and their origins.

Me, Caetano, Gil, Torquato Neto, we arrived at the first school when we were eight years. We were already prepared with everything necessary to live in a culture. But then at this moment we started to become interested in Aristotle’s, a thing I started to call “logical garbage.” We were strongly influenced by this Arabic culture, much more by the Aristotelian logic. In fact, I wasn’t informed by the Aristotelian formation at all. When I went to school at the age of eight, everything that I was being taught was coming in an Aristotelian way. It could be a little bit strange, but with our Arabic way of thinking, there was a way that both ways of thinking matched. Whereas the Aristotelian way of thinking was very precise, the Arabic way of thinking, there still was always something remaining there. We all know that two and two is not four. The human brain doesn’t throw anything away, it keeps everything. I thought that they were trying to throw out the little rest that came from the Aristotelian way and the Arabic way of thinking, but there was something that remained in the hypothalamus. The rest, which is called “logical garbage” remained and, when I went to university, there was such a big amount of “logical garbage,” it couldn’t fit in the head anymore. All this “logical garbage” came to the front cortex of the brain and we started to think our vocabulary being based on this “logical garbage,” always adding Aristotle’s and the Arabic way of thinking. We were trying to integrate a clique of very well known singers, like Chico Buarque, Vinicius de Morais, Edu Lobo. When we had the opportunity to present some of the songs to the public, including the leftists, we incorporated these two ways of seeing life – Aristotle’s and Arabic culture. But many segments of the society, including the political left wing, said it’s not good, it’s an alienation of Brazilian culture and a copy of American culture. Now, I’m finishing, but from now on you have to say that tropicália was not born from international rock music, but it came from the “logical garbage.” [Applause] Now we are asking the help of Egon because our time is precious.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Man, when I first went to Brazil I didn’t go with any preconceived notion of what I might find and like, and I found a bunch of music that I quite didn’t like, actually. When I first discovered Tom Zé’s music, it was almost impossible to categorize, because it was sold by the same record dealers who were selling records that was known as this psychedelic Brazilian movement tropicalia, whatever you call it. But it sounded totally different and it was very hard to place. How many of you guys have heard music of Tom Zé’s first album [Grande Liquidação]? His first album was released in 1968 and it has just being reissued by Mr. Bongo Records in the UK. I think we can play a song because we heard quite a bit and then talk about where this music actually came from. We already know that it came from the “logical garbage.” We already know that it didn’t come from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but let’s hear a little bit. There are a couple of songs that are always singled out as very influential songs from this record, one of it is called “Parque Industrial.” Let’s play that because it is a very groovy and influential song.

(music: Tom Zé – “Parque Industrial” / applause)

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Just a little excerpt from “Parque Industrial” from Tom Zé’s first album Grande Liquidacao, 1968. He had mentioned that he is not from São Paulo. You lived in São Paulo when you made this record, but you are originally from Bahia, right?

Tom Zé

I was born in the middle of the state of Bahia, more or less in the countryside, 25 KM away from all the members of tropicalism, just little villages.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

And this record was recorded for the Rozenblit [label], which was based in Recife, right?

Tom Zé

The record company was from Recife but they had an office in São Paulo.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

The Rozenblit fabrication studio was based in Recife, it was a very important company. Not only did they license American music and press it in Brazil, but they also issued Jorge Ben albums and would later issue some very amazing psychedelic rock records from Recife and made possible music by people such as Lula Cortes and Zé Ramalho, Flaviola and their Solar imprint. Some beautiful Brazlian music came about because of this independent factory that was founded by Jose Rozenblit. That would partially explain why that record is such a difficult record to find.

Tom Zé

One thing to remind is that at that time Brazil was resumed to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and the rest was nothing.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

And then here in the northern coastal city, there is this pressing plant, and they are importing music, releasing records in Brazil, and making records like this possible.

Tom Zé

It was a very interesting adventure to have a company to be based there, not only releasing American music, but also to be sensitive to everything that was happening around them artistically.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

One thing I want to ask, because in the middle of this song you break into this funk rhythm. There must have been some kind of influence of American and European music, rhythms, etc.

