Caetano Veloso’s A Foreign Sound

Book excerpt: What makes a song sound foreign? What makes it sound “American,” or Brazilian? Caetano Veloso's 2004 American songbook album, A Foreign Sound, is a meditation on these questions-but in truth, they were questions he'd been asking throughout his career. Properly heard, the album throws a wrench into received ideas regarding the global hegemony of US popular music, and also what constitutes the Brazilian sound. This book takes listeners back through some of Veloso's earlier considerations of American popular music, and forward to his more recent experiments, in order to explore his take on the relationship between US and Brazilian musical idioms. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of short, music-basedbooks and brings the focus to music throughout the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.