Vanguarda paulista

Vanguarda paulista was the avant-garde of Brazilian popular song that formed in São Paulo around 1979–1985, centred on the Teatro Lira Paulistana and its #Lira Paulistana# label. *Arrigo Barnabé*, *Itamar Assumpção*, *Grupo Rumo*, *Premeditando o Breque*, *Ná Ozzetti* and *Tetê Espíndola* subjected MPB to atonal harmony, twelve-tone rows, theatrical staging, humour and urban noise, against the polished mainstream of the dictatorship's final years. Commercially marginal but critically decisive, the movement reset the ambitions of Brazilian songwriting and fed directly into the rock and MPB of the following decades.