Caetano Veloso Podgycast August

Sorry for the delay on this podcast, but good things come to those who wait. (In actuality I was attempting a data transfer to my external hard drive and I accidentally erased the entirety of my collection of Brazilian Music that I've been painstakingly downloading over the past 4 months. Shoot!) But heartbreak aside I got the music I needed and put this podcast together especially for you the devoted listening audience.

Caetano Veloso and I go back. The first MPB CD i bought was called Noites do Norte. Caetano like so many other MPB monarchs is from Bahia. His falsetto voice could be attributed to the influence from Portuguese Fado music which he listened to as a youth, however his rock and roll sensibility is due to the American imports he adored so much growing up in the 1950's. Caetano has been called the Bob Dylan of Brazil. Caetano moved to Rio De Janeiro for college where he as luck would have it, won a musical contest. His career started with the bossa-nova influenced album Domingo featuring Gal Costa, another Baiana artist who I will be featuring next month. However, his career took a drastic turn in the late sixties acting as a musical and political firebrand for the Tropicalismo movement which he co-founded with fellow Baiano Gilberto Gil (see last month's podcast.) Because of the psychedelic, internationally influenced, and anti-military dictatorship rhetoric preached by the music, Caetano, Gilberto Gil plus a myriad of other musicians, artists, writers and actors were arrested and jailed.
Consequently Caetano and Gilberto Gil spent the following years in exile living in London, learning English, and unfortunately taking to singing in it. The albums of the period acutely capture the zeitgeist of his loneliness in exile.
Caetano was eventually allowed to return to Brazil and the music immediately succeeding his triumphant return is in my opinion his freshest, most inspired, most visionary, most captivating and most intriguing music of his career. But I'm going to stop because to quote Elvis Costello "writing about music is like dancing about architecture."
Caetano has since enjoyed international recognition, Oscar nods and even won a grammy for his 1997 album Livro.
Note: Brazilian albums are generally self titled albums, regardless of whether it is the artists first album or eighth album. Take a look at wikipedia or allmusic.com if you don't believe me! However Caetano is an exception in this sense due to the fact many of his albums have varying titles.