Tropicália: cannibal pop made under a dictatorship

The closest thing the movement has to a founding document, recorded by the whole crew at once. Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Os Mutantes, Tom Zé and the older bossa star Nara Leão all turn up, with Rogério Duprat arranging it like a pop-art answer to Sgt. Pepper's. Half the lyrics come from poets Torquato Neto and Capinan rather than the singers. Treat it less as an album than a mission statement you can dance to, then chase every name on the sleeve into their own records.

Gil's debut opens with 'Domingo no Parque,' the song he took to the 1967 Record festival with Os Mutantes behind him, berimbau crashing into Duprat's orchestral stabs. The whole record swings between northeastern folk and studio futurism without treating either as a compromise. This is a man who grew up on accordion forró deciding the electric guitar belonged to him too.

Three teenagers from São Paulo (Arnaldo Baptista, Sérgio Dias and Rita Lee) whose older brother built the homemade effects, all of it aimed straight at bossa nova. 'Bat Macumba' shrinks a chant into a word puzzle; 'Panis et Circenses' floats up and then winds down like a tape dying in the machine. They were the movement's mischief, the ones who treated the studio as the main instrument. Decades later both Kurt Cobain and Beck were openly begging them to reunite.

Gal had the voice the movement kept writing for. Her solo debut hands 'Baby' its definitive reading, the lyric printed on a candy wrapper in the artwork, and opens with Caetano's 'Não Identificado.' Where the men handled the manifestos, she handled the seduction, and the songs are sharper for it. Within a few years she would push that same voice all the way into screaming.

By 1970 the trio had drifted out of the headlines and into their own psychedelic deep end. The long jams and the warped humor point to a band following the studio wherever it led, with the festival crowds long gone. It asks more patience than the debut and pays it back. If the first album is the calling card, this is the one you keep coming back to.

Ben never signed up to the movement, but he was chasing the same fusion through a different door. Cut overnight with the percussion group Trio Mocotó, Força Bruta is loose, warm samba-rock built on handclaps and one hypnotic groove per song. It sounds like a party at 4am that refuses to end. Few records in any language feel this good in the body.

Homesickness pressed onto vinyl. Made during Caetano's London exile in 1972, Transa threads samba through folk-rock on long tracks like 'You Don't Know Me' and 'Triste Bahia,' switching between English and Portuguese mid-line. The band plays loose and the mood stays bruised. It is the warmest and the loneliest thing he ever recorded.

Gil came back from London in 1972 and made his most generous album. The title track dreams up a train running from 1976 to anywhere better than now, which under censorship counted as a position. 'Back in Bahia' tells the exile story without code. After all the experiments, this is Gil reminding the room he could just write hits when he felt like it.

The famous flop. Recorded in a single week at the only 8-track studio in the country, Araçá Azul is Caetano gone fully avant: tape collage, concrete poetry, a cappella fragments, barely a thing you could call a song. It became the most-returned LP of its era, buyers carrying it back to the shop in disgust. It was also the bravest swing of his career, and time has treated it far better than 1972 did.

A commune of Rio hippies who worshipped Hendrix until João Gilberto sat them down and taught them samba. The 1972 result fuses rock, choro and samba so easily you stop hearing the joins. Rolling Stone Brasil voted it the greatest Brazilian album ever made in 2007 and barely anyone objected. 'Brasil Pandeiro' on its own earns the ranking.

By 1973 Gal was the movement's loose cannon. Índia struck the regime as obscene, so the close-up of her in a bikini got the cover sold inside an opaque blue bag. The music is just as daring, from the slow burn of the title track to her ferocious 'Volta.' This is a singer with nothing left to prove and clearly enjoying it.

Tropicália's theatrical grandchild. The 1973 debut wrapped surreal arrangements around Ney Matogrosso's countertenor and full face paint, glam rock run through Portuguese poetry. It outsold almost everyone, past a million copies, while the original tropicalistas were still rebuilding their careers. Camp as armor, three years before Bowie made the same idea safe at home.

Zé was the movement's odd engineer, the one who treated a song like a machine to take apart. Todos os Olhos, from 1973, is full of cheap-sounding inventions and jokes smuggled past the censors, starting with a cover image that is filthier than it first looks. He was too strange to sell and nearly disappeared. The disappearing turned out to be a head start.

Pushed out of Os Mutantes, Rita Lee joined forces with the band Tutti Frutti and more or less drew up the blueprint for Brazilian rock. Fruto Proibido, from 1975, is leaner and harder than anything the Mutantes attempted, all hooks and nerve. 'Ovelha Negra' turned into a generational anthem. She would end up outselling every man on this list.

After the noise, the quiet. Refazenda, from 1975, opens Gil's 're-' trilogy with a turn toward acoustic roots, Bahian spirituality and easy grooves. It is the proof that the movement was never only about provocation. Tropicália swallowed the world; here is Gil digesting it slowly on a back porch.

The record that brought him back. Estudando o Samba (1976) takes samba apart and rebuilds it into something jittery and modern, years before any sampler could do the same work. It sat forgotten until David Byrne found a copy and reissued it on Luaka Bop in 1990, restarting Zé's career when he was in his sixties. The plainest evidence that the movement's weirdest member was also its most forward-looking.