Tom Zé
Encyclopedia
Tom Zé (ˈtõ ˈzɛ; born Antônio José Santana Martins, 11 October 1936 in Irará
, Bahia
, Brazil
) is a songwriter
, multi-instrumentalist
, and composer
who was influential in the Tropicália
movement of 1960s Brazil. After the peak of the Tropicália period, Zé went into relative obscurity: it was only in the 1990s, when the musician and label head David Byrne
discovered an album recorded by Zé many years earlier, that he returned to performing and releasing new material.
region of the country's Northeast. He would later claim that his hometown was "pre-Gutenbergian", as information was primarily transferred through oral communication. As a child, he was influenced by Brazilian musicians such as Luiz Gonzaga
and Jackson do Pandeiro
. Zé became interested in music by listening to the radio, and moved to the state capital of Salvador
to pursue a degree. He later relocated to São Paulo
and began his career in popular music there. Much of his early work involved his wry impressions of the massive metropolitan area
, coming from a small town in the relatively poor northeast.
Influential in the Tropicália
movement, Zé contributed, along with Caetano Veloso
, Gilberto Gil
, Gal Costa
, Os Mutantes
, and Nara Leão
, to the watershed Tropicália album
/manifesto
Tropicália: ou Panis et Circenses
(1968). He also participated in a series of concerts with the musicians. After the Brazilian military government of the 1960s began to crack down on the musicians of Tropicália, Zé moved out of the public eye and began to experiment with novel instruments and composition styles. While the other major figures of Tropicália would go on to great commercial and critical success in later decades, Zé slipped into obscurity in the 1970s and 1980s.
discovered one of his albums, Estudando o Samba (1975), on a visit to Rio de Janeiro
. Zé was the first artist signed to the Luaka Bop
label
and has so far released a compilation and two albums, all of which received positive reviews from critics in the United States.
In 2011, he collaborated with Javelin on the song "Ogodô, Ano 2000" for the Red Hot Organization's
most recent charitable album "Red Hot+Rio 2." The album is a follow-up to the 1996 "Red Hot + Rio
." Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues.
and Dada
impulses of Tropicália, Zé has been noted for both his unorthodox approach to melody
and instrumentation
, employing various objects as instruments such as the typewriter
. He has collaborated with many of the concrete poets
of São Paulo, including Augusto de Campos
, and employed concrete techniques in his lyrics. Musically, his work appropriates samba
, Bossa Nova
, Brazilian folk music
, forró
, and American
rock and roll
, among others. He has been praised by avant-garde
composers for his use of dissonance
, polytonality
, and unusual time signature
s. Because of the experimental nature of many of his compositions, Zé has been compared with American musicians such as Frank Zappa
and Captain Beefheart
.
One of his last efforts, though, has been a return to Bossa Nova, his Estudando a Bossa - Nordeste Plaza. Says Zé: “That music has inhabited my psyche for 50 to 60 years. Familiar and profound, yet somehow extraterrestrial in my mind. It had to come out, to be dealt with."
Irará
Irará is a city in Bahia, Brazil....
, Bahia
Bahia
Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil, and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the fourth most populous Brazilian state after São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and the fifth-largest in size...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
) is a songwriter
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
, multi-instrumentalist
Multi-instrumentalist
A multi-instrumentalist is a musician who plays a number of different instruments.The Bachelor of Music degree usually requires a second instrument to be learned , but people who double on another instrument are not usually seen as multi-instrumentalists.-Classical music:Music written for Symphony...
, and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
who was influential in the Tropicália
Tropicalismo
Tropicália, also known as Tropicalismo, is a Brazilian art movement that arose in the late 1960s and encompassed theatre, poetry, and music, among other forms. Tropicália was influenced by poesia concreta , a genre of Brazilian avant-garde poetry embodied in the works of Augusto de Campos, Haroldo...
movement of 1960s Brazil. After the peak of the Tropicália period, Zé went into relative obscurity: it was only in the 1990s, when the musician and label head David Byrne
David Byrne (musician)
David Byrne is a musician and artist, best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography,...
discovered an album recorded by Zé many years earlier, that he returned to performing and releasing new material.
