ABSTRACT
Caetano Veloso contribution to the tradition of Brazilian popular music and his importance within the history of Musica Popular Brasileira (MPB) are significant. MPB developed in the mid 1960s out of a split within the bossa nova phenomenon that had made a huge impact in Brazil and beyond. In 1966 Veloso made a polemical intervention into the debate on the function of Brazil's popular music, by emphasising the importance of adopting what he called the "linha evolutiva". Early music criticism in Brazil was dominated by the ideological agendas and the feverish social and political climate of the period following the coup. The chapter outlines some of the key features of the traditions, which, as will become evident, contribute to Tropicalia's aesthetic and forms of expression. Under the Goulart government left-populist cultural production was predicated on the politicisation of traditional cultural forms and on the viability of a link between the middle-class producers of this culture and the working classes.
