ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of Caetano Volos’s use of the tradition of musical romantic. Volos’s 1968 boss nova composition, "Saudosismo", provides a succinct and perspicacious commentary both on bossa nova's contribution to music-making in Brazil – as a musical revolution which imposed an aesthetic of experimentation and innovation – as well as on its limitations. The song "Drama" appears on the album of the same name by Veloso's sister, Maria Bethania, well known for her taste for melodramatic love songs. The use of the form of the love song is significant, given engage songwriters' rejection of the idiom of romance as a valid form of social commentary in the early part of Veloso's career. The question of Veloso's sexuality on public display is an important one and continued to be so, even after the radicalism of Tropicalia. Veloso's love song comment on the part played by music in socialising the individual and in disseminating dominant ideologies of gender identity.
