Tropical ginsberg

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Americans of the 1950s as a noble and dignifying act, in the most
transgressive of all manners. A very similar confrontation can be seen in
a letter written by Gilberto Gil in 1970.
In 1970, the exiled Gilberto Gil received a prize – a Golden
Dolphin – from the Museu da Imagem e do Som 238 (MIS), for his
farewell samba to Brazil, “Aquele Abraço,” which he had written and
recorded just a few months before being forced to leave the country. Gil
rejected the prize through a letter published in the journal O Pasquim. In
this letter Gil attacked the entire industry that was rewarding him with
an “insignificant” dolphin, he also condemned what that industry
represented to him, an “asphyxiating cultural paternalization, moralist,
stupid, and reactionary.” 239 Very much like the confronting farewell tone
of Ginsberg’s “America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel,”
Gil also says, “Para mim, a essa altura, aceitar ou não prêmios ao
trabalho que fiz no Brasil já não tem a menor importância. Agora eu
estou on the road.” 240 Gil was many miles away from home, doing, and
searching other sounds, while having to work hard in swinging London,
at that point he did not care if the MIS was praising “Aquele Abraço,”
he did not need anything from the MIS, and certainly was not going to
accept an award from an institution which, in the recent past, had
vehemently stigmatized his work. Like Ginsberg, Gil was confronting
the conservative musical and cultural industries of Brazil, he would
continue doing his songs, his own style, no matter if others liked it or
not.
It is my belief that this research is significant for all those who
wish to know a little bit more about beat literature, especially the life
and work of poet Allen Ginsberg, as well as the creation and
significance of the musical and cultural movement Tropicália. There is
not much research about Allen Ginsberg, or the beats, being conducted,
on the academic level, in Brazil, as far as I was able to research. My
(re)interpretation of the Tropicália, in comparison with Allen Ginsberg’s
work, is pioneering, and promotes another type of debate over a much
commented topic. The proposition of this study was to reconsider what
had been written about Ginsberg and the tropicalistas, while trying to
find similarities between them. Even though the relation between
238 Museum of Image and Sound.
239 Coelho, Frederico, and Cohn, Sergio Tropicália. Rio de Janeiro: Beco do Azogue, 2008.
253. The original reads, “sempre esteve contra a paternalização cultural asfixiante, moralista,
estúpida e reacionária.”
240 Ibid. 231. Which reads, “for me, at this stage, to accept or not prizes to the work that I did in
Brazil already have no importance whatsoever. Now I am on the road.”