Cultural guru? I’m not so sure. Maybe cultural commentator, if culture is limited to the small sector I engage with, but this is a blog and therefore its contents are defined by its author, namely me.
For post number one I thought I’d introduce you to one of my favourite all time artists, Tom Zé, and his new record, Estudando O Pagode. I’m still in two minds as to whether men can practice feminism, but I’d say in the case of Tom Zé he does a good job of engaging with, commenting on, and participating in developing ideas of feminism in a pop-cultural context.
Here’s the Zé intro: Born in 1936 in the Bahia region of Brazil, Zé has been a part of outsider culture coming out of Brazil since he first started making music. His early work dealt with his impressions of metropolitan Brazil, following his move to the relatively massive Sao Paulo coming from the poor northeast, but as time and ideas progressed he became a crucial part of the Tropicalia movement of the late 60s (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropicalia for more info). Using music as a platform to experiment with ideas and comment on politics through a more oblique language, the Tropicalistas created a form of political activism that proved effective because of its populist tenets and the way this blended with both creative and political experimentalism. Zé is perhaps most well known for his oft-quoted proclamation, “I don’t make art, I make spoken and sung journalism.â€
I’d go so far as to say that this record is a musical essay, journalism in its most critically engaged form.
Over the last 40 years not much has changed, Zé has been at the forefront of combining cultural observations with an agenda engaged with musical experimentalism, political observation, social commentaries and subversive populism equally. That he has achieved all of these with considerable amounts of success is remarkable.
So what makes his most recent record relevant to this blog? Read on and see, this is a review/ appreciation of sorts.
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