Biography.
Caetano Emanuel Viana Telles Veloso (born August 7, 1942) is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo, which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s, at the beginning of the Brazilian military dictatorship that took power in 1964. He has remained a constant creative influence and best-selling performing artist and composer ever since. Veloso has won nine Latin Grammy Awards and two Grammy Awards. On November 14, 2012, Veloso was honored as the Latin Recording Academy Person of the Year.
Idle Heart of Mine
That heart of mine isn´t tiredOf secretly desiring
To dream and become an adult
My heart behaves like a child
Always keeps on my mind
An old happy sight of a girl
Who has been in my dreams
And never said goodbye
She made of my eyes
Two boats floating adrift
That sad idle heart of mine
Wants to keep the world inside
Of me
Translated by Rita Cammarota
“Sampa,” They Call São Paulo
There’s something that riles up my heart every time even nowWhenever I cross Ipiranga at Avenue São João
But when I first came here, São Paulo, I didn’t understand
The concrete poetry of all the corners and streets here
The subtle foxiness of all the girls that I would meet here
What did I know then about the songs you inspire—
Psychedelic rock, political fire
There’s something that riles up my heart every time even now
Whenever I cross Ipiranga at Avenue São João
But when I first met you face-to-face and didn’t see my own face
I wrote it all off as just more of the city’s bad taste
You know Narcissus likes only what he sees when he looks in the mirror
The modern can be cold and that sometimes strikes terror
Like a band called the Mutants and nothing computes then
And so with that start out
No way I’d let you take my heart out
I had another dream of what it takes for a city
It took me so long to see what makes you so pretty
You’re the other side of the other side of the other side of the other
From your poor who scratch out a life in a shanty in the slums
From the wealth that you use to crush beauty under your thumb
From even the smoke that spews out to erase all the stars
I see the poets rise from your fields, your open spaces
Your forges, your forests, and your gods of rainy places
Pan-America, utopia of Africa,
A subway that’s an underground railroad
This outsider now can love you like I just belong
I strolled through your drizzly streets and I wrote you this song
Translated by Zack Rogow & Joana Darezzo
