Caetano Veloso: ‘Right now concern predominates within me; Brazil seems unable to save itself’
The celebrated musician reflects on old age, the Tropicália movement, The Beatles, technology and a world he watches with growing disenchantment
Caetano Veloso, in a video call from Lisbon, Portugal, speaks slowly with that blend of intellectual clarity and Bahian melancholy that for six decades has turned each of his interviews into something more like a philosophical conversation than a mere promotion of new albums or concerts. At age 83, the celebrated musician from Brazil is embarking on a tour titled Caetano nos festivais, which will stop in Madrid on June 4 and which he himself describes, without drama but with honesty, as perhaps his last visit to Spain. That is despite the close relationship he has always maintained with Spanish culture. There is no monumental nostalgia in his words; rather a physical weariness, a wise resignation, political concern and a bitter — though not yet defeated — view of the present. He speaks, without losing passion, about the military dictatorship his country suffered, about Silicon Valley, The Beatles, contemporary confusion and a Brazil that, in spite of everything, he still believes can “say something to the world.”