Chico Buarque

by John DouganOf the early stars of MPB (musica popular brasileira), Chico Buarque was one of the first to become a certifiable pop star. With his warm, nasally croon, elegant phrasing, and considerable skill at lyric writing, Buarque (who is handsome to boot) became extremely popular with women, who loved his understated sensuality. However, Buarque was uncomfortable playing the role of pop star preferring to be seen as a serious artist. Throughout his career hes managed to have the best of both worlds, but not without some significant bumps along the way. Still, he remains a towering figure in Brazilian pop music, one of the countrys greatest singer-songwriters and interpreters of the samba. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1944, Buarque spent his early youth in Sao Paulo and Italy. Upon returning to Brazil, Buarque artistic development was greatly enhanced by the friends of his father (the historian Sergio Buarque de Holanda) who were prominent in the early bossa nova movement. Although he immersed himself in music, specifically the new bossa nova sounds of Joao Gilberto, Buarque decided that a college education was more practical and he decided to study architecture at the University of Sao Paulo. That turned out to be a short-lived career choice and it wasnt long before Buarque was cutting classes and hanging out with Sao Paulos bossa nova cognoscenti. Buarque was 21 when his career began to take off. He recorded the single Pedro Pedreiro, composed music for a theatrical production and, perhaps most importantly, had three of his compositions recorded by the undisputed queen of bossa nova Nara Leao. Not an openly polemical performer, Buarques material did not lack social consciousness, but it did seem stylistically conservative when compared to the late 60s sounds of the tropicalistas such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Os Mutantes. Despite the charges of aesthetic conservatism leveled against him (by Gil and Veloso) Buarque took a huge career chance in 1968 writing and scoring a bleak, existential play entitled Roda Viva that was critical of obsessive fan culture. The plays pop star protagonist is torn limb from limb, his flesh consumed by his fans. In a move that sounds lifted from Julian Becks radical Living Theater, the performers would offer the audience pieces of the dead pop stars flesh to eat (it was chicken meat). Needless to say, with a military dictatorship in power this was considered extremely controversial stuff and soldiers were sent out to disrupt performances of Roda Viva, which including destroying sets and assaulting performers, Buarque himself was jailed briefly. After the disaster of Roda Viva Buarque returned to Italy for a year only to return to Brazil to find most of the stars of tropicalia in exile or severely circumscribed by government censorship. In 1971 he recorded the album Construction which was decided break from his earlier bossa nova records. This was the star of the second half of Buarques career that saw him writing more intense songs that underneath each complicated lyrical layer was social and political protest. Forced to submit his material to government censors, nearly two-thirds of his material was rejected. And from 1974-1975 the censors approved almost nothing he wrote. On a more positive note the rift between Buarque, Veloso and Gil was settled upon their return to Brazil in 1972 and Buarque went on to record with both of them in the mid-70s. In the 80s, Buarque was given more compositional leeway and recorded some stunning music, along with branching out into other artist endeavors that included writing plays and novels, as well as scoring films, all of this work consistent with his desire to re-examine Brazils cultural past, it relationship with the present, and its limitless possibilities for the future. For over 30 years Chico Buarque has been an artist that struggled with pop music and pop stardom. Always challenging, always conscious of cultural history, he remains, deservedly so, a towering figure in Brazilian music.