Tom Zé

That was the part that was really influenced by rock & roll. Especially an influence by Brazilian guys like Roberto Carlos, translating these rock songs into something we call “Ye Ye Ye” in Brazil. I am a very bad composer, but the text is the most important thing of everything. Because I am so bad, that is the reason I am here. I am always going to the edges, where nobody wants to go and trying to work it out.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Something very interesting I’d like to point out, and it comes from this idea of the Aristotelian versus the Arabic influence you were talking about, the “logical garbage” that was becoming so big in your brain, it’s almost as if there was some sort of conflict that you were expressing in the music. Because the music, especially on this first album, never stays in one groove for too long. Everything is always changing. There is always some conflict in the music, which I can only imagine comes from some sort of conflict you were explaining earlier.

Tom Zé

Maybe it’s possibly a very strong influence by Dorival Caymmi. We have bottled smiles; everything you have to do is to warm it up and use it. When I was a child I lived in a house that had a toilet, and I was delighted by this white beautiful thing, even though it was used to do dirty things. And absolutely everything was made outside of Brazil. Every time I sat on the toilet I saw “Made in England,” and you could say now that I spent all of my childhood shitting over England [laughter]. When I came to São Paulo at that time, there was already kind of a stamp from the exportation. That meant Brazil was starting to become an industrial country. There was a stamp “Made in Brazil” on export coffee sacks; that’s where the “Made, made, made – made in Brazil” in that song came from.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

There were also cultural exports happening from Brazil. Right up the street where my wife and I were hanging out, we heard what I think was a rather atrocious version of a Vinicius de Morais song, Frank Sinatra doing “Girl From Ipanema,” and of course, bossa nova was exported and it was rather an explosive force. But two years prior to this record coming a very important record was released all over the world, [Os Afro Sambas] by Baden Powell and Vinicius de Morais. This was a product directly of Brazil, which influenced the “thinking musician” all over the world. Were you aware of this record and its influence?

Tom Zé

Bossa nova was really something overwhelming. It’s a girlfriend with three pussies [laughter]. It was really delightful, you go out on the streets and you listen to this marvelous songs. Sweetness. The reason was the complexity of the chords of American jazz that influenced Brazilian music. But there is something interesting also, after that boss nova started to influence jazz music.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

And this Os Afro Sambas album by Baden Powell and Vinicius de Morais, did you know it when it came out?

Tom Zé

All these people were geniuses for us. During our youths we were blessed by these composers.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

From my limited viewpoint, I look at the latter part of the 1960s in Brazil, and I see a record like Os Afro Sambas and I see it had a tremendous impact. Then in 1967 and 1968, there is a series of albums like Caetano Veloso’s first album, the [Os Mutantes first album, your first album, that all come out at the same time. Were you aware of these albums? Of course, you were friends with Caetano, but were you aware of the Mutantes, for example?

Tom Zé

Yes, we were together. All of us, we heard everything that happened in Rio de Janeiro through the radio. Vinicius, Baden Powell, Jobim, João Gilberto, we loved that music passionately.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

But these albums, like Caetano Veloso’s first album, the Os Mutantes’ first album, these weren’t done in Rio, they were done in São Paulo, right?

Tom Zé

Caetano’s first record was recorded in São Paulo, but the songs were made in Bahia. In my case, I was studying something, which was very rare in Brazil… Very good teachers, although our state was very poor. Although the quality of the teachers was very high at university, there was lots of poverty and people used to starve. The director of the university was crazy but marvelous. It was three schools, music, communication and dance and they involved the best academic teachers from Europe in Bahia. In this time, ’58-’59, we were taught John Cage. We were taught by, what’s the name of the Hungarian composer? I forgot. Naturally, the French musique concréte composers. All these people, we listened to their music, studied their works. My education was a luxury in a very miserable country at that time. Caetano went to the same school, even though I was the only one in the music school. But we all had the same kind of formation, because we were all went to the same school and were influenced by the same ideas.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé, we have a very romantic picture of the tropicalista movement because of the record that came out called Tropicália: Panis et Circensis. You were on the front cover with the Mutantes, Gilberto Gil and Caetano. [To audience] Do you guys know this record I’m talking about? It’s a very influential late ’60s Brazilian record. Can you talk to us a little bit about this record?

