A Journey to Listen to an Album from Every Single Country
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Album: Os Mutantes
Artist: Os Mutantes
Year: 1968
Genre: Psychedelic Pop / Experimental Rock / Psychedelic Rock
Length: 36:01
As I take my first steps into this long journey ahead of me, it only made sense that I start it off with not only something familiar that I love but a country that is rich in musical history. Brazil just felt like the perfect place to start. Outside of the usual western music we are constantly bombarded with (specifically US and UK) Brazil is one of the countries that has the richest and biggest music scenes that not only led to innovation and massive inspiration for artists outside of it but also had massive historical importance and was revolutionary within it’s own history.
I fell in love with Brazilian music years ago when I started doing my 1001 Albums challenge and started to discover how much music came out of Brazil and how much of it was superbly amazing, discovering artists like Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Joao Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto, Milton Nascimento, Lo Borges, (and thanks to some good Brazilian friends of mine (One of whom, my good friend, Camila, gave me some great insight into Brazilian music for this post, so I hope I do you proud!)I also discovered bands like) Mamonas Assassinas, Raul Seixas, and Ultraje a Rigor. And this only scratches the surface of so many great musical artists that Brazil has to offer.
It became clear that choosing an album from this country would be difficult. With the already mentioned multitude of artists I named, the amount of great albums I love from the country and a variety of musical genres and movements that came out of Brazil: Samba, Tropicalia, Bossa Nova, Choro, Brega Music, Sertanejo, MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira), I basically had an entire ocean of music I could choose.
It only made sense to me then that I would pick Os Mutantes debut album to listen to, for two reasons: 1. They were historically one of the most important bands of Brazil when it came to the Tropicalia movement and revolutionary attitudes during an oppressive time and 2. I was just really in the mood to listen to Os Mutantes because I just love this album.
At this point in the 60s, Brazil was under a military dictatorship and the government was basically setting up bans of what could be said in various forms of media (music, newspaper, tv, theatre, etc.). It only made sense that out of this militaristic right wing government, a large group of left-wing liberals would come out as revolutionaries to speak out against it. Problem was, the government was heavily chekcing what every piece of media was saying and if it even mentioned anything they disagreed with, it would never see the light of day. How did they work around this? They made their music sound like nonsense or used very poetic language, so they’d only get their message across to those who truly knew what they were really saying.
Os Mutantes were one of those bands (along with Caetano Veloso who famously was kicked out of the country for his outspoken revolutionary views of the government through his music) to come out of the movement and their mix of lyrical themes and satire with discordant, fuzzy guitars and strange musical noises, made them a favourite amongst the population (something that would protect them as the government tended to just kill any revolutionaries but because these were artists well-liked by the population they didn’t just do away with them (hence why Caetano Veloso was asked to leave rather than just full-on murdered)).
Os Mutantes weren’t just revolutionizing rock music but played an important part to standing up to an oppressive government, a sentiment that would eventually permeate throughout other cultural movements in other countries. In a lot of ways, they were a punk band before punk ever had a name. And that’s pretty cool in my books.
I would highly encourage everyone to seek out the music of Brazil because there really is a lot of amazing music there (and yes I realize I am biased since I love Brazilian music quite a lot). I had almost gone with Milton Nascimento and Lo Borges’ album Clube da Esquina, which is a phenomenal album as well and deserves all the attention and I would highly recommend that you at least check that one out as well.
Starting this journey with a strong opener, here’s to another 197 to go!
-Bosco
Bosco's Modern Life 