Early life and career
Tom Zé grew up in the small town of Irará, Bahia in the dry sertãoSertão
In Portuguese, the word sertão first referred to the vast hinterlands of Asia that Lusitanian explorers encountered. In Brazil, the geographical term referred to backlands away from the Atlantic coastal regions where the Portuguese first settled in South America in the early sixteenth century...
region of the country's Northeast. He would later claim that his hometown was "pre-Gutenbergian", as information was primarily transferred through oral communication. As a child, he was influenced by Brazilian musicians such as Luiz Gonzaga
Luiz Gonzaga
Luiz Gonzaga do Nascimento was a very prominent Brazilian folk singer, songwriter, musician and poet. Born in the countryside of Pernambuco , he is considered to be responsible for the promotion of northeastern music throughout the rest of the country...
and Jackson do Pandeiro
Jackson do Pandeiro
José Gomes Filho , more commonly known as Jackson do Pandeiro , was a Brazilian percussionist and singer....
. Zé became interested in music by listening to the radio, and moved to the state capital of Salvador
Salvador, Bahia
Salvador is the largest city on the northeast coast of Brazil and the capital of the Northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. Salvador is also known as Brazil's capital of happiness due to its easygoing population and countless popular outdoor parties, including its street carnival. The first...
to pursue a degree. He later relocated to São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
and began his career in popular music there. Much of his early work involved his wry impressions of the massive metropolitan area
Metropolitan area
The term metropolitan area refers to a region consisting of a densely populated urban core and its less-populated surrounding territories, sharing industry, infrastructure, and housing. A metropolitan area usually encompasses multiple jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, townships,...
, coming from a small town in the relatively poor northeast.
Influential in the Tropicália
Tropicalismo
Tropicália, also known as Tropicalismo, is a Brazilian art movement that arose in the late 1960s and encompassed theatre, poetry, and music, among other forms. Tropicália was influenced by poesia concreta , a genre of Brazilian avant-garde poetry embodied in the works of Augusto de Campos, Haroldo...
movement, Zé contributed, along with Caetano Veloso
Caetano Veloso
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso , better known as Caetano Veloso, is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s,...
, Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira , better known as Gilberto Gil or , is a Brazilian singer, guitarist, and songwriter, known for both his musical innovation and political commitment...
, Gal Costa
Gal Costa
Gal Costa is a Brazilian singer of popular music.-Early life:...
, Os Mutantes
Os Mutantes
Os Mutantes ) are an influential Brazilian psychedelic rock band that were linked with the Tropicália movement of the late 1960s. It was formed by two brothers and a vocalist, but has gone through numerous personnel changes throughout its existence...
, and Nara Leão
Nara Leão
Nara Lofego Leão was a Brazilian bossa nova and MPB singer and occasional actress. Her husband was Carlos Diegues, director and writer of Bye Bye Brasil....
, to the watershed Tropicália album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
/manifesto
Manifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
Tropicália: ou Panis et Circenses
Tropicália: ou Panis et Circenses
Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis is a 1968 collaboration album by artists including Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Tom Zé, Nara Leão, Os Mutantes and Gal Costa...
(1968). He also participated in a series of concerts with the musicians. After the Brazilian military government of the 1960s began to crack down on the musicians of Tropicália, Zé moved out of the public eye and began to experiment with novel instruments and composition styles. While the other major figures of Tropicália would go on to great commercial and critical success in later decades, Zé slipped into obscurity in the 1970s and 1980s.
Re-emergence
In the early 1990s, Zé's work experienced a revival when American musician David ByrneDavid Byrne (musician)
David Byrne is a musician and artist, best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography,...
discovered one of his albums, Estudando o Samba (1975), on a visit to Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
. Zé was the first artist signed to the Luaka Bop
Luaka Bop
Luaka Bop is a world music-oriented record label established by David Byrne, former guitarist, singer-songwriter and producer of the art rock/new wave band Talking Heads. It has been a wholly independent label since leaving V2 in 2006. Previous distribution relationships included Warner and Virgin...
label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
and has so far released a compilation and two albums, all of which received positive reviews from critics in the United States.
In 2011, he collaborated with Javelin on the song "Ogodô, Ano 2000" for the Red Hot Organization's
Red Hot Organization
Red Hot Organization is a not-for-profit, 501 3, international organization dedicated to fighting AIDS through pop culture.Since its inception in 1989, over 400 artists, producers and directors have contributed to over 15 compilation albums, related television programs and media events to raise...
most recent charitable album "Red Hot+Rio 2." The album is a follow-up to the 1996 "Red Hot + Rio
Red Hot + Rio
Red Hot + Rio is a compilation album produced by Paul Heck as part of the Red Hot AIDS Benefit Series intended to promote AIDS awareness. This installment is a contemporary tribute to the Bossa nova sound, especially the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim...
." Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues.
Style
Remaining true to the experimentalExperimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
and Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
impulses of Tropicália, Zé has been noted for both his unorthodox approach to melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
and instrumentation
Instrumentation (music)
In music, instrumentation refers to the particular combination of musical instruments employed in a composition, and to the properties of those instruments individually...
