Say what you will about despots, but at least they inspire flippin’ great music — think the blues, pre–Pol Pot Cambodian garage rock, and especially Tropicália, the late-1960s Brazilian stew of psychedelia and native beats. Even four decades later, Tropicália buzzes in your brain like Red Bull: bubbly, organ-drenched f-yous by Brazilian hipsters to the country’s military dictatorship, heavy on the chord play and politics. It shimmered brightest during those Manichaean years, 1967 and 1968, spurred on by musical titans Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil (now Brazil’s Minister of Culture), Tom Zé and other assorted maniacs. And then the despots got mad: They imprisoned Veloso and Gil but allowed the Tropicálistasone final show so they could raise funds for airplane tickets to England, where the despots deported the... More >>>