Moleque Gonzaguinha: sujeito e modernidade na canção dos anos 70

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the work of Luiz Gonzaga do Nascimento Jr., known as Gonzaguinha, based on the hypothesis that his songs constitute a privileged corpus for examining the tensions of Brazilian modernity during the 1970s. By considering popular song as a cultural form capable of articulating individual experience, ideological disputes, and broader historical processes, the study seeks to understand how the composer’s work reconfigures issues related to subjectivity, mass culture, the recording industry, and the social transformations that shaped the period. To this end, the study begins with a discussion of the formation of Brazilian youth during the 1960s and 1970s examining the impact of phenomena such as rock, Bossa Nova, MPB (Brazilian Popular Music), Tropicália, and debates surrounding national-popular culture on the emergence of new sensibilities and forms of artistic engagement. It then analyzes the recurring figure of the “moleque” and representations of childhood in Gonzaguinha’s work, understood as symbolic constructions that are central to the development of a poetics marked by tensions among marginality, belonging, and the assertion of subjectivity. Finally, the dissertation investigates parody and irony as discursive procedures through which the composer problematizes social, cultural, and political values, particularly under the conditions imposed by the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship. Throughout the analysis, the study argues that Gonzaguinha’s work operates as a space of negotiation between social criticism, participation in the cultural industry, and the aesthetic elaboration of modern experience, revealing both continuities and reconfigurations of issues historically associated with the Romantic tradition. In this sense, the composer is understood not only as an interpreter of his time but also as an active agent in the formulation of particular ways of perceiving and representing the contradictions of Brazilian society.