Tom Zé

Antonio José Santana Martins is one of Brazil's representatives of the alternative sound, not only because of his use of objects as instruments, but also for his attitudes and for the eccentric style of the small and vivid man. Influential in the Tropicalia movement, Zé contributed, along with Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Os Mutantes, and Nara Leão, to the watershed tropicalia album/manifesto Tropicália: Ou Panis Et Circenses. While the other major figures of tropicalia would go on to great commercial and critical success in later decades, Zé slipped into obscurity in the 1970s and 1980s.