Book, Letter only / About letters 2 vols[LS]

Letra Só is a selection of lyrics by Caetano Veloso, organized by the poet and professor of Brazilian literature Eucanaã Ferraz. The volume brings together verses from which the music was removed, in order to highlight the inventiveness and richness of the composer's writing. About the lyrics, it features photos of the composer and comments from Caetano himself regarding the genesis of his writing. Caetano is a unique case in Brazilian music. Since the 1960s, his work has presented a mix of high culture and mass culture, with the Beatles, pop art, Godard's cinema and concrete poetry as its main references. Furthermore, the composer has always had a strong inclination to work with conceptual and formal shifts, taking the aesthetic dimensions of the song to the extreme. Removed from their melody, the words gain in materiality and show themselves in the most diverse ways: economical verses appear alongside long narrative structures, experimental constructions coexist with traditional forms, extreme simplicity mixes with formal sophistication. The selection was made based on thematic or formal familiarities, without concern for grouping by discs or chronological sequence. Among the main themes are Santo Amaro da Purificação, Bahia, Tropicalism, music, love, Brazil, existence, cinema, literature and Carnival. The reader of Letra Só and Sobre as Letras will be able to confirm the strength of Caetano's verses, with their accelerated pulse and their strong dialogue with the country's poetic tradition. And you will better understand, based on the composer's comments about the songs, why his lyrics have become a valuable reference for both written poetry and Brazilian song.