Caetano Veloso, from Lisbon, speaks slowly, via video call, with that mix of intellectual lucidity and Bahian melancholy that for six decades has turned each of his interviews into something more like a philosophical conversation than a simple promotion of albums or concerts. At 83 years old, the Brazilian musician is facing a tour titled Caetano nos festivais, which will pass through Spain (Madrid, June 4) and which he himself describes, without dramatism but with honesty, as perhaps the last stop in our country. And that despite the close relationship he has always maintained with Spanish culture. But there is no monumental nostalgia in his words; rather physical tiredness, wise resignation, political concern, and a bitter — although not yet defeated — look at the present. He speaks, without losing passion, about the military dictatorship his country suffered, Silicon Valley, The Beatles, contemporary confusion, and a Brazil that, despite everything, still believes it can “say something to the world.”
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Question. How are you facing this tour? Has your relationship with your voice and the stages changed much over the years?
Answer. I am old [laughs], so I arrived in Lisbon and stayed a few days before singing in Porto, then returning here and then going to Madrid. I think that way it will be possible. Before I would arrive at places and go out to chat, eat, walk… This time I am quieter, wanting to feel more rested.
Q. Many people think these could be your last concerts in Spain. You yourself hinted at it in a video on Instagram.
A. I don’t think exactly like that, but I believe it’s not very easy to think about making long trips at this stage of life. When I return to Brazil, maybe I won’t want to travel to far places anymore. Although you never know. Roberto Menescal [bossa nova musician], who is 88 years old, said he would never return to Japan because it is very far… and now maybe he will go again. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not sure.
Q. Does that change the way you approach a concert? A performance is not the same as “the last one.”
A. This concert is basically a reflection of what I have been doing in Brazil lately. But the song selection is very current because they are strong songs, confronting the absurdities of the world. From various periods of my life, yes, but now they sound different because the world seems very crazy.
Q. There are veteran artists who end up becoming monuments. You, on the other hand, keep debating with the present. Does nostalgia bother you?
A. No, but I feel aware of what is happening. I see the complexity and difficulty of international and national issues. That even influences me in the choice of songs.
Q. Tropicalism advocated absorbing foreign culture instead of protecting oneself from it. Does that idea remain valid in the digital age?
A. The world has changed a lot. Those ideas were healthy for Brazil for many years. But today, with the digital world and technological changes, the issue is different. Many new people constantly appear on social networks and it is very difficult to know who is really special. The very idea of the “cultural star” belongs more to the past. We wanted to recognize that Brazil was part of the world and absorb influences without submitting to them. That remains important to me, although now everything happens much faster and more confusingly.
Q. That movement took much from Anglo-Saxon culture, especially The Beatles.
A. The Beatles were a very interesting phenomenon in the history of song and the world. We wanted to recognize their creative strength without placing ourselves beneath them. To understand that this was part of the world we lived in, but continue making Brazilian music. We admired the creative freedom they showed and the way they constantly expanded their artistic possibilities, but the intention was never to imitate them, but to dialogue with that energy from our own tradition.
Q. You have always fought cultural purism.
A. Because it cannot be true, especially in colonial countries like ours. In America, cultural purity does not exist. We wanted more creative energy and that is why we did not accept the closed defense of tradition. Later we discovered the ideas of Oswald de Andrade [poet and essayist] and that notion of “cultural cannibalism”: devouring the influences of the dominant world to transform them into something ours. That complex vision of culture still seems valid to me.
Q. The song Alegría, alegría seemed to announce a modern and open Brazil in 1968. What do you feel when you look at today’s Brazil?
A. It was already an ironic song. We were under the military dictatorship. There was everyday pleasure in the song, yes, but also a bitter look. Today that irony still exists. I made an album a few years ago, Meu coco [from 2021], where there are very critical songs about the digital world and Silicon Valley. A bitter, although complex, view.
Q. You suffered imprisonment and exile during the dictatorship. Are you worried about the return of certain authoritarian longings?
A. Yes. There are people who publicly say they would like the military dictatorship to return. And they say it as if it were nothing. For me, that is unbearable. Prison, confinement, and exile were very painful experiences. We were imprisoned for two months, then confined for several months in Salvador, and then exiled for more than two years. That even changed my way of facing the world.
Q. For years you were criticized both by conservatives and some sectors of the left. Did that make you feel freer?
A. The criticisms from the left made us suffer, of course, but they were part of the cultural debate. It made me feel freer, certainly. The painful thing was the attitude of the military: prison, confinement, exile. That even changed my courage.
Q. There is always beauty in your work, even when you talk about painful matters. Is aesthetics still a form of resistance?
A. Yes, without a doubt. You have to be like that.
Q. You defended aesthetic and sexual ambiguity long before it was common. Is there more real freedom today or simply more exposure?
A. Now it seems there is more exposure than anything else. When I wrote Verdad tropical [your autobiography, from 1997] I said that the left needed to pay more attention to racial, sexual, and behavioral issues. But today it seems to me that there is too much racialization, sexualization, and emphasis on gender issues. That creates a lot of confusion.
Q. Does writing songs still move you?
A. Yes, I feel the desire. But the capacity seems less due to old age. Even so, I continue doing it.
Q. What do you keep from the young Bahian who arrived in São Paulo in the sixties?
A. I keep reaffirming the interesting things that young man started to do. But now I better understand what it means to be old and see how the world changes.
Q. When you think about Brazil’s future, does optimism or concern prevail in you?
A. Right now concern prevails in me; sometimes a kind of disenchantment. I try to avoid a too dreamy view of reality. Brazilian popular music still represents one of the country’s great cultural forces, but today things are so bad… Brazil seems like it cannot be saved. But at the same time, the feeling that it can still say something important to the world, bring a different presence, another sensitivity, keeps coming back to me. That feeling has not died inside me.
