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.

Gravidade
Caetano Veloso Lyrics

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Asa asa asa asa
Não ter asa
Pedras no fundo azul

Água água água água
Barbatana
Seixo rolando no leito

Chama chama chama chama
Nada nada
Sonho afogado no ar

Asa asa asa asa
O vento entra pela casa
Pedra de sono na cama
Sonho no fundo do leito
Brasa debaixo da cinza
Anjo no peito da terra
Asa no fundo do sonho

Asa asa asa asa
Rio infinito no leito de um rio

Seixo seixo seixo seixo

Destino do destino
Destino do destino

Overall Meaning

The song Gravidade by Caetano Veloso is a poem that uses repetitive phrases to explore the concept of gravity and its opposite, flight or weightlessness. The first stanza juxtaposes the image of wings with the reality of not having them, symbolized by stones in a blue abyss. The repetition of the word "asa" (wing) emphasizes the longing for the ability to fly and escape the limitations of the physical world. The second stanza uses the image of water and a fish with a rolling pebble to depict the struggle of navigating through the forces that hold us down.

The third stanza introduces the element of fire with the word "chama" (flame), which is repeated to suggest the fleeting nature of dreams that can be extinguished by the weight of reality. The imagery of drowning in air adds to the sense of suffocation and hopelessness. The final stanza brings together the previous themes in a series of associations that evoke a sense of the infinite and the unstoppable force of destiny. The repetition of "asa" and "seixo" (pebble) create a rhythm that culminates in the idea of destiny being the destiny of destiny itself.

Overall, Gravidade is a meditation on the physical and spiritual aspects of gravity, and the tension between the desire for flight and the pull of the earth. The song invites the listener to reflect on the power of forces that shape our experience of the world, and the possibility of transcending them.

Line by Line Meaning

Asa asa asa asa
Wings wings wings wings

Não ter asa
Not having wings

Pedras no fundo azul
Stones at the bottom of blue

Água água água água
Water water water water

Barbatana
Fin

Seixo rolando no leito
Pebble rolling on the bed

Chama chama chama chama
Flame flame flame flame

Nada nada
Nothing nothing

Sonho afogado no ar
Dream drowned in air

O vento entra pela casa
The wind enters through the house

Pedra de sono na cama
Sleep stone in the bed