Living Legend

 My heart of hearts shouted Pele, Pele -- full of power, with one foot in Africa. How great to be a beautiful people who dance, dance, dance. How great to make music. The power comes from that stone that sings Itapoa; it speaks Tupi, it speaks Yoruba.

Caetano Veloso sang these words last year at an outdoor concert in his home state of Bahia in Brazil. "It was a special, magical night on the eve of my birthday," reminisces the 60-year-old icon over the phone as he prepares to embark on his biggest U.S. tour ever, which ends in Miami. ("I love [Miami]," Veloso tells New Times. "It's beautiful and as humid as Brazil. I love the color of the sea, and the temperature of the water is so much like Bahia.") The tour promotes Live in Bahia, the album that captures those two enchanted summer-night performances in Salvador, released last October to coincide with the publication of the long-awaited English translation of his memoir, Tropical Truth (first published in Portuguese in 1997). "People in the audience were singing along, so the record company decided to record it and then afterward they played it for me," says Veloso. "I hesitated a little to come out with it, but then I said 'Let it be.'"

Considered Brazil's premier songwriter, one of the finest poets in Portuguese, and an international pop musician on par with Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Bob Marley, Veloso is a restless intellectual who delves deep into his nation's psyche. He is constantly exploring, experimenting, provoking, questioning, and challenging, be it through his music, writing, films, or political activism.

Charles A. Perrone, author of Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song: MPB, 1965-1985, observes that Veloso has always been ahead of his time. When traditional sounds were popular in Brazil, Veloso focused on international trends. When musical militancy and activism were in vogue, he explored romantic and spiritual themes. Faced with sentimentalism, Veloso turned his attention to materialism. And when consumerism came under scrutiny, Veloso's taste for the avant-garde resurfaced.

Born in 1942 in the Bahian countryside of Santo Amaro da Purificação, Veloso quickly gained recognition as a composer in the early 1960s when his sister, singer Maria Bethânia, recorded his songs for a music show in Rio. In the following years Veloso competed in pop festivals and made movie soundtracks. In 1967 he recorded his first LP, Domingo, with the collaboration of singer Gal Costa. Soon thereafter Veloso found himself at the forefront of Tropicalia, a cultural movement of artists including Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé, and poet Torquato Neto, that turned Brazil inside out.

Born into an oppressive atmosphere, Tropicalismo faded fast. With few supporters outside Brazil, the movement soon found itself between a rock and a hard place. The left criticized it because it embraced U.S. culture, and Brazil's right-wing military government objected to its open, often outlandish expression. Still Tropicalismo stirred a new national discourse and left a lasting imprint on the arts.

"When I started composing and singing for audiences I was already impregnated with so many different things that I filtered through my point of view and aesthetic inclination," Veloso relates. "All of these experiences had an impact on me and I was never afraid or ashamed to show it. Tropicalismo was based on the courage of facing [the world] without fear. We took to international influences without prejudice in our hearts."

But Veloso paid a price; in 1969 he was arrested by the military regime and sent into exile in London along with Gilberto Gil. The cold, rainy European metropolis didn't dampen Veloso's curiosity, though. He evolved from a rebellious, counterculture guru into a cultivated and worldly artist. Upon his return to Brazil in 1972, Veloso began experimenting with reggae, afoxé (Afro-Brazilian drumming), and eventually with rap. Active and innovative throughout the Eighties and Nineties, Veloso won a Grammy for best world music in 2000, for his 1998 album Livro. He won a Latin Grammy for best Brazilian popular music for his 2001 studio album, Noites do Norte (Northern Nights), a reflection on Brazilian attitudes about race, slavery, and the quest for a national identity.

On Live in Bahia, Veloso's flowing falsetto ranges over the five-decade span of his celebrated songbook. He reaches even further back into history when he pays tribute to the bossa nova era by dusting off Tom Jobim classics "Caminos Cruzados" and "Samba de Verão." But much of the material comes from Noites do Norte: "Zumbi" salutes the legendary black leader of a runaway slave republic; "Rock 'n' Raul" with its metallic guitars pays tribute to Raul Seixas, who made American rock a part of Brazil's playlist in the 1960s; and "Zera a Reza" combines the rhythms of samba and Brazilian hip-hop, two different genres of music born out of similar circumstances.