Friday, June 19, 2015

Birthday: Chico Buarque (born 1944)



Here is a great archival clip of a young and wickedly handsome Chico Buarque at a Brazilian music festival in 1967:




Wikipedia reminds us that the great singer and writer, a true cultural force in Brazil for the past half-century, "came from a privileged intellectual 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."

There is nothing unusual about this. The depth of Latin American intellectual and cultural traditions is simply not known or understood in the United States, to our great loss. Living in Mexico as I do, I notice the profound respect for the life of the mind every day, as I would in Brazil or Argentina or Chile as well. 

It is therefore characteristic that Buarque has always been politically and intellectually engaged, and has become an acclaimed novelist in his maturity. 

Chico Buarque Definitive Collection 1970 - 1984

Budapest: A Novel

Spilt Milk

Turbulence

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