Caetano Veloso (BR)

About

Also known as: C. Veloso, Caetano, Caetano Emanuel Viana Telles Veloso, Caetano Valeso, Caetano Velloso, Caetano Velosa, Caetano Velosos, Caetaqno Veloso

Few artists have reshaped their national music as decisively as Caetano Veloso did when he helped ignite Tropicália in the late 1960s. The movement fused Brazilian pop with rock and roll and avant garde sounds, and its collective manifesto, the landmark LP Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis, gathered Veloso alongside Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Tom Zé and Os Mutantes. The Brazilian military dictatorship found all of this threatening enough to arrest him and Gil in 1969, and the two spent time in exile in London. His song É Proibido Proibir, performed at the 1968 International Song Festival in a shiny green plastic suit while being booed by leftist students, remains one of the most charged moments in Brazilian music history. Back in Brazil from 1972 onward, Veloso kept expanding his range, weaving in half forgotten Brazilian folk rhythms and international styles, producing albums for artists like João Gilberto and Gal Costa, and regularly turning other people's songs into classics simply by covering them. His Spanish language album Fina Estampa and his all English set A Foreign Sound show just how far beyond MPB his reach extends. The New York Times called him one of the greatest songwriters of the century, and with over fifty albums to his name, that feels about right.