Tropicália's Second Generation: Sounding Antropofagia and New Gendered Tropes

During the first decade of the 21st century, new groups of artists of all disciplines, reminiscent of the 1960s Tropicália movement, have emerged in different parts of Brazil. In 2020, they have come to constitute a cohesive new tropicalista wave which gravitates in Rio de Janeiro around Moreno Veloso, Bem Gil and Alexander Kassin, in São Paulo around Ava Rocha and Léo Negro, and includes more artists of Minas Gérais, Recife, Brasília and Salvador. With a constructive message based on non-violent music and non-violent communication, these heirs of Tropicália inspire other second generation tropicalistas to challenge the Brazilian status quo and its habits of consumption by using peaceful strategies. Armed with kind lyrics and compassionate behavior, they articulate a pacifist response to gender debates, social chiasms and violence in Brazil. By engaging in non-commercial music production, alternative promotion and digital distribution the new tropicalistas model a pacific subversion which connects with forms of resistance from Amerindian and LGBTQ groups (see examples in chapter VI). Powered by a praxis of cultural borrowing such as the antropofagia philosophy and a transnational musical legacy that includes samba and bossa nova, this new tropicalista wave offers an inclusive and cosmopolitan fusion of Brazilian values. Built on intellectual bases from anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and non-violent teachings, including those of non- Brazilian artists such as Alice Coltrane, these new tropicalistas, while refusing to be seen as a movement, challenge power and the post-colonial perpetuation of race and class exclusion in Brazil