Milestones

Caetano Veloso

Name: Caetano Veloso – Transa
Item: Transa
Author: Federico Romagnoli

Transa

1972 (Philips)

Brazilian popular music

by Federico Romagnoli

Caetano Veloso e Gilberto Gil fled to London in the summer of 1969, while Brazil was going through one of the darkest moments in its troubled history: the previous December, the military had suspended parliament and driven the final nail into the coffin of democracy. Veloso and Gil were arrested just days after the coup and charged with subversion over the television special "Divino, maravilhoso", in which they parodied local cultural stereotypes in an extreme, flamboyant fashion.

Their imprisonment was brief, but the price they paid was steep: they were granted their freedom on condition that they leave the country. Their double exile obviously didn't go unnoticed in Brazil. Although the media weren't allowed to report on it, everyone in the entertainment world knew what had happened, and after a while some big names began to voice their discontent. The first to speak up was "the King", Roberto Carlos, who in 1971 wrote one of his greatest hits drawing inspiration directly from Veloso. Although he's never named outright in the lyrics, there's no doubt about who the character described in the gorgeous "Debaixo dos caracóis dos seus cabelos" ("Beneath the curls of her hair") really is.

In the summer of that same year, João Gilberto agreed to return to television after almost a decade's absence, but only on condition that Veloso, regarded as his greatest heir, could appear alongside him. Veloso moved heaven and earth to make it happen, and got the green light. He returned to Brazil for a couple of days, just long enough to record the special, and found the atmosphere far more relaxed than when he'd left. Encouraged by the experience, he decided to move back for good in January '72, together with Gil. Shortly before leaving London, he had recorded a new album, released in April under the title "Transa" (roughly, more or less literally, "Screw"). A word that jolts, symbolic of the artist's urge for redress.

As with its predecessor – one of his several untitled albums (the one that opens with "A Little More Blue", to be precise) – "Transa" was recorded under the supervision of the young Ralph Mace, fresh off the sessions for David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World".

Mace opted to try a live-in-studio approach, keeping overdubs to a minimum, while the arrangements were handled by virtuoso guitarist Jards Macalé (a cult figure of Música Popular Brasileira), who had joined Veloso in London.

The record makes frequent use of English, as had become Veloso's habit over the previous couple of albums. It's impossible not to recall his first experiment along these lines, "The Empty Boat" (1969): a kind of blues that unfolds hypnotically in a continuous emotional build-up. By repeating phrases over and over, the author cleverly sidesteps his shaky command of English and ends up creating a kind of mantra in the shape of pop music.

That landmark track, though not among his best known, laid the template for the two albums that followed, with "Transa" bringing the formula to its ultimate fulfilment.

“You Don’t Know Me”, which opens the album, blends English and Portuguese with easy confidence, moving along the reiterative lines typical of that phase of Veloso's career, yet injecting a surprising dynamism thanks to the backing vocals of Gal Costa (a star of Brazilian music and close friend, who happened to be in London for some shows at the time of the recording) and the acoustic guitar, whose lead line weaves tirelessly throughout.

“Nine Out Of Ten” is a daring blend of Brazilian folk, electric guitar solos, simmering jazz-fusion-flavoured basslines and reggae rhythms (which Veloso had discovered in London, since Brazil had remained impervious to it up to that point).

"Neolithic Man" is the most obsessive of his mantras: an acoustic intro sets a handful of phrases circling (the incipit is unforgettable: "I am the silence that is suddenly heard, after a car has passed"), then just as the song seems to open up toward more pop-oriented sounds, a pounding drum kicks in that makes krautrock pale in comparison and sweeps away the rest of the arrangement.

There are also tracks sung entirely in Portuguese, like “Mora na filosofia”, an old samba by Rio-born composer Monsueto Menezes, dressed up with refined blues phrasing, echoing vocals and jazzy drum breaks. And “Triste Bahia”, nine minutes that build in intensity, with a cathartic finale of tropical percussion and funk bass. The first eight lines are taken from the seventeenth-century poem of the same name by Gregório de Matos, after which Veloso soars off into a sweeping succession of images, ships, seas, flags and invocations to the Virgin. It's both a majestic tribute to his homeland and a metaphorical account of the exile he was forced into.

The album wasn't a great success, but over the decades it has become a cult object. Today it's regarded as his most prestigious work, and more broadly as a cornerstone of Brazilian music history, at least among the most discerning listeners. Veloso himself was always convinced of its worth, and kept performing its songs often at his concerts, which is far from a given considering the disappointing sales at the time: in how many cases, throughout the history of popular music, have we seen an artist disown an album simply because it was poorly received by the public?

Not this time, though, and indeed its influence is now evident in all those artists who have blended the alluring sensibility of Brazilian music with the dynamics of Anglo-American rock, searching for sounds alternative to those of mainstream radio. Listening, for instance, to an album like Hermanos' “Ventura”, from 2003, it's clear that “Transa” can be considered a direct forerunner of the local indie rock scene.

A country where the album still cannot count on a tradition of support from critics and devoted fans is, paradoxically, Italy, where Veloso nonetheless boasts a considerable following.

In our country there persists an almost suffocating devotion to “Estrangeiro”, from 1989. In any list, poll or selection, whenever Veloso comes up, it's with that record. Although it is by all means a first-rate work, one is still left wondering why Italian critics unanimously consider it his masterpiece. It's curious that for an artist with such a strong and varied discography, the record that always gets singled out is one that, in the artist's own country, is usually considered inferior to any of his releases from the Seventies (not necessarily rightly so, but that's how it is).

It's probably a combination of several factors: first, the reverential awe surrounding the producer of "Estrangeiro", Arto Lindsay (especially among critics writing for a niche audience); second, the fact that it was his first album to get decent international distribution (by the time "Estrangeiro" started circulating in Italy, "Transa" was a record that was practically impossible to find – and the internet age was still a long way off). It's an explanation that's only partly convincing, though: decades on, there would still have been plenty of opportunity to correct the aim, had anyone wanted to.

So perhaps there's a third, more discouraging reason: the well-known laziness of many industry insiders, for whom it's far easier to keep repeating a stereotype, without ever checking whether it holds up, than to actually find out how things really stand.

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18/08/2019

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Federico Romagnoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition

Tracklist

1. You Don't Know Me
2. Nine Out Of Ten
3. Triste Bahia
4. It's A Long Way
5. Mora na filosofia
6. Neolithic Man
7. Nostalgia (That's What Rock'n Roll Is All About)

CAETANO VELOSO on the web

Official website

Caetano Veloso on OndaRock

Monograph

Caetano Veloso

The conscience of Música Popular Brasileira

For some reason, the general Italian public seems convinced that Caetano Veloso belongs to the jazz universe. You'll find him filed in that section in record shops, not to mention the invitations he gets to our jazz festivals. In reality, his stellar career, now spanning half a century, has never strayed from the pop-rock path