This comprehensive portrait of Tropicália, exploring everything from influences and results to context and main players, demonstrates how the genre helped reinvent Brazil's cultural identity in a post-colonial world.
While bossa nova nurtured a snobbish audience rooted in jazz and MPB spoke to a multicultural yet oppressed nation, Tropicália invested in a crossover instigated by the progressive youth who refused to glorify a past it didn't identify with and whose outdated codes it didn't intend to perpetuate. The genre's core comes from a unique mix of native and foreign influences: Tropicália doesn't repudiate the international pop panorama, but instead aligns with the era by assuming itself as its undeniable product. The book discusses the strangling military dictatorship and its resulting censorship serving as the sociopolitical backdrop, and Tropicália's incisive criticism of imperialism through symbolism and allegory. It also reveals the genre's enthusiastic desire for propelling culture (and counterculture in particular) forward, repudiating senseless conservatisms and niche intellectualisms in favour of a broader reach of Brazilian music.
