Tom Ze (The Wire, 2001)

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It could never be convincingly argued that São Paolo is an attractive
city: a Brazilian megalopolis where over 20 million people are
crammed into a giant conurbation of badly constructed roads, concrete
buildings, favelas (slums) and glistening skyscrapers; its populace
combats high pollution levels, crime and poverty at every turn. But
for all that, São Paolo isn't without a certain charm. Despite its
social and environmental problems, its inhabitants have an ability to
grin in the face of misfortune and a famous passion for football,
'novellas' (soap operas) and music.

In a ten floor apartment block in the middle of this contradictory
but captivating city lives Tom Zé, arguably Brazil's most
unconventional musical maverick, a composer who eschews the sanitised
strumming of bossa nova and the mainstream makeovers of MPB (Musica
Popular Brasileira, the umbrella term for the country's popular
mainstream styles) in favour of dissonance, angularity, contrapuntal
harmonies and experiments with 'objetos concrete'. Also a poet and
troubadour whose lyricism ranges from biting satire and wry humour to
nonsensical streams of consciousness, brutal iconoclasm and
deconstructed semiotics, Zé, it must be said, is no ordinary cookie.

Now aged 64, Zé has had his share of highs and lows. The author of
some nine albums of original material, his avant garde innovations
have swung him from mass popularity and critical acceptance to
virtual invisibility and back again. On the surface his recordings
can seem meandering and erratic, and Zé's lengthy career has suffered
from wildly fluctuating popularity, but it has remained artistically
consistent.

Although he doesn't usually look forward to interviews, today Zé is
animated and eager to discuss his new album, Jogos De Amar (Games Of
Love) to be released through the São Paolo label Trama. The project
carries special resonance for him, since it features a rebuilt
version of his famous 'cabinet of instruments', a collection of
doorbells, whistles, sandblasters, car horns and floor polishers that
Zé wired up to a keyboard back in 1978.

"It's something I've wanted to do for a long time," he relates via a
translator. "It was deemed too experimental for Luaka Bop, which is
why I've collaborated with Trama. We've basically recreated the
different types of instruments to be more or less the same as the old
version. I began working with these kinds of things after I found a
broken sandblaster at home. When I released the button, the sound
stopped immediately instead of winding down like it normally would,
which meant I could get an interesting staccato noise every time I
turned it on and off. I had another one exactly the same in the
house, so I deliberately broke it and composed a song with just these
two sanders and my voice. That's how it all started."

Although Zé is renowned for using any number of instruments to add
colour to his compositions, this particular contrivance was never
recorded. After being stored at a friend's father's house (Zé was in
the middle of selling his house at the time), the machine eventually
became a burden and was used somewhat less creatively as firewood.
But now it's back, and on Jogos De Amar, the weird and wonderful
assortment of taps, slaps, horn blasts, whistles, clanks and whirrs
provide subtle embellishments to Zé's awkward but beautiful songs.
Here, as in almost all of his work, he deftly combines strange,
exotic melodies, intricate syncopation, clipped vocal delivery and
aberrant but socially aware lyricism into a highly idiosyncratic
whole.

Once again, Zé focuses on rhythm on his new project, this time going
so far as to 'invent' a new one. "With some of my records, people
didn't know whether to come in on the one or the two beat, so a
drummer that I know came up with an idea for a new rhythm that I call
'chamegá'. He invested in it himself and there are three tunes on the
album that use it. There's also a special dance that goes with it;
the rhythm is quite close to maxixé but the dance was already
invented in a way. We used to do a similar version of it when I was
young. It involves pulling your shirt up and slapping bellies - it
was a kind of sex education as well."

Zé shows his egalitarian side by supplying an extra CD, which
deconstructs some of the songs on Jogos into separate clicks, strums,
whistles, sounds and drum patterns so that people can remix the
components into their own versions of the originals. "The first thing
that people can see is that the loops I use are simple," he declares.
"They'll say, 'Hey, he's earning a living doing this!' I'm letting
people play around with these different loops because although
popular music isn't considered as highly as other types of art, it's
one of the few musics where it gives the opportunity for people to
get involved - it's more accessible. Plus my music is naturally made
up of separate pieces that can be rearranged, a little bit like the
hanging mobiles of Alexander Calder."

