Gal Costa, muse of Tropicália
Singer Gal Costa died November 9. An icon of modern Brazilian music and culture, her passing represents a huge loss to the country and the world. Throughout her career of 50 years, she was an innovator and a calmly courageous resister during Brazil’s darkest times. Her voice was immediately recognizable in any music she created, sharp but sweet, elegant and demanding, strong but vulnerable. She made her mark on generations of Brazilian popular genres and defied categorization. Her death was unexpected, and though the cause has not been disclosed, she was apparently recovering from surgery to remove a nasal polyp. She was 77 years old, and had released her most recent album, Nenhuma Dor (No Pain) two years ago.
It was eerily fitting that I learned of Gal Costa’s death as I stepped off the plane in Ilhéus, in Southern Bahia. Gal Costa was a Bahiana, born in the capital city of Salvador, and she was part of a unique group of talented Bahian musicians and composers who upended popular music from the 1960s onward. The group included Maria Bethânia, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Tom Zê, among many others.
Gal Costa liked to say that she was untrained, didn’t read music, and sang instinctually. She grew up wanting to be a singer and was encouraged by her mother, doing her first gig as an adolescent. She had her first hit in her early 20s, as part of the groundbreaking album and movement, Tropicália. The song Baby was a biting sendup of consumerism written by Caetano Veloso. Gal Costa’s voice is an inexplicable mix of whiny and seductive, “Baby, you have to know about the swimming pool, margarine . . . gasoline, You have to learn who I am . . . You have to learn English . . . you need, you need, I don’t know, read it on my T-shirt.” Like everything in brasileiro falado it loses a huge amount in translation. The song’s irony was heightened by its over-the-top production with orchestral strings swelling in counterpoint to Gal’s piercing vocal.
Tropicália was not just a musical release, it was disruptive innovation of the culture itself. The album came out in 1968, and was subtitled “bread and circuses.” This merry band of talented hippies had disagreements with both liberals and conservatives. The left at the time was dogmatic about keeping Brazilian music pure, which to them meant forswearing electric guitars, echoing Bob Dylan getting booed for going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Being part of the future when most of the world isn’t ready is never easy.
Above all, this new movement was eclectic, drawing on traditional culture and pulling in world music and pop rock. They elevated the culture and traditions of Northeast Brazil and beyond, integrating poetry and literary references. Their movement was psychedelic, incorporating past, present and future, even venturing out to space travel.
All this was too much for the military-civilian dictatorship, and they judged these artists as sufficiently threatening to warrant the exile of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil the following year; in 1969 they decamped to London. Gal Costa remained and continued to record their music. She told the New York Times in 1985, “It was not a matter of courage. I belonged to that movement, and they were my friends.”
Gal Costa’s catalogue of works is extensive, varied and unique. I can’t begin to do justice to what it is she means to Brazil and Brazilians, and how she and her compatriots in music stood up to the establishment in all aspects of culture and forged a new, syncretic movement that changed Brazil forever. What higher praise can there be for the strength of an artistic creation than that the authoritarian rulers found it so threatening they had to banish some of its members from the country?
The concept of disruptive innovation is typically associated with business, but the Tropicália movement is a good fit despite not being strictly about business, in my view. They were upstarts with minimal resources who challenged the status quo within an industry, music, and changed it forever. And they did this, really, in just one year, 1968 to 1969, when Caetano and Gil were exiled. Gal Costa was a leading voice, an artistic muse, an avatar of the future of Brazil and its vibrant culture. That is her legacy.
President-elect Luis Inácio Lula da Silva said of Gal Costa’s passing:
“Gal Costa was one of the greatest singers in the world, one of our main artists to take the name and sounds of Brazil to the entire planet. Her talent, technique and daring enriched and renewed our culture, shaped and marked the lives of millions of Brazilians.”
Gal Costa’s last posting on social media celebrated Lula’s election to the presidency. She said simply, “Love conquered hate.”