Horse And Fish

Vinicius Cantuária is known throughout his home country as a gifted composer, a kind of Brazilian Babyface whose phone rings the moment a singer enters a studio. "Everyone from Gal Costa to Xuxa," he laughs, invoking the go-go booted host of Brazil's most popular children's show.

That kind of attention, while good for his wallet, was tough on his work. "People expect so much - they only want hits. My music needs change, it needs to talk to new people, to be free to experiment," he explains. It needed exile, it needed New York. "The difference between my generation and the tropicalistas is that they had to fight for everything. I don't want to fight - I want to explore music."

Through the prism of Vinicius's music, it's obvious that tropicalia was really a portal through which bossa nova could grow into something else, the anything-goes admixture that's developing in Brazil through artists as diverse as Marisa Monte, Chico Science, and Vinicius Cantuária. "In two or three years, there will be an explosion in Brazil of people doing what I'm doing, drawing equally on rock, tropicalismo, and bossa nova."