To fully analyse, understand and evaluate Zé's work, it's necessary
to step back into his childhood. He was born Antonio José Santana
Martins in the tiny village of Irará in the northeast of Brazil (120
km from Salvador) on 11 October 1936. Due to the intensity of the
slave trade between 1538 and 1880 (abolition came into effect
officially in 1850 but was duly ignored), the north east is
culturally closer to Africa than to most other regions of Brazil.
Zé's grandparents were two of the five million or so African slaves
imported into the country by the Portuguese colonists. His parents
were part of a reactionary party called the UDN, while his aunt and
uncle were fully fledged communists; his uncle, Fernando Santana, was
secretary of the Communist Party of Bahia but was a rebel even inside
the party.

"Irará in 1936 was another century," comments Zé. "In the south of
the village it rained a lot and in the north it was always very dry.
Sometimes we would have two years of rain and then a whole one
without. My father's textile store sold clothes and blankets but if
it didn't rain, people didn't have any money to buy them and my
family didn't have money to eat."

During the 40s, as Zé was growing up, the most popular music styles
in Brazil were 'samba-canção' (which would become samba as we now
know it), or imported tangos, boleros and waltzes. However, since the
musical traditions that had come over from Africa were constantly
being integrated with Portuguese styles (it was they who introduced
the European tonal system, Moorish scales and medieval European modes
and provided instruments like the flute, piano, violin, cavaquinho
and tambourine), the North East was ripe with interesting hybrids,
rhythms and rituals such as afoxé, jongo, lundu, maracatu, baião and
maxixé.

Throughout the 40s, north eastern musicians such as Luiz Gonzaga and
Jackson Do Pandeiro did much to popularise these sounds, offering
their own colourful, rhythmic and lyrically topical amalgams. The
latter character especially was a profound influence on the young Zé,
though he would only realise it much later. In fact, Zé's pre-teenage
musical experiences amounted to little more than a cursory interest
in his parents' classical music collection, with Stravinsky and
Bartók standing out as particular favourites. Despite the fact that
he greatly enjoyed folk sounds like samba-de-roda, bumba-meu-boi,
chegança and reisado, and also listened to romantic songs on the
National Radio of Rio De Janeiro and the Carnaval songs made every
February, Zé didn't even begin to think about music until he was 17.

"I didn't care about music really until a friend of mine showed me
his guitar," he reveals. "I wasn't particularly interested in the
instrument at all, but when he played this strange chord sequence I
immediately decided I wanted to play. The skies blackened and I
rushed off to buy a book so that I could learn. I couldn't play
anything, but I taught myself a couple of basic chords and spent time
playing with friends and local villagers. We'd play games such as
desafio, a traditional African game, similar to repente in Spanish
countries, where two of us would challenge each other. We'd throw
around all these C sharp and E sharp exchanges at each other, and
trade lyrics and verses."

Zé's first compositions were poetic paeans to Irará and its larger
than life characters. One of his best known songs was a limerick
about one Maria Bago Mole, a woman in her late thirties who "educated
many of the young boys in sexual matters". The song became so well
known that Zé would play it around the village, remaining silent for
the chorus so that groups of villagers could join in. His reputation
for idiosyncratic compositions and witty lyrics began to grow, though
his early ambitions to become a village troubadour were thwarted.

"I had a girlfriend when I was around 18," he says. "I hadn't told
her that I played guitar, but she found out and wanted me to play
some love songs for her. I went home and composed some but when I got
to her house I couldn't play at all - I simply froze. Because of that
I gave up sentimental music and love songs altogether... because I
couldn't compose beautiful songs for my girlfriend I started to make
crazy songs. The important thing for me was to make music that people
would pay attention to... I wanted to entertain them for the whole
three minutes and it became a challenge. I started making songs that
people weren't used to and I got requested to play a lot because of
this. In this way, music became my profession even though I had no
real musical talent."

In 1960, some members of the village arranged for Zé to appear on a
popular TV talent contest called Stairs To Success. Despite having
never seen a TV set before, he travelled to the show to perform,
though when he arrived no one was expecting him. Thankfully they let
him play anyway, with Zé performing a song called "Rampa Para O
Fracasso" ("Ramp To Failure").

"I didn't know what the reaction would be to the song," admits Zé. "I
didn't know if people would understand the lyrics and the whole
approach of the song. I used a local newspaper's headlines for
lyrics, so the song was about some of the problems that Brazil was
suffering from to some extent. I soon realised that people were
interested in the music, and that my lyrics could be politically
relevant."

