Чико Буарке: Жизнь и творчество бразильского барда.

Brazilian singer songwriter (born 1944)

Francisco Buarque de Hollanda (born 19 June 1944), popularly known simply as Chico Buarque, is a Brazilian singer songwriter, guitarist, composer, playwright, writer, and poet. He is best known for his music, which often includes social, economic, and cultural reflections on Brazil. The firstborn son of Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda, Buarque lived at several locations throughout his childhood, though mostly in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Rome. He wrote and studied literature as a child and found music through the bossa nova compositions of Tom Jobim and João Gilberto. He performed as a singer and guitarist in the 1960s as well as writing a play that was deemed dangerous by the Brazilian military dictatorship of the time. Buarque, along with several Tropicalist and MPB musicians, was threatened by the Brazilian military government and eventually left Brazil for Italy in 1969. However, he came back to Brazil in 1970, and continued to record, perform, and write, though much of his material was suppressed by government censors. He released several more albums in the 1980s and published three novels in the 1990s and 2000s. In 2019, Buarque was awarded the Camões Prize, the most important prize for literature in the Portuguese language. However, awarding of the prize was delayed by four years due to actions by Jair Bolsonaro, but Buarque received it in April 2023.

Buarque was born in Rio de Janeiro on 19 June 1944. He came from an intellectually privileged family background—his father Sérgio Buarque de Holanda was a well known historian, sociologist and journalist and his mother Maria Amélia Cesário Alvim was a painter and pianist. He is also brother of the singer Miúcha and politician Ana de Hollanda. As a child, he was impressed by the musical style of bossa nova, specifically the work of Tom Jobim and João Gilberto. He was also interested in writing, composing his first short story at 18 years old and studying European literature, also at a young age. One of his most consuming interests, however, was playing football, beginning at age four, and he still played regularly in his 60s. He made his public debut as musician and composer in 1964, rapidly building his reputation at music festivals and television variety shows when bossa nova came to light and Nara Leão recorded three of his songs. "Apesar de Você" was overlooked by the military censors, becoming an important anthem in the democratic movement. After selling over 100,000 copies, the single was eventually censored and removed from the market. At one point in 1974, the censors banned any song authored by Chico Buarque. Then, he created a pseudonym, naming himself "Julinho de Adelaide", complete with life history and interviews to newspapers. "Julinho de Adelaide" authored songs such as "Jorge Maravilha" ("Wonder Jorge") and "Acorda Amor" ("Wake Up Love" as in a lover) before he was outed in a Jornal do Brasil news story. Buarque also wrote a play named Calabar, about the Dutch invasion of Brazil in the seventeenth century, drawing parallels with the military regime. Despite the censorship, songs such as "Samba de Orly" (1970), "Acorda amor" (1974, as "Julinho da Adelaide") manifested Buarque's continuing opposition to the military regime. During the 1970s and 1980s, he collaborated with filmmakers, playwrights, and musicians in further protest works against the dictatorship. Buarque approached the 1983 Concert for Peace in Nicaragua as a valid forum to vocalize his strong political views. Throughout the decade, he crafted many of his songs as vehicles to describe the re democratization of Brazil. The Concert for Peace in Nicaragua was one in a concert series known as the "Central American Peace Concerts." These concerts featured various Latin American artists. The political turmoil that plagued this era were expressed in many of Buarque's songs. He later wrote Budapeste, a novel that achieved critical national acclaim and won the Prêmio Jabuti, a Brazilian literary award comparable to the Booker Prize. His 2017 album Caravanas was elected the 3rd best Brazilian album of that year by the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stone.

Following the Brazilian military coup of 1964, Buarque avoided censorship by using cryptic analogies and wordplay. For example, in the song "Cálice" ("Chalice"), a duet written in 1973 with Gilberto Gil and released with Milton Nascimento in 1978, he takes advantage of the homophony between the Portuguese imperative cale se ("shut up") and cálice ("chalice") to protest government censorship, disguised as the Gospel narrative of Jesus' Gethsemane prayer to God to relieve him of the cup of suffering. The line "Quero cheirar fumaça de óleo diesel" ("I want to sniff diesel fumes") is a reference to the death of political prisoner Stuart Angel, who reportedly had his mouth glued to a jeep's exhaust pipe during a torture session. Buarque was close to Stuart's mother, Zuzu Angel. This song is the subject of the final chapter of the book <First Chico Buarque> by Charles A. Perrone (London: Bloomsbury, 2022) in the Brazil 33 1/3 series.

The cover art of the Buarque's 1966 album Chico Buarque de Hollanda became a viral internet meme with "happy" Chico and "sad" Chico.