I honestly do not know what this song means. I only know that I love it. My understanding is that it has to do with living under oppression, the blurred lines of political parties and ideologies. And “Esquerda” means “dear”. I thought it was a love song for years. I don’t think so. But it is wonderful- full of juice and life and raw energy and whenever I hear it I have to get up and dance. Every song on this album, Vira Na Via Lactea, by the wild, progressive and brilliant Brazilian musician Tom Zé, one of the originators of the Tropicália movement in Brazil in the late sixties, is fabulous.
(An hour later) So… exploring this song led me down a Tom Zé rabbit hole… and I discovered a beautiful song with such an interesting contrasting video, a piece of Tom Zé avant garde art. Apparently the song is about Jesus reincarnating as a flower in the Amazon forest. I used Google Translate to wrangle this translation from Portuguese to English of what he had written about it on his website. Mind you, he was born in 1936. This was apparently written 3 years after the worst of the pandemic- which would put him either at age 87 or 88 at the time he wrote it and filmed this video! The translation (less than perfect, no doubt):
Jesus, Amazon Flores The idea of the song that Jesus Christ, in his second incarnation, was reborn as the Amazonian Flora, also passes through a curious accident. Felipe Hirsch was the director of Sesc, when Danilo was in charge. In a few seconds, in a very short time, I commented with Danilo that I wanted to make a song in which Christ would be reborn as a flower. Second incarnation. Coincidentally, at that moment Danilo was standing there on the table, but in the same way as he looked at us, it was as if he said to me: “Let me look at this idea in deep secrecy, start playing music”. Now, 3 years have passed, after the pandemic problems, I have achieved strength to compose a song as I assumed. Here we go now. Bearing this song, Jesus, Amazon Flower, could also be considered a homage to the rich Danilo, or mentor, through the Sesc, of a metamorphose widening our culture, as Washington Olivetto states.
~Tom Zé, via Google Translate~