Alegria, Alegria

Alegria, Alegria is often called the Brazilian anthem of 1967. Caetano sang it at the third Brazilian popular music festival on 21 October 1967, backed by the São Paulo group the Beat Boys, and placed fourth. The electric guitars were booed at first, then the audience came round, and he won a standing ovation. Gil appeared at the same festival with Os Mutantes, the first time rock bands had played it.

He partly modelled it on the previous year's winner, Chico Buarque's A Banda, and added rock instrumentation on purpose to provoke the crowd. Alegria means joy, but the theme is freedom. The title phrase came from the TV personality Chacrinha, who had borrowed it from the singer Wilson Simonal. Caetano called it his best-known song and compared its place in his work to that of Satisfaction in the Rolling Stones' catalog. Pitchfork's Andy Beta noted its burst of fuzz guitar and electric organ and its name-dropping of Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale, and quoted Caetano on the movement: it was against the dictatorship without saying anything about it.

The song became the theme of the miniseries Anos Rebeldes and was sung in 1992 at demonstrations for the impeachment of Fernando Collor de Mello. Rolling Stone Brasil ranked it the tenth greatest Brazilian song. Daniela Mercury recorded it for an album marking thirty years of Tropicália.