The Brazilian band "Som Imaginário" was created in 1969 to accompany the musician Milton Nascimento on his tour the following year to promote his album Milton (1970). In the next years the group pursued independent projects, which resulted in three albums recorded for Odeon Label in 1970, 1971 and 1973. In this article, we articulate the group's musical production within the context of MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) in the early 1970s, marked mainly by the country's dictatorship in its most repressive period coupled with the consolidation of the country's music industry. Regarding the first two albums, which share the same title, we analyse the lyrics of the songs, which reveal political positions and cultural values of the 1970s generation, which suffered the dictatorial repression while receiving delayed information from foreign counterculture and the hippie movement. Musically, we consider the album Matança do Porco (Slaughtering the pig) from 1973, which is totally instrumental, as an icon of that historic moment. Through analysis of their production and their compositional structure we raise issues such as those involving conflicts and consolidation of national and international popular elements in its creation and the conditions of the recording industry during that period.
Som Imaginário and instrumental music; Brazilian popular music and counterculture; music industry in the 1970s