Shorn -- But Not Shot

​The legend of Caetano Veloso includes this: marched at gunpoint from his cell, to a mysterious doorway, where he had every reason to fear the worst.

Instead of taking a bullet in the back, he was divested of his flowing locks.
Soon he was flown to Europe, with no way of knowing if he could ever get home to Brazil.

This is the aura of the electric presence of a survivor, now 79 years old and still singing, surely to the annoyance of the current Brazilian dictator.

I have been trying to figure out how the New Yorker came to run a long and lush profile of Caetano Veloso, by Jonathan Blitzer, in its mid-February issue – a Valentine for Veloso fans, like me? A political comparison to other countries veering rightward, dangerously? Whatever the reason, thank you.
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The kid lost his hair but not his life -- and later wrote "Narcissus on Holiday."

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North Americans have come a long way with Brazil and music. When I was a kid, we had  the movie,“The Road to Rio” with Crosby and Hope  -- don’t bother – but in the early 1960s I first heard  “Song of the Jet,” (Samba do Avião) a Tom Jobim song, sung by Tony Bennett, about a jet landing in Rio. Now we were getting somewhere.

In the same magnificent decade for music, we heard a version of “The Girl From Ipanema,” music by Antônio Carlos Jobim, in a collaboration by Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto, and In the same decade, we got the bossa nova – Brazil ’66 – Sergio Mendes. About the same time,  a skinny kid from Bahia captivated listeners and ticked off the authorities and lived to smirk about it.
 
I’ve been listening to Veloso for over a decade, partially because of my friends Altenir and Celia, but also for the music that flows so copiously, a veritable Amazon of Veloso -- love songs, political songs, tributes to indigenous people, their cultures disrupted by invaders from Europe.

On one of his CDs, there is a song called “Manhata,” in his reedy but purposeful voice, about “uma canoa,” as he describes a Lenape maiden piloting her canoe on one of the streams criss-crossing a certain island in North America. (The streams still exist in the basements of high-rise Manhattan. Surprise!)

About three minutes in,  the peaceful gliding turns into a cacophonous stroll through modern “Manhata” – Blare of horns! Rattle of drums! That would make sense, since Veloso has often performed in the city and seems to find a higher level of ego and motivation in Bigtown. 

In 2008, Veloso was the subject of a DVD, “Coração Vagabundo" (Wandering Heart) during his tour of Sao Paulo, Japan and Manhata – preening when pretty girls smiled on the street and cabbies honked their horns in recognition. His kind of town. (Blitzer informs us that Veloso keeps a flat in the East Village.)

As a writer and a fan, I am envious of the access Blitzer had with Veloso in Rio, and also with musicians I admire like David Byrne and Jacques Morelenbaum. Also, Blitzer’s article quivers with the presence of Tom Jobim, Joao Gilberto, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil.

The article also takes us from the dictatorship that spared Veloso in the ‘60s to the current regime of Jair Bolsonaro, who considers it a good day when bulldozers take down dozens of acres of the rain forest.

But enough from me. Jonathan Blitzer writes the story so well. Perhaps you subscribe to the New Yorker, as I do, or perhaps you can call up a freebie from the website. Here is the link, and good luck:
 
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/02/14/how-caetano-veloso-revolutionized-brazils-sound-and-spirit

Did I mention that Veloso also sings Cole Porter....and Michael Jackson (above) with a touch of Lennon/McCartney at the end ?

Also, for a great swath of contemporary Brazilian music, my friend Andrea Dunn plays two hours every Monday, from 1-3 PM, Eastern Time, on KDHX (88.1 FM) St. Louis  https://kdhx.org/