From other lands and languages to wake you up: Taiguara, music as a battlefield

This work addresses the surveillance of ideologies and customs by the State apparatus during the Military Dictatorship in Brazil, especially concerning music. The case of Taiguara stands out, as a composer who, by repeatedly trying to personally defend his songs, ended up gaining a reputation of nonconformity in the face of censorship. This eventually worsened as the military regime began to restrict not only songs about customs, but also about content considered subversive. Thus, there is a nexus of causality between the musician’s career, and in parallel, the escalation of repression beginning with the Coup of 1964. Surveillance was evident even during the televised music festivals of the 1960s, where the musician had a constant presence. This eventually led to Taiguara’s two periods of exile, the first in England and the second in Tanzania. The album Imyra, Tayra, Ipy (1976) was the culmination of this persecution, because even though it had passed the filter of censorship, it was hastily recalled as soon as it was distributed. In addition to discussing the exile and censorship faced by Taiguara, we analyze the composer’s musical solutions and lyrics in this context. His critical stance and defense of agendas that today would be classified as progressive made him stand out as an artist in search of freedom of expression.