Brazilian musical revolutionaries Os Mutantes are back. After nearly three decades in obscurity, brothers Arnaldo and Sérgio Dias Baptista have reignited the fire, writes Jim Carroll

THE merry pranksters are in full swing again. When the Tropicália movement was energising and encouraging Brazilian artists to stand up against the country's military dictatorship and their cultural repression back in the 1960s, Os Mutantes provided much of the movement's soundtrack and colour.

The three kids from São Paulo, teen brothers Arnaldo and Sérgio Dias Baptista and Arnaldo's girlfriend Rita Lee, produced pop music which was day-glo, psychedelic, far-out and inventive. They dressed in whatever outfits they rustled from TV studio wardrobe departments, wrote music around what they taped from BBC radio's shortwave transmissions, and sang songs which were surreal and irreverent.

Os Mutantes were huge at home (You Tube's archives are full of their appearances on Brazilian TV shows), but they made no real impact abroad during their initial run. After 12 years together, the band imploded in 1978, the Baptista brothers coming to blows after an argument over guitar brands.

It's a different story today. Sérgio Dias Baptista is busy in his São Paulo apartment preparing for a forthcoming US and European tour. Both Baptista brothers are still in the Mutantes frame; a new singer, Zélia Duncan, has replaced original vocalist Lee, who declined to participate in the reunion.

For Baptista, the band's 2006 reunion for a show at London's Barbican to co-incide with a massive Tropicália exhibition there, was down to timing.

"If we had got back together in the 1980s, no one would have been interested in us," he says. "Now, the time is right, the music has done its job. We were in hibernation and we needed to be awakened."

Os Mutantes' second coming, he says, is down to the great PR job done by fans who went on to became influential musicians.

"I think the most interesting thing is the fact that our music is more alive now and more popular now than it was in the 1960s or 1970s. It's amazing to see how these kids who were listening to our music are now making their own music, cats like Beck, Sean Lennon, David Byrne, Belle & Sebastian and Devendra Banhart. They put our music on the radar again, and that triggered us to come back again. Things like this don't happen because of one decision or one person."

Baptista still sounds a little awed at how the reunion came together and then snowballed last year. "It started with the show at the Barbican. Then we got some American shows, so we decided to give it a try. Our drummer, Dinho Leme, hadn't played in 20 years, so we played together for the first time in years at my studio, and all the magic was there. Of course we screwed up the music, but it was fun and we had a good time.

"But in the space of the 20 days, we had an American tour and a British tour booked. All this without playing a note of music or releasing a record or making a video. It was awesome, man."

When Baptista looks back at the Tropicália movement now, he remembers the good times fondly.

"Tropicália was our Flower Power. There were so many people involved in the movement, musicians and artists and poets and writers and film-makers and theatre people, that we ended up shaking the structure of the country. It was beautiful to see. It was a clan, we were like King Arthur and his knights searching for the Holy Grail."

Yet it wasn't all just all peace and love. "There were dark tones because there really was a war going on for the soul of the country. There was a lot of defiance and protest, and so there was a lot danger in trying to be as free as we wanted to be. There was also a clear line between the nice guys and the assholes, and that was fantastic. What we did, we did with our hearts. We were kids then, and when you're a kid you feel you're indestructible and immortal. And it turns out that we are."

Why, in their heyday, did Os Mutantes never catch a break beyond their homeland? "You didn't have the same inter-connectivity that you have today, where people everywhere know about great art and music wherever it's from. We played at the Olympia in Paris once. It was a very weird show. It was a very Tropicália event because you had Gilberto Gil singing and you had a ballet and an orchestra, and then we came on."

Gil is now the Brazilian minister for culture, an elevation you'd think would please Baptista.

"He is more than entitled to be there because of his experience and his knowledge of the business, but he is doing shit," says Baptista bluntly. "He could be making a good contribution to the cultural industry in Brazil, but he is not. He was such an amazing activist then. He was never a lightweight - he knew what he was doing. But now he's just another politician."

So Sérgio Dias Baptista will not enter politics if he gets the call from President Lula? "No!", he roars down the phone. "I have better things to do. We have been writing new songs and I want to record them. For me, my friend, life is too much fun to consider becoming a government minister."

Os Mutantes play Vicar St, Dublin on July 26th