Tom Zé

At that time, Gilberto Gil already knew the Mutantes. At that time they were very young. At the same time Caetano was playing with an Argentinian band.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

What was the name of the band?

Tom Zé

Audience member

The Beat Boys.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

How about Gal Costa?

Tom Zé

Excuse me. I would like to introduce you to musicians from my band. Nilza Maria, Renato Lellis is only 19 years, and Lauro Lellis is playing with me for 40 years already and is the father of Renato. (Applause) But we were talking about the album Panis et Circensis. The Latin from the album title is wrong, but the concrete poets said it was a minor error. It wasn’t important to us.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

We look at that record now as like a call to arms for this musical movement, which we now call tropicália. But did you look at it as such when it was first released?

Tom Zé

I was quite aware that it was something different, something new and that it could eventually be that arm that linked the Brazilian middle age with the second industrial revolution, as I call it.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

We played a song earlier “Parque Industrial” and that was also done on this album, Panis et Circensis, on which you participated and it was the sole Tom Zé composition. Let’s play a moment of that.

(music: Tom Zé – “Tropicália Parque Industrial” / applause)

Tom Zé

Rogerio Duprat made a very patriotic arrangement to our ears, fooling around with the bands, of course.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Was this the only time you worked with Rogerio Duprat?

Tom Zé

We didn’t work together. We are roughly the same age and we started from the school.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

And, of course, Rogerio produced and arranged many of the influential records from this time, including records by Gal Costa, Mutantes etc.

Tom Zé

Normally, when you come from classical music and work with people within popular music, there is no real understanding. It’s like breaking a leg. Rogerio Duprat had this classical background but he was very skilled and that’s why he succeeded in arranging popular music.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

You released your second album for another label – you no longer worked with Rozenblit. Your second self-titled album, Tom Zé, the one with you on the cover with a guitar, came out on RGE. Why didn’t you continue to work with Rozenblit?

Tom Zé

The company crashed but they kept the rights over my songs, as if I was a football player. Cazuza is a very famous singer in Brazil, he’s already dead. He died very early of AIDS. But his father, who was a producer, paid 2,500 Brazilian reals at that time to free me from my contract.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Wow! OK, can you describe a little bit the transition between the first and the second album? What changed between Grande Liquidacao and the Tom Zé album on RGE?

Tom Zé

I was in a kind of crisis, because I knew at that time that I didn’t want to do the popular music from my first album again. At the same time, I didn’t know what to do and at the same time, João, the guy who freed me from my contract with RGE, was putting pressure on me to work and do more music. To me, it’s a crisis album and I don’t like to listen to it very often.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Wow. 1970, this is a crucial moment in what we referred to in the tropicália movement. Caetano Veloso was recording in exile in London. Gilberto Gil was going through the same sort of crisis. And we didn’t talk about the Brazilian military dictatorship, which started in 1964, nor of the influence of that on this movement. But perhaps now is an appropriate time to discuss that.

Tom Zé

Of course, the dictatorship was something that we didn’t appreciate. It was a disturbance. But at the same time I don’t like to talk about it because for many artists who had their songs censored, it was a kind of glamorized thing. “You know, my music is being banned…” I’m not very fond of talking about it. Many of my songs have been rejected, but I don’t like to talk about that subject because of that kind of glamorous artists that would go, “I am censored!”, and so on.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Let’s play a song from your second album. This song is called “Guindaste a Rigor,” do you remember this?

Tom Zé

[Enthusiastically] I like this song.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Thank God. Well, then let’s play that song.

