TOM ZÉ Estudando o Pagode Luakabop ****

Nobody has chiselled away at tradition with the sharp edge of technology quite like Tom Zé. As socially engaged as he is restlessly innovative, Zé sculpted out Brazil's tropicalia movement in the 60s, and now, at the age of 70, he has decided to write an operetta. Updating the pagode (a working-class and largely chauvinist form of samba) with a political conscience, clusters of electronica and the occasional donkey impersonation or female orgasm for good measure, Zé's opera is hardly a black-tie affair. From the squat opening of Ave Dor Maria, a soft hymn pumped up by what sounds like an angry swarm of robot bees, through the simple guitar phrases and coochy-coo choruses of Pagode - Enredo dos Tempos do Medo, Ze's agenda may be anarchic, but somehow it's never bewildering. It may help to know that the music tells the tragic story of a young black student, mistreated by his university professor, who in turn drives his girlfriend into prostitution. In the tradition of opera nothing ends happily, but in Zé's hands the tradition of samba comes in for some excitingly rough treatment. It may occasionally suffer from conceptual overstretch - a "metaphysical samba" or a duet that takes place during a gay parade in the Vatican - but Zé knows how to work his trademark friction between the comforts of the old and the shock of the new. At the very least this is one hell of a night at the operetta.

www.tomze.com.br