Caetano Veloso: Transa

Considered one of the most important albums of Caetano Veloso’s career, Transa — his fourth solo album and the second album recorded during his exile in London — transforms the experience of uprooting into the musical language. Amongst a cosmopolitan London, in a moment when he moved through new sounds and cultures, but without losing his connection with his homeland, the artist mixes together Portuguese and English, samba, reggae, rock, and references to the Brazilian Northeasterner cancioneiro, creating a hybrid sound that reflects his own condition as an expat.

The album was recorded throughout four sessions in the second semester of 1971. Accompanied by musicians Jards Macalé, Tutty Moreno, Moacyr Albuquerque and Áureo de Souza. Caetano built a musical universe that was more acoustic and intimate, stripped of the exuberant flourishes of Tropicalism, yet without losing its sophistication and experimentalism.

In this book, part of the collection The Book of the Album, by the publishing house Cobogó, the author, Mateus Baldi, starts from the departure into exile and moves through the behind-the-scenes of the recording sessions and the press reception, presenting in-depth archival research combined with previously unpublished interviews with key figures in the album’s history.

To Baldi, Transa is an “album-map” of the Brazil Caetano held within himself. From the many incorporations of the Brazilian cancioneiro to the English-language tracks, the singer recreates “a Brazil intimate to his affections” — and it is through this interpretive lens that the pages dissect the album.

Amidst the violence of the military dictatorship, Transa arrives as an artistic and affective compass “to orient oneself amidst devastation”, affirming Brazilian music as a space of resistance, memory, and reinvention. As Jards Macalé defined in an interview with the author, the album is “a vital source of nourishment for Brazilian music, for Brazilian culture, for everything and for our own satisfaction. It was, and is, immense.”

About the author
Mateus Baldi was born in Rio de Janeiro, in 1994. She holds a master’s degree and Literature, Culture, and Contemporaneity by the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). She is the author of the short-story book Os anos de vidro [Glass Years] (2024), which was awarded the APCA prize in 2025, and Formigas no paraíso [Ants in Paradise] (2022), besides being the organizer of the anthology Vivo muito vivo — 15 contos inspirados nas canções de Caetano Veloso [Alive, very much alive — 15 short-stories inspired in Caetano Veloso’s songs] (2022).

Specifications
Title Caetano Veloso: Transa
Author Mateus Baldi
Language Portuguese
Page count 200
ISBN 978-65-5691-198-4
Cover Filipa Pinto
Format Softcover
Size 13 x 19 cm
Year 2026