Monday, Sep 8, 2008
As a performer, Zi was the weirdest in a weird movement. The military came down on the Tropicalistas with extreme censorship in late 1968. Some of the musicians were arrested, others banished. Zi went underground. He began recording with homemade instruments, experimenting with atonal riffs and continuing to write political songs. Zi, unlike his Tropicalista comrades who abandoned much of the strangeness of Tropicalia and became stars, lost his audience.
He languished for years until David Byrne found his records during a stay in Sau Paulo. Byrne tracked down Zi and arranged to release the Brazilian's older songs on his Luaka Bop record label. The first collection, "The Best of Tom Zi," is a pleasant mix of acoustic guitar melodies, strange sounds and Zi's soft, almost soothing voice. At the same time, it's very, very odd: One minute back-up singers coo lullabies, the next there's the sound of metal milling against a grinding wheel. Odd, and very, very pretty.
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Zi in the Irving Plaza lobby: "Politics are in my songs in the same way that to be lovers -- to have a relationship -- is politics, the same way that staring at the moon is politics. For us Brazilians, politics is a very important matter, because politics is destroying us. It's fucking up the country. Politics are in my music because it is part of our food. It is very important."
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Tom Zi is jumping up and down onstage at Irving Plaza. There are 1,100 people in the audience and the show is sold out. He is playing percussion by thumping his chest. Behind him, the members of Tortoise plink on vibes and shake rattles and play fuzzed-out guitar.
People in the audience are not really dancing: They are listening. When Zi asks them to, they sing entire choruses. Some speak Portuguese, many know the lyrics and sing along.
Zi is very pleased with a just-finished version of "Defect 2." He smiles at the mike, gleams at the lights and addresses the crowd. "You know that I no speak English," he says. This does not stop him.
"In Africa, I am the slave. In Brazil, I am the slave. In Brazil, the republic is the slave. But here, here I am the boss."
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"Fabrication Defect" (1998), Zi's third record for Luaka Bop, is a concept album of sorts, based around some of the esthetic theories Zi has been toying with since he began studying music at a university in Bahia in the early '60s. An essay in the liner notes explains that Zi believes that people in the third world have been converted to "a kind of android," which allows them to serve "first world bosses." The androids, however, are not perfect yet, they have defects, which include the ability to think, dance and dream. Zi's album then is a celebration of those defects, broken down into 14 different songs, each celebrating a separate defect.
It's smart music, obviously, but the ideas never seem forced. The three-minute songs effortlessly segue from one to another. "Defect 1: Gene" is a sprightly tune based around ringing guitar patterns and chiming tambourines. "Defect 2: Curiosidade" is a quieter ballad, its acoustic guitar riffing off "Defect 1," with Zi baby-talking in the background.
It's almost suspiciously tight, musically at least. Did Zi ever abandon the album's concept for musical concessions? Is there a difference between the fabrication defect idea and "Fabrication Defect"? "My attempt was to make the record very simple: Defect one, to think, that is the most dangerous defect; defect two can be to love, to study, to dance, to think. These are all defects," he says. "But the songs I get to compose -- like the winds in navigation -- change the direction of the target. My own inspiration changes direction too. It fucked me up."
Not too much. There are moments when you can hear Zi's past, like the "vasolina-gasolina" rhyme he rips off from Caetano Veloso on "Defect 3: Politicar." And there are other moments when Zi sounds like the future, or at least hyper contemporary. The record's figurative centerpiece is the loping, accordion-driven finale, "Defect 14: Xiquexique," which flips from found-sound to rhythm sticks, methodically builds new patterns upon each section and crescendos at five and a half minutes with all the different sounds ramming into one another. It's as dramatic and complicated and weird and exciting as the best songs by Beck, Stereolab or Tortoise.
Brazilian music, once again, is reaching critical mass in the States. Consider:
And so what does it all mean? What were the Tropicalistas onto that still resonates today? For starters, it probably has something to do with the essence of pop: miscegenation and the constant progress that comes with reinventing form by destruction. Then there's the lure of appropriation, the desire to turn a world of sounds into a private playground, and the absurd drama of dada, which allows for laughter in the face of tyranny. And there might be a little political residue, or at least a nostalgia for a time or place where to sing about politics seemed important, when it gave their music force and a reason to exist.
Ask Zi what the fuss is about and he'll answer with a bizarre riddle, one that says everything and nothing at once -- the perfect Tom Zi quote.
"To respond, I will make a metaphor," he says, speaking quietly, his eyes narrowing in. "The ears of the dollar are more sensitive than the honors of the dollar."
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