The Tropicália-Movement and the Challenges to Brazilian Art in the Age of Culture Industry
The Tropicália-Movement and the Challenges to Brazilian Art in the Age of Culture Industry

Summary/Abstract: This article analyzes the original way in which the Brazilian cultural and musical movement Tropicália, led by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil in the late 1960s, dealt with the constant imminence of seizure by the culture industry. Instead of seeking isolation from this modern reality of the market, Tropicália strove to critically amalgamate it, in addition to its technological innovations. In doing so, it established a language that brought together erudition and popular elements, as well as foreign influences and the Brazilian subject matter. Tropicália was not about using aesthetical autonomy as an alibi for shunning the world, but about accepting the challenges of artistic communication in a mass society, especially by means of popular music. It thereby introduced to Brazil the possibility of having vanguard art done while harnessing new media forms.

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