More local fame ensued, and Zé was afterwards invited to work at the
left wing CPC (Centro Populares de Cultura) in Salvador. There, he
composed some popular music with José Carlos Capina, a left wing poet
from Bahia known for his political outlook. After a couple of years,
spurred on by his friends and family, Zé took the entrance exam for
the College of Music at the University of Bahia and managed to attain
first place. In that same year (1964), a military coup took power in
Brazil. The CPC was shut down, but just as Zé was about to return to
Irará and work with his father, the former director of the
institution offered him a scholarship so he could continue his
studies.

At the university, Zé was taught by a range of distinguished European
teachers, among them Hans Joachim Kollreuther (who also taught
Brazil's most eminent songwriter Tom Jobim), Ernst Widmer (a
passionate follower of Stravinsky and Bartók who taught 12 tone
composition) and Walter Smetak, who taught Zé violin and introduced
him to the notion of constructing his own instruments.

"It's surprising that the government didn't close the university down
as it was traditionally left wing," comments Zé. "It was a very
different place all round, as none of the students had any education
as such; we were barbarians who used to play in a very simplistic
way. But luckily, people like Kollreuther adapted the curriculum in a
simple way for us, and discovered a new way of teaching that brought
our talents into the open. I didn't even know how to write the notes
of music - If you'd played me a scale I couldn't have told you
whether it was minor or major - but I had lots of ideas about the
world and music and this was what the teachers took advantage of.
They made us successful students of erudite music."

By the mid-60s, the musical climate in Brazil was fairly staid. A few
years earlier, the driving, percussive rhythms of samba had been
refined by João Gilberto and Tom Jobim into the soft, romantic sways
of bossa nova. Although this had resulted in some high profile
collaborations with America's jazz giants (Stan Getz, Charlie Byrd,
Herbie Mann, et al), much of the innovation was lost; there were only
so many times and in so many ways one could wish to hear the tale of
"Garota De Ipanema". What was needed was some kind of musical
shake-up, an electric prod to wake the general public from its
slumber.

During his university years, Zé had been introduced to two other
musicians from the Northeast - Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil - by
an astute journalist named Orlando Senna, who reckoned the performers
might have some common ground. In 1967, Zé - notorious for not
listening to much music outside his own compositions - was taken to
São Paulo by Veloso and introduced to the music of The Beatles.
"[Veloso] took me to a hotel and played me the whole of the Sgt
Pepper's record," laughs Zé. "He translated every single lyric and
said to me, 'OK, you might not listen to much music, but there's no
way you can miss out on this. It's too important'."

Within a few months, the trio, along with others such as Os Mutantes
and Gal Costa, found themselves at the forefront of a controversial
creative movement called Tropicalismo, or Tropicália. One of the
central ideas of the phenomenon - which encompassed visual art,
architecture, poetry, drama and music - was based on the writings of
concrete poet Oswald De Andrade, who in his Anthropophagic Manifesto
(1928) first posited the theory of 'cultural cannibalism'. The poet
wrote of devouring the cultures of Europe and Africa, digesting them
and spitting out whatever new mixture was created.

The musicians who embraced this philosophy did so with vigour, coming
up with a kaleidoscopic, intellectualised pop music that merged
Anglo-American traditions (from The Beatles to Hendrix) with
Afro-Brazilian sounds, jazz, R&B and psychedelia. The resultant music
- which Veloso would later describe as a form of syncretism - was
wide ranging, but even at its least potent stood in stark contrast to
much bossa.

In July 1968 Veloso decided that the movement's musicians should work
together as a group. The subsequent 'manifesto' LP was Tropicália Ou
Panis Circensis (Tropicália Or Bread And Circuses). Zé's contribution
was a satirical song called "Parque Industrial", a kind of
anti-development song which told of a group of children who were
turned from laughing, fun loving innocents into mindless consumers by
hanging around in a newly built park.

Initially the Tropicalistas were chastised from all sides. The Left
hated them for bowing to Western music styles (they particularly
resented the inclusion of electric guitar), while the Right labelled
them surrealists, Dadaists and a threat to the established order. The
government decided that the group's lyrics were opening people's
minds and began to persecute anyone involved; Veloso and Gil were
both arrested at the end of 1968 and went into self-imposed exile in
London. The others managed to avoid such extreme measures (though Zé
was to be arrested twice in the early 70s) and continued playing live
at venues such as the Arena Theatre in São Paolo.

