Tom Zé

b. Antônio José Santana Martins, 1936, Bahia, Brazil. A master craftsman of unorthodox Brazilian pop music, Zé is credited with the creation of Brazil’s radical variant of jazz fusion, tropicalismo, in the 60s. Alongside artists such as Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, he wove together free jazz guitar, electronics and highly politicised lyrics to protest at the right-wing military junta then controlling Brazil. Zé created his own instruments (including one made of blenders, typewriters and radios all mounted in a giant box and taking up most of his beach house), and used tape recorders triggered by doorbells and floor sanders to make music. He would also refuse to listen to any conventional popular music lest it influence his own compositions. Many of the tropicalismo artists were jailed, including Zé, who was imprisoned on two occasions. However, of all his peers Zé was the most fearlessly experimental, and he began to run out of musical partners and become marginalized within the Brazilian music scene.

He lost his recording contract in the 70s, and had to make do with various odd jobs to support himself, playing music only part-time. ‘I was at the point where I was thinking of going to work in my nephew’s gas station in my hometown of Irará, ’ he recalled. Eventually, David Byrne found one of his old albums in a Brazilian record store and decided to track him down. The result was a new contract with Byrne’s Luaka Bop label, and artistic rehabilitation for Zé, who cemented the partnership with a greatest hits collection. He followed this up with two albums of typically avant garde jazz, The Hips Of Tradition: The Return Of Tom Zé (1992) and Com Defeito De Fabricação (1998). Ever political, the title track of the latter release referred to what the artist described as first world domination of non-industrialised cultures. Zé’s work was later remixed by a series of western alternative rock and dance music acts, including Tortoise, Sean Lennon, Stereolab and the High Llamas, who had become infatuated with his Luaka Bop recordings. The approbation caused Zé some confusion: ‘It’s strange because I’m used to being on the outside, and now they’re treating me like an old idol.’ ~ Rovi