In the late 1960s, the cultural explosion across the Western World shaped the next half a century with its summer of love, embrace of psychedelia, artistic experimentation and protest songs. From Sunshine Pop in California, the Canterbury Sound in Southern England to the beginnings of New York’s growing Avant-garde proto-punk scene, these musicians are now carved into the fabric of our collective history, but whilst Satanic Majesties, Pet Sounds and the Velvets brought psychedelia into pop music in the West, Tropicália was having its moment in Brazil.

Tropicália rose during the American-Backed Military Dictatorship that lasted 21 years, with artists and creatives pushing back with new experimentations in music, poetry and art. Musicians such Caetona Veloso and Tom Zé pioneered a new sound that took influence from psychedelia, garage rock and baroque pop but where the foundations in the West were in blues and Western folk, Tropicálias basis was in Samba, Bossa Nova and traditional Afro-Brazilian music. 

To celebrate Velosos birthday, we’ve picked out some of our favourite albums from the genre, move over Sgt Peppers because Tropicália is here.