In the same year Zé released a self-titled debut album, which
included "Parque Industrial" and a popular song called "São São
Paolo". Some of the Tropicália music was represented at that year's
MPB awards, at which Zé won an award for "São São Paolo" and a prize
for best lyric writer for "2001", a song he recorded with Os Mutantes
lead vocalist Rita Lee and which was later recorded by Gilberto Gil.

In 1970 Zé released a more commercial album, again entitled Tom Zé,
on RGE (his first album became known as Grande Liquidação after the
words that appeared above his name on the artwork), which featured
another popular song of the time, "Jeitinho Dela". In 1972 he
recorded a third LP for national label Continental (bizarrely enough
with the same name again, though it came to be named after the most
succesful song on the album, "Se O Caso É Chorar"). Lyrically, these
first three albums illustrated that Zé's roving eye could be cast
over his new environment in the same way that he observed the
happenings in Irará. His social observations were delivered in an
increasingly 'concrete' style with alliterative sentences and
nonsensical vocabulary. They also confirmed his fascination with
counterpoints, atonality and unusual juxtapositions, while songs like
"Frevo" on the latter LP harked back to his Northeastern roots.

In 1972, Veloso and Gil returned to Brazil and received a heroes'
welcome. The same crowds who had booed Veloso off the stage a couple
of years earlier now adored him. But Tropicália was already fading:
the government had eased its repression and artists began beating
their own musical paths. Veloso and Gil rode the growing wave of MPB,
experimenting slightly but slowly becoming more and more embedded in
the mainstream they would eventually come to dominate.

Not so Zé, for whom Tropicalismo was more a detour than a total
change of direction. In fact, with his fourth album Todos Os Olhos
(All The Eyes)’ released in 1973, Zé made it clear that he was
content to remain on the fringes of Brazil's music scene. The cover
of the album featured a photomontage by revered concrete poet Augusto
Do Campo (taken from his visual poem "Olho Por Olho" ("Eye For An
Eye"), and inside, the angular arrangements and Dadaist themes were
more prominent than ever before. In creative terms, the album was
arguably his best yet, but in commercial terms it was a flop, and the
composer would spend the next 17 years descending ever further into
obscurity.

"I have no idea why I made that album," sighs Zé, clasping his head
in his hands. "The university students enjoyed it, and luckily there
were enough people in São Paolo that bought it, which helped me
survive for a while. But really that was the end for me; nobody
wanted to listen to me any more after that. It took me completely out
of circulation. Before I had been looking for some success, but with
that album I decided to become free. It nearly cost me my life. When
you take away a baby from her mother she can die. Similarly when I
was taken away from the bosom of the public I suffered a lot, and not
just financially."

Throughout the 70s, Zé's work became ever bolder and more
adventurous, creating innovative albums such as Estudando Do Samba
(Continental 1975) and Correio Da Estação Do Bras (1978) for an ever
decreasing audience. His experimentation with Northeastern rhythms
continued, as did his use of objetos concrete. However, after making
the exceptional Nave Maria in 1984, he all but gave up on music
completely. But once more he was saved. Just as he was on the verge
of returning to Irará and working in a petrol station, he received a
phone call from Talking Heads' David Byrne. Byrne, in Rio to show his
True Stories movie at the Film Festival, had been seduced by the
strange imagery on the cover of Estudando Do Samba (depicting a
length of rope intertwined with barbed wire), and what he heard on
the record aroused his curiosity.

Byrne's Luaka Bop label released the album which re-ignited some
attention for Zé's work, Brazil Classics 4, a collection of Zé's
songs culled from Nave Maria, Todos Os Olhos and Estudando Do Samba.
Its subtitle, Best Of Tom Zé, seems inappropriate for an artist who
had been virtually invisible for the previous two decades, but the
album served its purpose and introduced his work to a whole new
generation; most notably America's sampler-friendly cognoscenti, who
easily found a kindred spirit in Zé's short, clipped songs, use of
found sounds and quirky arrangements.

The punch that pulled Zé back from his defensive position, though,
was an album of new material. The Hips Of Tradition: The Return Of
Tom Zé was issued in 1992 and emphasised the rhythmic aspect of Zé's
work, discarding to an extent his normal obsessions with (a)tonality
and melody. On the album he uses percussion, guitar, bass and words
to tap out hypnotic, suggestive rhythms. "Even the cavaquinhos", he
notes on the album, "are playing in odd intervals, as far as possible
from tonality."

