Tom Zé and the performance of citizenship in Brazil

Abstract

AbstractThis paper examines the recent historical trajectory of the idea of citizenship in Brazil through the perspective of Tom Zé, a composer and musician noted for his juxtaposition of avant-garde poetics and popular music. My study begins with his participation in the watershed Tropicália movement of the 1960s, focusing on his critique of consumer society and its implications for popular citizenship. In the early 1970s, the figure of the bourgeois citizen, or senhor cidadão, appears in his work as a caustic critique of those who benefited most from the expansion of capitalism during the period of authoritarian rule. With the re-emergence of civil society and redemocratisation in the 1980s, Tom Zé's work reveals a more affirmative notion of citizenship premised on the discourse of self-represenation among working-class subjects. Finally, this paper discusses Tom Zé's most recent work and its contribution to insurgent forms of citizenship in contemporary Brazil involving historically marginalised and impoverished urban communities within the context of neo-liberal globalisation.