POPULAR AND POLITICAL SONGS IN BELÉM

“CABOCLO” SOUND AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTALIST ACTIONS IN BRAZILIAN POPULAR MUSIC (MPB)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to revisit, by the light of musical production, the theme of engagement in Belém in the late 1960s and in the 1970s. This study is a reflection about some musical and sociocultural references put into songs whose composers expressed themselves critically about the aesthetical debates related to MPB music and political issues linked to the developmental state actions in Brazilian Amazon. They projected, in brightly colors, images and ideas through which they gave visibility to the aspects of local reality, at the same time, came out in their defense. Such participant attitude, carved in the frames of a “conscious alignment”, a “choice of position”, selective, partial and arbitrary as any other, indicates, most of the times, a form of the artist’s engagement in the dynamic and unpredictable game of social relations in the present.