The colourful percussion makes clear his debt to Jackson Do Pandeiro
(the album is dedicated to the musician) with cues from traditional
structures like canção, baião, baião quebrando and various styles of
samba (samba leve, samba-de-roda, samba novela). "Jackson Do Pandeiro
made music by adapting it to his own innovations," remarks Zé, "by
transforming it into something full of charm, rhythms and balance.
One of his best qualities was called 'divisão' [division], which is
the art of transforming the word into something that, besides its
meaning, sounds also like percussion."

On the opening track "Ogodo, Año 2000", Zé deconstructs words into
onomatopoeic syllables so that they merge with the rhythm section.
"Sem A Letra A" is based on a children's game where the letter A has
run away from the alphabet. On "Sufra De Juvenate" ("Suffer From
Youth") he spits his words out in apparently tortured frustration.

One of the most celebrated tracks on the LP, "Fliperamá", is pure,
unadulterated Zé. A hefty HipHop/rock beat sways under Zé's voice as
he phonetically spells out the title as a chorus: "Flip, flip, flip,
filip, filip, filip, flip, filip, flip, flipé, pépé, pépé, pépé rará,
rará, rará, rará rará rará, rá rá, mamá, mamá Fliperamá". The
artist's earlier comments about being unable to write decent love
ballads are also confounded here with the tender "Amar" ("Love").
Zé's next Luaka Bop LP, Com Defeito De Fabricação (Fabrication
Defect, 1998), was even more conceptual; its theme concerned a plot
by the First World to use the population of the Third World as worker
androids, but is distressed to discover that the populations contain
innate 'defects', such as the ability to have ideas and dreams. The
music is illustrated by Pedro Bell-style cartoon artwork which
depicts Zé and his guitar in ecstatic union. This album is also where
Zé elaborates his theories of "arrestão", or "plagi-combination" -
the general idea being that all songs, rhythms, notes, melodies,
tones, structures and even lyrics are reinterpretations or
'borrowings' ('arrestão' describes the bag-snatching routinely
carried out by thieves in Brazil) from those that have gone before.

Throughout the album, he dedicates each song to those he robbed from:
Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Veloso, Jorge Luis Borges, Flaubert and
Saint Augustine. "If I have a coffee, everyone smells the coffee on
my breath," explains Zé. "It's the same with my music: everyone can
see the styles I use. If I drink milk from my mother every day I can
only regurgitate milk. I have tapes here with slow, middle and fast
samba and baião and I don't need much more. I have bass and guitar
which I can use to build on those rhythms. Nave Maria is a good
example of how I have degenerated original rhythms; all of my songs
sound quite similar, as I always use the same kind of rhythms. I am
not a genius but a Japanese - someone that has simply worked hard."
This talk of musical "bag-snatching" could only endear Zé to the
sampler generation, and sure enough a remix album, Postmodern Platos,
followed in 1999 on Luaka Bop, featuring The High Llamas, Amon Tobin,
Sean Lennon, Tortoise's John McEntire and Ui's Sasha Frere-Jones.

"The people that are working with me are like my grandchildren,"
smiles Zé. "When the younger people hear what I do, they call me
their long lost grandfather. When all my records were rereleased
recently, I thought it was great as everyone could listen to them
again. I think they're really old sometimes, but then at other times
I hear things and I can't believe I was doing it in those days."
This project led to McEntire and Zé corresponding regularly and
becoming rather unlikely friends. This in turn sparked Zé's decision
to choose the group as his backing unit for a mini-tour of the USA in
1999. The group rehearsed for just five days before the tour, yet
received gushing reviews. "I met Tortoise for the first time in
1999," says Zé. "When I went there for the tour I spent a week in
John McEntire's house in Chicago, and he was very friendly and
welcoming. The guys manage to play samba that not even the Brazilians
could complain about."

This year Zé is on tour again, and will be coming to London as part
of the Barbican's Only Connect season. Tortoise will again be
providing the musical accompaniment to Zé's onstage antics - last
time he created rhythms (and sparks) by hitting anvils and banging on
hard hats - as the artist revives tracks from Fabrication Defect.

It's remarkable that at 64 years old, Brazil's most ignored pop
collagist and iconoclast is finding fame once more, not only in his
own country but further afield. The irony is not lost on Zé.
"If success happens, it will happen," he concludes. "It doesn't
matter if it comes from below, from the top or from the inside or
outside. It is always something good and opens new possibilities of
working - it's an incentive. Ultimately it was my own inabilities and
deficiencies that made me make this type of music. I never wanted to
be a musician in any real proactive sense, so how can I complain about
anything?"