MUSIC, POLITICS AND BOHEMIA IN FORTALEZA

MPB MAKES YOUR SCENE (1980 – 1985)

Abstract

During the process of political opening of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship, young musician-students from the Federal University of Ceará, in Fortaleza, adopt independent/alternative music practices and become part of an embryonic local MPB circuit. This article is based on a master's thesis, in which I propose to discuss the scene of popular music in Fortaleza between the years 1980 and 1985. The analysis takes as a reference the trajectory of seven artists, namely Amaro Penna, Calé Alencar, Dilson Pinheiro, Eugênio Leandro, Jabuti Fonteles, Parahyba and Pingo de Fortaleza. We revisit and contextualize local production throughout the 20th century, during the consolidation of cultural industries and centralization of the dissemination of symbolic goods in the Rio-São Paulo axis. Different from a romantic idea of a generation that chose to “stay in Ceará” – in contrast to the trajectory of musicians who migrated in the previous decade – we propose that, in the early 1980s, a series of factors contributed to the consolidation of a music scene linked to MPB in Fortaleza and connected to independent music circuits in other cities.