What is it so special in that song?
From one perspective there’s a tone of tenderness — is there anything gentler than ‘meu caro amigo’? And it goes further: ‘me perdoe por favor, se não lhe faço uma visita…’ (‘please forgive me if I don’t pay you a visit…’) Chico intensifies and projects – almost humorously – his balmy language (You may watch the video at Youtube).
In a different point of view underlies a tone of lament which builds up a scenery of hardships to be revealed right after the sentence ‘a coisa aqui ta preta’ (‘these are dark times’), followed by ‘muita mutreta pra levar a situação’ (‘this situation needs many tricks to be solved’), and in the same line words like: careta, pirueta, sarro, sapo, cachaça (literally: face, pirouette, mockery, frog, cachaça)… The result is inevitable: ‘ninguém segura esse rojão’ (‘nobody can restrain this rocket’).
Anyone who lived the 70’s in Brazil knows how intolerable was the massacre of the media on the outcry ‘ninguém segura esse país’ (‘no one can restrain this country’) – the dictatorship persisted as if it was a national desire. Chico’s song has the taste of a payback, with a vengeful, small dose of irony and prank: it is not a country, but a rocket. The verse may have been prophetic: coincidently, a rocket broke out at Rio Centro a few years later.
Colloquium: Contemporary Brazilian Music and Thought 