Tom Zé

Tropicália star Tom Zé transforms the unassuming beauty of Brazil’s samba and folk traditions—often performed on accordion, triangle and cavaquinho guitar—into art that’s intelligent and leaves room for a little clowning on the side. Born Antônio José Santana Martins in the small town of Irará in 1936, Zé moved to Salvador in 1951 to study music. There, he met Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, whom he followed to São Paulo, where he contributed the track “Parque Industrial” to the landmark 1968 musical manifesto Tropicália Ou Panis Et Circensis. Zé’s earliest albums brought him cult appreciation but not fame, and he spent much of the ’70s and ’80s back in his hometown working in a gas station. But his fortune changed in 1990 when David Byrne released Brazil Classics 4: The Best of Tom Zé on Luaka Bop. Zé doubled down his experimental folk-pop on more than a dozen seriously playful investigations of Brazilian music and culture, including 2022’s theatrical tour de force Língua Brasileira.