(music: Tom Zé – “Guindaste a Rigor” / applause)

Tom Zé

This is a very good moment to talk about how stupid the dictatorship in Brazil really was. During the break of the song there is where everybody stops, and you can hear a beautiful burp of Coca-Cola and the woman who was working at the censorship department, she said, “No burp. Please, this word we cannot use.” So, I said, “Your name, Maria Joana, is also very similar to the word marijuana.” And she said, “You are an educated guy, don’t put it in the song.” I replied, “Be patient, I am an educated guy. But this word is no surprise for my audience.” At the end, and not to discuss the whole afternoon about this, I just changed it from “burp” to “blow,” which in the end is a turn off.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

But you said you like the song, why do you like it particularly, especially considering that you don’t listen to this album very often?

Tom Zé

In this song there are a couple of interesting things. The people from the interior department said that the notes, the “do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do,” could be words and therefore could be censored. The original lyrical idea was [translates the wordplay that only works in Portuguese]: “Me, over you, with no pause, merciless. Without making out on the sofa.” There is something very beautiful in there. It seems like provincial poetry.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Oh, man, never know what to expect with you. I like this.

Tom Zé

The people from the north of Brazil at that time didn’t have any sexual education. There were no Playboy magazines, only magazines with dressed women, which already would help a lot [laughter]. The folklore was the main thing responsible for preparing the children to enter into adult life with the libido and everything that comes with adulthood. There is a Brazilian song that says that… [sings song in Portuguese] “Under a balcony / The male clover was hurt / And the rose was torn apart.” If you are a guy, you know nothing before the libido comes. But when the libido comes, the person is like, “What?” [Laughs]

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

This record, when you look at the front cover, it appears like a very conservative record. Especially given the records your peers you were working with were putting out around at that time. Obviously, people like Gal Costa were stepping up the game, talking about libido. Like the Gal Costa record [India], you know what I’m speaking of? So have you broken from the scene of musicians with which you worked on the Panis et Circensis album by the time you released your second album? Were you still friendly, were you still collaborating? Was there some sort of fraternity?

Tom Zé

We separated but we didn’t break up. At that time, all the tropicália musicians started doing Brazilian popular music of the ’70s. At the same time, I was ostracized, trying to work out what I’m doing today.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

You actually did only one record with RGE before signing with another label, Continental. The third album, with your face on the front cover, I believe it was released as a self-titled album, was reissued in the ’80s as Se O Caso E Chorar, and it had somewhat of a funky song in the same vein of the one that we previously played, “Dor e Dor.” Do you remember this song and do you like it?

Tom Zé

Do you have “Jimi Renda-se”?

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Jimi Hendrix?

Tom Zé

“Jimi Renda-se”!

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

No.

Tom Zé

Because the name of the guy Jimi Hendrix is “Jimi Renda-se” in Portuguese, which is a game of words. Instead of Jimi Hendrix, if you say “renda-si” it means “surrender, Jimi,” and that’s the name of one of my songs. But we could play that one.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

The reason I ask about this song is because we started with your first album, we only played one song from it, but it’s an album of great variety. Your second album had a certain pop sensibility to it, that track we played was very funk. But from your first Continental record, there is a track that gained some notoriety over the past 40 years. [To audience] Have you guys heard this song, “Dor e Dor”? Let’s play that song for a moment, “Ache and Ache.”

(music: Tom Zé – “Dor e Dor” / applause)

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

“Dor e Dor,” Tom Zé from his third album. That just elicits an applause any time you play it, it’s great song. You said “ostracization,” I don’t understand how you could be ostracized making beautiful funky pop music like that.

Tom Zé

I suffer listening to the music.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Do you like that song?

Tom Zé

I don’t like.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

OK, why? Can you explain it a little bit more?

