Vanguarda Paulista and political openness: song as an agent of redemocratization, in Sao Paulo in the 1970s-1980s

Abstract

The 1970s and 1980s, in Brazil, were marked by the process of political opening and redemocratization. In this same period, an eloquent production of experimental, alternative and independent music emerged with considerable local strength, the so-called “Vanguarda Paulista”. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that popular music spaces were already controlled by multinational recording companies and the ideological power of songs had been neutralized by the logic of the cultural industry. To do so, it uses concepts of “everyday tactics”, by Michel de Certeau; and “invention music” (“música de invenção”), by Augusto de Campos, to analyze the challenge of Vanguarda Paulista (avant-garde paulista) in achieving its place on the margins of the phonographic market spectrum, and reaching the general public with the greatest possible creative freedom. In this context, the article elects the musical groups Rumo, Língua de Trapo and Premeditando o Breque (Premê), analyzing songs that approach themes related to the sociopolitical moment, using authors such as Marcos Napolitano, José Adriano Fenerick, Éder Sader and others, who discussed about this opening process and its implications in the cultural scope. Some partial conclusions point out that these Vanguarda Paulista songs form bricolage of musical styles and genres; and that can be heard as everyday reports of a given temporal and physical space.