Tom Ze: the conscience of Brazil's tropicalismo.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Classical guitarist and musician

For those whose impressions of contemporary Brazilian music have been shaped by the predictable pastiche of Tom Jobim's willowy bossa novas, Jorge Ben's robust Afro-sambas, and Milton Nascimento's sophisticated balladry, the classical guitar music of Tom Ze is a radical departure. His aural cocktail is made of equal parts urban chaos and rural simplicity, emitting flashes of bittersweet, toxic-grade anti-music and pure Brazilian soul. Tom Ze's sound is as disconcerting as the events that have shaped his life. And even though most of his countrymen find his work inaccessible, Ze plods along, at peace with his self-appointed role as an out-of-tune counterbalance to Brazil's sunny, upbeat mainstream music.

Ze's life began under quite ordinary circumstances. He was born Antonio Jose Santana Martins in the small town of Irara--the kind of rural, impoverished, backwater town depicted in the novels of Jorge Amado. In 1936, long before the arrival of mass media and outside cultural influences, Ze's hometown, despite its shortcomings, proved to be an effective incubator for an inquiring young mind. His father's store was the town's gathering place where information was exchanged and culture was observed, shaped and perpetuated. "I didn't know," Ze explains today, "that when I left home to attend high school in Salvador, I was leaving the university of my father's store to study in a boring, occidental, lineal school."

As Ze's bumpy, academic career progressed, the self-taught guitarist made music...