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.

O Samba E O Tango
Caetano Veloso Lyrics

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Chegou a hora, chegou, chegou
Meu corpo treme, ginga qual pandeiro
A hora é boa e o samba começou
E fez convite ao tango pra parceiro
Chegou a hora, chegou, chegou
Meu corpo treme, ginga como pandeiro
A hora é boa e o samba começou
E fez convite ao tango pra parceiro

Hombre yo no se porque te quiero
Que te tengo amor sincero
Diz la muchacha del Plata
Pero nel Brasil es diferente:
Yo te quiero simplesmente

Teu amor me desacata
Abla castellano no fandango
Argentina canta tango
Para neutralizar ligeiro
Eu canto e danço sempre que possa

Um sambinha cheio de bossa:
Sou do Rio de Janeiro

Overall Meaning

The lyrics of Caetano Veloso's O Samba E O Tango juxtapose the Brazilian and Argentinean rhythms, samba and tango. The verse "Chegou a hora, chegou, chegou/ Meu corpo treme, ginga qual pandeiro/ A hora é boa e o samba começou/ E fez convite ao tango pra parceiro" (English translation: "The time has come, it has, it has/ My body trembles, sways like a pandeiro/ The time is right and the samba has begun/ And it invited the tango to be its partner") describes the excitement of the moment when the samba starts, with the singer's body responding to the rhythm like a percussion instrument. The samba extends an invitation to the tango, which is traditionally associated with Argentina, to dance together. The lyrics convey a sense of cultural collaboration and mixing, celebrating the similarities and differences between the two genres.

The second verse of the song introduces a dialogue between a man and a woman, with the woman stating in Spanish that she doesn't know why she loves the man so much, but in Brazil it's different, and she loves him simply. The man responds in Portuguese, saying that her love disrupts him, and that while Argentineans sing tango to neutralize their emotions, he sings and dances samba whenever he can, because he is from Rio de Janeiro. This verse highlights the cultural and linguistic diversity of the region, and how people express their emotions through different art forms.

Line by Line Meaning

Chegou a hora, chegou, chegou
It's time, it's time!

Meu corpo treme, ginga qual pandeiro
My body trembles, swaying like a pandeiro

A hora é boa e o samba começou
It's a good time and the samba has started

E fez convite ao tango pra parceiro
And it invited the tango to be a partner

Hombre yo no se porque te quiero
Man, I don't know why I love you

Que te tengo amor sincero
That I have sincere love for you

Diz la muchacha del Plata
The girl from Plata says

Pero nel Brasil es diferente:
But in Brazil it's different

Yo te quiero simplesmente
I simply love you

Teu amor me desacata
Your love disrespects me

Abla castellano no fandango
Speak Spanish in the fandango