Música popular brasileira experimental: Itamar Assumpção, a vanguarda paulista e a tropicália

Abstract

This article examines the early phase of Itamar Assumpção's career at the start of the 1980s from the point of view of how his challenging music and his nonconformist attitude were received by the Brazilian press and music industry at that time. Despite overwhelmingly positive critical acclaim Assumpção failed to achieve commercial success and widespread popular exposure. This failure (and the failure of the other leading lights of the vanguarda paulista such as Arrigo Barnabé and Grupo Rumo) to break through to commercial success was markedly dissimilar to the trajectory of the majority of the artists associated with the tropicália movement of the late 1960s, despite the fact that tropicália also set out to radically challenge the style of contemporary popular music.