Lecture: Nicholas Brown February 21, 2005

Nicholas Brown, assistant professor of English and African American studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will present a speech titled ?The Politics of Musical Form: Brazilian Popular Music and the Coup of 1964? at noon on Tuesday, Feb. 22 at Carleton College?s Gould Library Athenaeum. The event is free and open to the public.

Brown currently teaches modernism, African literature and critical theory. He has done research in areas such as Marxism, the history of aesthetics, Lusophone literature and music studies.

Brown will speak on tropicália, a late- 1960s/early 1970s musical movement that combined North American rock, blues, jazz, folk and psychedelic music with Brazilian and other Latin American styles. Closely identified with youth and counterculture, tropicália was the most visible part of an artistic movement that sought to redefine Brazilian culture, and actively helped subvert the military dictatorship which had taken over the country in 1964. In part, tropicália also was a reaction to the perceived stodginess of bossa nova music, which had been the dominant pop style since the late 1950s. Both tropicália and bossa nova have come to be referred to as part of modern Brazilian pop, though the term originally applied only to tropicália.

Brown?s lecture also will focus on the coup of 1964, which served as both a turning point in Brazilian history and a key event nearing the end of the Cold War. Before the coup, Brazilian populism attempted to converge the extremely divergent goals of the imbalanced Brazilian economic classes, in order to stimulate the Brazilian economy. The attempts caused much tension, but also led to the creation of some of the greatest modernisms ever, including concretism in poetry, Brazilian constructivism in plastic arts, innovative experiments in architecture and bossa nova in music. The tension eventually brought about the coup of 1964 and a period of artistic experimentation of new forms.

For more information and disability accommodations, call Carleton?s library at (507) 646-4260.