It was in 2002 with Cucurrucucu Paloma, a Mexican song that he sings tenderly in Spanish for Talk To Her, the Pedro Almodovar film, that Caetano Veloso revealed himself to European audiences ⁽¹⁾. But this immense artist, poet, singer, and guitarist has been  a cornerstone of the Música Popular Brasileira (MPB) since the 1960s and 1970s ^{(2, 3)}.

The two main foundations of Caetano Veloso are, on the one hand, the fusion project Tropicália – Tropicalism, carried out with his sister Maria Bethania, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Tom Zé, and on the other hand, his unwavering love for the deeply original culture of Salvador Da Bahia - the former slave capital at the gates of Africa.

Another major influence is his multi-year immersion in the cultural hotbed of London in the late 1960s, following his forced exile by the military dictatorship that brutalized Brazil for an entire generation.

We saw Caetano Veloso in 1983 and 1989 at the first two of his six shows at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

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⁽¹⁾ In the film Talk To Her [Habla Com Ela] with Jacques Morelenbaum on cello - 2002

⁽²⁾ In 2025, Rolling Stone ranked Caetano Veloso 108th among the 200 Greatest Singers Singers of All Time.

⁽³⁾  For more information, visit Caetano Veloso official website.

This article is based on an interview with Caetano Veloso at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1983, a time of military dictatorship and censorship in Brazil. It was published by Construire (Switzerland), by Pascal Schmidt with the collaboration of Ana Freire.

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From 1976, from one Tropical Night to another, the best Brazilian artists made the detour to the Montreux Jazz Festival. Brazilian music has long since escaped the stereotype of Mardi Gras. Since then, it has taken on the changing charms of a mixed-ethnicity beauty born from Africa, Europe and America.

«  Brazil can be nonsense. Until then all is well, nothing is wrong. It may be absurd but is not deaf. Brazil has a musical ear that is not normal » sings Caetano Veloso, distinguished host of the last festival. Neither the normalization of the ear nor that of its music is ready to end in the country.

Are the spirits dozing? Is the music taking a cruising speed? Here emerges from a tiny torrid village in the Northeast of Brazil, a genius and shaggy madman like Hermeto Pascoal. Self-taught, he built a world worthy of outsider art, invented sound and instrument, and even surprised a giant such as Miles Davis on his own land.

Does Brazil bathe in the sad purring of committed song, punctuated by the voids left by the scissors of the military censor? Maria Bethania reunites Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Caetano Veloso, who gives the group a name: Doces Bárbaros. Their 1976 tour sparked a scandal. While political repression was in full swing, we heard them singing about love, joy, and pleasures forgotten by various morals. The overwhelming insults they receive are similar to those addressed in 1925 to the surrealists by the French Communist Party. It must be said that the four friends all come from Salvador Da Bahia. The libertarian spirit, the carefree work, the taste for celebration and the total incomprehension for any form of logic have become a legend of this former capital of slavery. « It was very risky, crazy, and not even a good cultural policy » confirms Caetano in Montreux.

Through a few metaphors, he reveals to us other meanings of this spirit of Bahia: « The scissors?... When I cut my nails, I always manage to cut those on my left hand, never those on the right! ... But I can also talk to you about censorship if you wish. / The beach ?... When it's sunny and a beach, I feel compelled to go. I have to do it as if I were going to work. / TV?... I was in London when color television was born. I did everything to buy myself one, and since then I watch, I stop, I watch again, and I love… / The flirting? (the tone becomes modest) A little ... it depends on the trip ... very little. »

Who does not know the song Garota De Ipanema, written by Vinicius de Moraes? It was taken over in the sixties by anyone who wanted to « play Brazilian », starting with Stan Getz to Archie Shepp. « La Cirrhose » was the name of a bar opened by Vinicius in Ipanema. It was a place to drink, he put that name on it, which was abominable » (Caetano). The Bossa-nova was born at the end of the 1950s in the fine vapor of scotch, disdaining the bitter sweat of Samba. Precise and delicate, it invaded the world via New York and is often still considered THE Brazilian music. Its parents were João Gilberto, singer and guitarist, Tom Jobim, composer, Baden Powell, guitarist, and Vinicius de Moraes, poet. « Let love be infinite as long as it lasts », said the latter, who married more than seven times.

The powerful link that unites Brazilian music is this constancy of emotion. It grew up on January 19, 1982, when a telex from São Paulo announced: Elis Regina, « the woman leader of Brazilian music », died Tuesday, aged 36. « Elis was the queen of professionalism but didn't write any of her songs and was never skilled at an instrument », says Carvalho, her former producer. The funeral of the « Queen » appeared disproportionate, when considering her first concert led by flashlight due to a lack of funding. Since this first concert, she had worked her voice to such a level that it made it exceptionally particular. 

Several songwriters owe an appreciable part of their notoriety to having been interpreted by Elis. These were notably João Bosco, present in Montreux this year (in 1983), or Milton Nascimento, who pays her a remarkable tribute on his album Anima. Milton remains a fascinating character with a Brazilian cultural mix. Everything about him seems both extremely familiar and distant. He is in turn champion of the spirit of life and death, of the child and the old man, inspired from native Brazilian culture as in the song Promises of the Sun: « You want me strong. And I am no longer. I am the end of the race, the old one, the one who once was. I summon the Silver Moon to deliver it to me. I pray to the Gods of the forest that they put me to death. / You want me beautiful. And I am no longer. They took everything a man should have from me. They cut me with a knife without finishing me off. Leaving me alive, without my blood, to rot. / You just want me fair. And I am no longer. The sun's promises no longer burn my heart. What a tragedy is that which falls on us all. What a tragedy is that which falls on us all. »

Newcomers (as written in 1983) gain a foothold in the difficult terrain of Brazilian music. Their names are Djavan, Luiz Melodia, Angela RoRo, Arrigo Barnabé… « I sing in the rhythm; I have no other vice. If the world is a garbage can, I am not. I am cute, full of affection. That's what my singing voice says. For our Lord » sings again, not without irony, Caetano Veloso, the sweet barbarian [Love, Love, Love - 1978].