Tropicália
The 8 Best Tropicália
Tracks of All Time
A twelve-month Brazilian insurrection in 1967 and 1968: bossa harmony, samba, psychedelic guitars, concrete poetry and deliberate bad taste, aimed at a military dictatorship that responded by jailing and exiling its leaders.
- Origin
- Bahia and São Paulo, Brazil, 1967
- Tempo
- 80–140 BPM
- Also known as
- tropicalismo, tropicalia
- Tracks
- 8
- Updated
- 2026-08-31
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Number 1: Caetano Veloso / Tropicália
1968 · Philips
The song that named the movement, a collage of Brasília, monuments and television, sung deadpan over an arrangement that keeps changing its mind.
Number 2: Caetano Veloso / Alegria, Alegria
1967 · Philips
Performed at a televised festival with an electric rock band and booed by a crowd who wanted acoustic protest songs. He won anyway, and the argument started that night.
Number 3: Gilberto Gil / Domingo no Parque
1967 · Philips
A murder ballad set at a funfair, arranged by Rogério Duprat with capoeira berimbau and an orchestra. The most formally ambitious three minutes in Brazilian pop.
Also on Dancing to Bad News
Number 4: Os Mutantes / Panis et Circenses
1968 · Philips
Teenagers with home-built fuzz pedals, singing about bread and circuses while the tape slows to a halt mid-song. Kurt Cobain later begged them to reform.
Number 5: Gal Costa / Baby
1968 · Philips
Caetano's lyric is a list of consumer instructions — learn English, drink Coca-Cola — sung with total sincerity. Satire and love song at once, and Costa refuses to tell you which.
Also on Sung to Someone
Number 6: Caetano Veloso / É Proibido Proibir
1968 · Philips
"It is forbidden to forbid." He was shouted down at the festival, harangued the audience from the stage, and was arrested and exiled within months.
Number 7: Gilberto Gil / Bat Macumba
1968 · Philips
A lyric that is a concrete poem — the words shed a letter per line until nothing is left. Playful, and a direct product of the São Paulo avant-garde.