Gilberto Gil and Haroldo de Campos: in(con)fluencies, transcreation of the song

Abstract

Between 1967 and 1968, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso headed Tropicália, an avant-garde movement in Brazilian Popular Music. In the tropicalist phase of their appearances in Festivals, Gil and Caetano had contact with the Brazilian concrete poets. The lyrics of “Batmakumba”, 1968, written in partnership between Gil and Caetano, are a concrete poem. The concretists also contributed to the enthusiasm of the baianos towards Oswald de Andrade’s Anthropophagy. Gil had already revealed an ‘anthropophagic’ vocation in 1967, when he dreamed about mixing electrified musical innovations from abroad with authochtonous artistic manifestations; the Beatles with the Banda de Pífanos from Caruaru. Anthropophagy, Transcreation and Tropicália coincide in their incorporation of foreign elements as a revitalizing food for national art. We are to discuss this convergence from the perspective of its resonances in the work of Gil as a song translator. There are similarities between poetry translation and song translation, and some song translations by Gil are consistent with brothers Campos’ ideas in two aspects: in the procedures used to translate, and in the very selection of the songs to be translated, which seem chosen bearing in mind certain contributions to the semiotic target system.