However, the Brazilian military dictatorship viewed Veloso's music and political action as threatening, and he was arrested, along with fellow musician Gilberto Gil, in 1969.

Shortly after the move, Veloso won a lyrics contest for his composition "Um Dia" and was signed to Philips Records.

During this period, Veloso, Bethânia, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Tom Zé, and Os Mutantes developed "Tropicalismo", which fused Brazilian pop with rock and roll and avant-garde music.

Although Gil and Veloso's performances at the 1967 MBP Festival were rapturously received, within a year, Tropicalismo had become a deeply divisive issue among Brazil's youth audience, with Marxist-influenced college students of the Brazilian left wing condemning Tropicalismo, because they believed it commercialized Brazilian traditional music by incorporating musical influence from other cultures, specifically the United States.

[4] The musical manifesto of the Tropicalist movement was the landmark collaborative LP Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis ("Tropicalia: or Bread and Circuses"), issued in mid-1968, which brought together the talents of Veloso, Os Mutantes, Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé and Gal Costa, with arrangements by avant-garde composer-arranger Rogerio Duprat (who had studied with Pierre Boulez) and lyrical contributions from poet Torquato Neto.

When Veloso (backed by Os Mutantes) performed in the first round of the Festival's song competition on 12 September, he was initially greeted with enthusiastic applause, but the situation soon turned ugly.

Dressed in a shiny green plastic suit, festooned with electrical wires and necklaces strung with animal teeth, Veloso provoked the students with his lurid costume, his sensual body movements and his startling new psychedelic music, and the performers were soon being bombarded with loud insults, jeers and boos from the students, who became even more incensed when American pop singer John Dandurand made a surprise appearance on stage during the song.

[citation needed] The ideological conflict climaxed three days later on 15 September when Veloso returned for the second round of the competition, performing a specially-written new song entitled "É Proibido Proibir" ("It is Forbidden to Forbid").

After being joined by Gilberto Gil, who came on stage to show his support, Veloso finished his diatribe by telling the students "...if you are the same in politics as you are in aesthetics, we’re done for!"

[7] [103] Even though Tropicalismo was controversial among traditional critics, it introduced to Música popular brasileira new elements for making music with an eclectic style.

[9] Veloso's anti-authoritarian political stance earned him the enmity of Brazil's military dictatorship which ruled until 1985; his songs were frequently censored and some banned.

[11][12] The journalist Randal Juliano [pt] of RecordTV propagated a story that Caetano and Gil had sung the Brazilian National Anthem in subversive parody.

He said that "they didn't imprison us for any song or any particular thing that we said," ascribing the government's reaction to its unfamiliarity with the cultural phenomenon of Tropicália—they seemed to say "We might as well put them in prison.

[15][16] By 2004, he was one of the most respected and prolific international pop stars, with more than 50 recordings available including songs in film soundtracks of Michelangelo Antonioni's Eros, Pedro Almodóvar's Hable con ella, and Frida, for which he performed at the 75th Academy Awards but did not win.

In 2002 Veloso published an account of his early years and the Tropicalismo movement, Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil.

The two tracks include a remix of "Terra" by Prefuse 73 ("3 Mellotrons in a Quiet Room Version") and "Dreamworld: Marco de Canaveses", in collaboration with David Byrne.

[6] In January 2016, Caetano Veloso was a featured artist at the convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA), in Austin, Texas.

[21] In May 2018, Veloso performed at the Grand Final of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, alongside 2017 winner Salvador Sobral.

[23] In 2018 Veloso participated in Stefano Bollani album "Que Bom" with two songs: "La nebbia a Napoli" and "Michelangelo Antonioni".

[24] Veloso married fellow Baiana and actress Andrea Gadelha (or Dedé) on 21 November 1967, in a ceremony that reflected the style of the counterculture era.

[28] Veloso's 1989 CD Estrangeiro includes songs ("Esse Amor", which means "This Love", and "Branquinha") inspired by and dedicated to, respectively, his ex-wife Dedé and his wife at the time, Paula Lavigne.