Entre o sonho e o desencanto: Belchior e o tempo da alucinação

Abstract

This paper proposes a historical, critical and philosophical analysis of Belchior’s album Alucinação (1976), interpreting it as an artistic response to the crisis of utopias and the symbolic exhaustion of Brazilian modernity in the 1970s. In contrast to the conciliatory discourse of Tropicália and traditional MPB, Belchior’s work assumes a dissonant stance, marked by an aesthetic of fracture, disenchantment and autobiographical subjectivity. It is argued that Alucinação constitutes a singular document of its time, while at the same time going beyond its immediate context by articulating a critique of the cultural industry and the emptying of engaged music and, indirectly, of the myth of racial democracy. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, the article discusses the historical and cultural conditions that shaped the trajectory of the artist from Ceará and examines how his work reflects political, racial and existential tensions of the period. The analysis is anchored in philosophical references, especially in the critique of modernity present in Nietzsche, as well as in recent studies on the relationship between aesthetics, identity and racial silencing in post-Tropicalismo.