, employing various objects as instruments such as the typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
. He has collaborated with many of the concrete poets
Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....
of São Paulo, including Augusto de Campos
Augusto de Campos
Augusto de Campos is a Brazilian writer who was a founder of the Concrete poetry movement in Brazil. He is also a translator, music critic and visual artist....
, and employed concrete techniques in his lyrics. Musically, his work appropriates samba
Samba
Samba is a Brazilian dance and musical genre originating in Bahia and with its roots in Brazil and Africa via the West African slave trade and African religious traditions. It is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival...
, Bossa Nova
Bossa Nova
Bossa Nova may refer to:*Bossa nova, a style of music*Bossa Nova , a dance form associated with the music*Bossa Nova , a 2000 film*Bossa Nova - album by John Pizzarelli...
, Brazilian folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, forró
Forró
Forró is a kind of Northeastern Brazilian dance as well as a word used to denote the different genres of music which accompanies the dance. Both are much in evidence during the annual Festa Junina , a part of Brazilian traditional culture which celebrates some Catholic saints...
, and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
, among others. He has been praised by avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
composers for his use of dissonance
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
, polytonality
Polytonality
The musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality . Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time...
, and unusual time signature
Time signature
The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....
s. Because of the experimental nature of many of his compositions, Zé has been compared with American musicians such as Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
and Captain Beefheart
Captain Beefheart
Don Van Vliet January 15, 1941 December 17, 2010) was an American musician, singer-songwriter and artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called The Magic Band, active between 1965 and 1982, with whom he recorded 12...
.
One of his last efforts, though, has been a return to Bossa Nova, his Estudando a Bossa - Nordeste Plaza. Says Zé: “That music has inhabited my psyche for 50 to 60 years. Familiar and profound, yet somehow extraterrestrial in my mind. It had to come out, to be dealt with."
Discography
- 1968: Grande Liquidação
- 1970: Tom Zé (album)
- 1972: Se o Caso É Chorar
- 1973: Todos os Olhos
- 1976: Estudando o SambaEstudando o SambaEstudando o Samba is a concept album by Brazilian singer Tom Zé, recorded in 1976.It was listed by Rolling Stone Brazil as one of the 100 best Brazilian albums in history.-Track listing:Side A:#"Mã"...
- 1978: Correio da Estação do Brás
- 1984: Nave Maria
- 1990: Brazil Classics, Vol. 4: The Best of Tom Zé - Massive HitsBrazil Classics, Vol. 4: The Best of Tom Zé - Massive HitsThis 1990 album was Tom Zé's first release on Luaka Bop after being discovered by David Byrne and was the first introduction of Zé's music to a wider U.S...
(Compilation) - 1992: Brazil Classics, Vol. 5: The Hips of TraditionBrazil Classics, Vol. 5: The Hips of TraditionThis is Tom Zé's first studio album on Luaka Bop and is the 1992 follow-up to his previous compilation released on the same label, Brazil Classics, Vol 4...
- 1997: Parabelo (with Miguel Wisnik)
- 1998: Com Defeito de FabricaçãoCom Defeito de FabricaçãoFabrication Defect is a concept album by Tom Zé.It tells a story in which the people of the third world are turned into androids by the economic exploitation of the first world...
- 1999: Postmodern Platos
- 1999: 20 Preferidas (Compilation)
- 2000: Série Dois Momentos (vols. 1, 2, and 15) (Compilation)
- 2000: Jogos de Armar
- 2002: Santagustin (with Gilberto Assis)
- 2003: Imprensa Cantada
- 2005: Estudando o Pagode - Na Opereta Segregamulher e AmorEstudando o PagodeThe title of Tom Zé's 2005 release, Estudando o Pagode, literally means "studying pagode" . This album is a three-act operetta about women and their relationship to men...
- 2006: Danç-Êh-Sá
- 2008: Danç-Êh-Sá Ao Vivo (live)
- 2008: Estudando a Bossa - Nordeste Plaza
- 2010: Studies of Tom Zé: Explaining Things So I Can Confuse You
Further reading
Mei, Giancarlo. Canto Latino: Origine, Evoluzione e Protagonisti della Musica Popolare del Brasile. 2004. Stampa Alternativa-Nuovi Equilibri. Preface by Sergio Bardotti and postface by Milton Nascimento.External links
- Official site
- Tom Zé on the Luaka Bop label website
- Tom Zé discography on Slipcue.com
- Tom Zé interview on ArtistInterviews.eu