Caetano Emanoel Viana Teles Veloso (born August 7, 1942 in Santo Amaro, Bah… Read Full Bio ↴Caetano Emanoel Viana Teles Veloso (born August 7, 1942 in Santo Amaro, Bahia, Brazil), professionally known as Caetano Veloso, is a singer, composer, musician, producer, arranger, writer and political activist, being one of the most popular and influential Brazilian MPB artists of all time. With a career that exceeds five decades, Caetano has built a musical work marked by renewal and widely considered to possess great intellectual and poetic value.

Veloso is the fifth of the seven children born to José Telles Veloso ("Seu Zezinho") and Claudionor Vianna Telles Veloso ("Dona Canô"). His younger sister Maria Bethânia, another popular and renowned artist in Brazil, preceded him to fame as a singer in the mid-1960s. He began his career around 1965 singing bossa nova and he has cited his greatest musical influences from his early period as João Gilberto and Dorival Caymmi. (João Gilberto would say later about Caetano's contribution that it added an intellectual dimension to brazilian popular music.) But with such musical collaborators Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Tom Zé, Chico Buarque, and Os Mutantes, and greatly influenced by the later work of The Beatles, developed tropicalismo, which fused Brazilian pop with rock and roll and avant garde art music resulting in a more international, psychedelic, and socially aware sound. Veloso's politically active stance, unapologetically leftist, earned him the enmity of Brazil's military dictatorship which ruled until 1985; his songs were frequently censored, and some were banned. Veloso was also alienated from the socialist left in Brazil becasue of his acceptance and integration of non-nationalist influences (like rock and roll) in his music. Veloso and Gilberto Gil spent several months in jail for "anti-government activity" in 1968 and eventually exiled themselves to London. Caetano Veloso's work upon his return in 1972 was often characterized by frequent appropriations not only of international styles, but of half-forgotten Brazilian folkloric styles and rhythms as well. In particular, his celebration of the Afro-Brazilian culture of Bahia can be seen as the precursor of such Afro-centric groups as Timbalada.

In the 1980s, Veloso's popularity outside Brazil grew, especially in Israel, Portugal, France and Africa. By 2004, he was one of the most respected and prolific international pop stars, with more than fifty recordings available, including songs in soundtracks of movies such as Pedro Almodovar's Hable con Ella (Talk to Her), and Frida. In 2002 Veloso published an account of his early years and the Tropicalia movement, Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil.

His first all-English CD was A Foreign Sound (2004), which covers Nirvana's "Come as You Are" and compositions from the Great American Songbook. Five of the six songs on his third eponymous album, released in 1971, were also in English.

Giulietta Masina
Caetano Veloso Lyrics

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Pálpebras de neblina
Pele d'alma
Lágrima negra tinta
Lua, lua, lua, lua
Giulietta Masina

Ah, puta de uma outra esquina
Ah, minha vida sozinha

Ah, tela de luz puríssima

(Existirmos a que será que se destina?)

Ah, Giulietta Masina
Ah, vídeo de uma outra luz

Pálpebras de neblina
Pele d'alma

Giulietta Masina
Aquela cara é o coração de Jesus

Overall Meaning

The opening lines of Caetano Veloso's song "Giulietta Masina" speak of "misty eyelids" and a "soul's skin" - metaphors for the nebulous and intangible nature of the subject at hand. The repeated refrain of "Lua, lua, lua, lua" (moon, moon, moon, moon) adds to a dream-like atmosphere, conjuring images of a nocturnal landscape where the characters that populate the song move about.

The titular character, Giulietta Masina, was an Italian actress who appeared in several classic films, most notably in the lead role of Federico Fellini's "La Strada" (1954). Veloso's song speaks obliquely of Masina, using her as a symbol for a larger idea. "Ah, puta de uma outra esquina" (Oh, whore of another corner) may seem like a harsh line at first, but it speaks to the idea of the "other" - someone on the periphery, someone who is not the singer themselves. Similarly, "ah, minha vida sozinha" (oh, my lonely life) speaks to a sense of alienation and disconnection, which is compounded by the image of "tela de luz puríssima" (pure light screen).

The final lines of the song - "aquela cara é o coração de Jesus" (that face is the heart of Jesus) - add a religious element to the mix. Perhaps the paradoxical combination of a "whore" and a "saint" is suggestive of a larger tension between the sacred and the profane, the divine and the earthly.

Overall, "Giulietta Masina" is a song that invites interpretation, not only in terms of its enigmatic lyrics, but also in the way it weaves together disparate elements - the cinematic, the spiritual, the nocturnal - into a tapestry that is both haunting and elusive.

Line by Line Meaning

Pálpebras de neblina
The misty eyelids

Pele d'alma
The soul's skin

Lágrima negra tinta
Black ink tears

Lua, lua, lua, lua
Moon, moon, moon, moon

Giulietta Masina
Giulietta Masina

Ah, puta de uma outra esquina
Oh, whore from another corner

Ah, minha vida sozinha
Oh, my lonely life

Ah, tela de luz puríssima
Oh, purest screen of light

(Existirmos a que será que se destina?)
(To what end does existence lead us?)

Ah, Giulietta Masina
Oh, Giulietta Masina

Ah, vídeo de uma outra luz
Oh, video of another light