Tom Zé

Because I first made a song called “Jimi Renda-se,” it is the same music, but some kind of subject is very different. At that time, the people coming up from the “middle ages” of Brazilian music started to use a lot of English words without criticism, such as “approach” and “briefing” in the advertisement world. And I like the song because it is a joke, mixing with other languages like French, English, making a Brazilian approach to these languages. Someone from the United Kingdom wrote that the world was never as massive as it is now. But, Brazil for example, is an invaded country. Nowadays, it has a lot of invaders. They don’t have a face, but they are there. Brazil has always been an invaded country in the sense that, instead of drinking the milk straight from the cow you have to pay taxes to an Italian company that bottles the milk. It’s this kind of situation. We are an invaded country, no doubt. Today, in this kind of war, the invaders don’t have faces. But the country is invaded, no doubt. Including the banks from Spain.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

We were briefly talking yesterday about a term that I used, “funk.” I would call that funk music, what would you call that song?

Tom Zé

I’m glad that it comes out like this for you and other people because at the time I was in such a mess when I composed the song that I didn’t get where I wanted to get [with that song]. But I’m glad that it is seen as a funk song.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

You signed to Continental at a great time in that label’s trajectory in the era in which that album was released, Arthur Verocai’s first album was released – Arthur Verocai being one of the in-house arrangers at Continental at that time. Arnaud Rodrigues, Celia, there was a great amount of varied records coming out on Continental. Were you aware of any of them at that time?

Tom Zé

Not at all. I don’t mean they weren’t good artists, but since my music was not played on radio, it was painful for me to listen to music on the radio. I wasn’t really following. After spending eight years in a classical conservatory, I was listening to other kinds of music. I was more into the last quartets by Beethoven, the more difficult stuff.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Your next album, Todos Os Olhos, you remember this album, of course. Came out on the same label, Continental, the following year. But gone are these songs that resembled pop music that you would hear on the radio and were replaced by a much more adventurous type of music, which does not sound like your first album, Grande Liquidacao. It’s a very different sound. Can you talk a little bit about the development between the Tom Zé third album and this Todos Os Olhos album?

Tom Zé

This album was the closest thing that I could do at that time to what I’m doing now. But at the same time, this album was responsible for my ostracization. About two years after that record came out, radio stations would call and ask about missing artists and I would be one of them. The idea of the cover came from a concretist poet from Brazil called Décio Pignatari and it actually is an asshole.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

That’s a great way to get on the radio, man.

Tom Zé

At that time, to release an album with an asshole on the cover was not only something to try and cheat the dictatorship, it was really something aggressive and to go against it. There was a young band that sang the word “breast” in one song and they got arrested after the show. So the asshole on the cover was a symbol for resistance.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Let me play one song from this record, it actually appears on the record in two parts, “Complexo de Épico.” It’s a very complicated song. I personally didn’t know what to make of it the first time I heard it, I had to listen to it a few times.

(music: Tom Zé – “Complexo de Épico” / applause)

Tom Zé

This song deserves a translation. Rogerio Duprat made the arrangement of this record and made a tape loop. I started to improvise and, because of that, I said, “Record what I sing before I forget.” The song says that every Brazilian composer is "complexed". Why be so serious, take love so seriously, play so seriously, kiss so seriously? Because at the time of the dictatorship when you wanted to be free of problems, you had to appear to be a serious person. In the song it says that you can go be serious like this in hell.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

After going back and listening to it, and I’ll be 100% honest with you and my very limited Portuguese, I couldn’t figure out what in the world what you were talking about. Your wordplay and the rhythms of your speech are so interesting, it sounds like rap music to me, like hip-hop. Especially the way you go in between the beats and you change your rhythms.

Tom Zé

It’s interesting because hip-hop would come many years later.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

And we, who are interested in the origins of rap music, we go back to all these cliches at a certain point. Like it started with Jamaican toasting or it started with a religious guy or a radio DJ. Then you hear a thing like this and the complexity is akin to what MF Doom does with his patterns. Or I could think about what Erykah Badu said in her lecture about this way that she tries to map out the rhythm of her words before she records, and I hear a lot of that in this. A very unknown record by that hip-hop generation.

