“Tropicalistas: Gal Costa, Maria Bethania and the Women Behind the Music in Brazil.” Option. March/April, 1989.

[Excerpt]

What is perhaps most striking about Brazilian popular music is the sense of community inherent in it. The communities of race, class, religion, and nation provide both the subject matter of popular song and the arenas — carnival, terreiros, festas, and religious festivals — in which music is performed. Even among musicians who have achieved notoriety, there is a tendency to see themselves as part of a musical and cultural movements, and to describe their achievements in terms of contemporaries and artists who have come before them. They perform on each other’s albums and interpret each other’s songs. (Even success tends, paradoxically, to bring them closer to their audiences.)