Tom Zé

In regards to what Erykah Badu said, Torquato Neto, one of the members of the tropicália movement wrote lyrics, especially for Gilberto Gil. But even though he was only writing the song, he was obliged to make the song himself because then he could also map the way the song would sound like with somebody else’s voice. Don’t take me too seriously. If it was me leading the show, I would say it’s about to end. Pardon me. We have 20 more minutes to end.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

Obviously, we can’t go through the entirety of your catalog of even what you did in the 1970s, but you did do one other album for Continental. Maybe we could briefly talk about that because in a lot of ways it’s responsible, through David Byrne’s discovery, for the recordings you did in the ’90s. Can I play a song from that album [Estudando O Samba]? Let’s play one song here real quick from the last album that Tom Zé did for Continental, a song called “Toc.”

(music: Tom Zé – “Toc”)

Tom Zé

Ah, ah. If I would choose only one song to play to you, I would choose this.

[applause]

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

“Toc.”

Tom Zé

When I was just listening to it, I know that nowadays there is a big amount of things that use some kind of [sampled] language. But remember, this song was made in 1976 and was really something new at this time.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

So you said, if you could only play one song it would be that song. Why?

Tom Zé

It was the first album that was re-released by David Byrne, Estudando o Samba. I was invited into a classical music festival where I didn’t have to play live, but I could play some things from the record. The song was extremely well received and I was very touched. All the composers were sitting on one table and somebody would go and turn on the music, no public at all.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

We are nearing the end here, and like I said, it’s difficult to have to cut this short here as you recorded more in the ’70s. You actually worked in the ’80s and there is an interesting period there. You hinted at David Byrne who discovered the record and brought you forth with the recordings in the ’90s. I suppose there’s a lot written about this and you guys can take it from here. But you probably have some questions and now it would be an appropriate time to open it up to the floor, unless, Tom, you have something that you would like to say before we take questions from the participants. Any questions?

Participant:

I have got one question, do you listen to new music?

Tom Zé

I have an idea. [Walks around, picks up phone book] Yesterday, I made the show Tormenta Tropical, and I made a joke of singing things out of the phone book. I was lost, trying to get to the theater in another part of the city. It’s better to sing than to take orientation. Then we invented a real Brazilian beat to sing it.

(music: guitarist and percussionist start a samba groove, Tom sings the title and excerpts of the Madrid phone book)

“Las paginas blancas, Madrid capital.”'

[rings phone numbers]

[applause]

I was glad that you asked this because I was able to show that my concerts are nothing fixed, but based on things I read in the papers or the phone book I found in the hotel. I do it like this because I regard myself as a bad composer, so I have to integrate as many things possible.

Eothen “Egon” Alapatt

That was amazing, man.

Participant

I would like to ask, do you hear the echo of tropicália in modern Brazilian music? In the young generation of Brazilian musicians, do you hear the trace of what you did?

Tom Zé

It’s quite impossible to get rid of this influence in Brazil. If you are under dictatorship it is very convenient that you don’t think about anything. Caetano and Gil were able to build this kind of tunnel for young people that kept their interest alive in certain things, in certain subjects. So, they were ready to what was coming next, like data processing, the TV language, the language of advertisement posters, the quantum theory by Max Planck. The intellectuals in Brazil thought that the knowledge was going to come by vomits, almost when you want to throw up and then everything comes out. The second law of thermodynamics, the entropy, is also an important factor because it predicted a very sad end to the universe. If you use a certain amount of energy to make something happen, to produce an event, once it is transformed back into energy, there is an energy loss. The universe was fated to an end in an amorphous, shapeless way, but to produce any kind of information you need energy. The thing you guys do is to produce information and there is no other job where the production of information is so important as it is for what you guys are doing. Tropicalism is responsible for keeping these ideas alive in the Brazilian spirit.

Participant

Just a quick question out of curiosity, do you make visual art as well?

Tom Zé

The White Pages is an example that is close to visual art and I could also try to do something visual right now. I never thought that singing is possible for me.

[picks up guitar and starts to play]

[applause]