Q: What do David Byrne, Devendra Banhart and M.I.A all have in common?
A: They’ve all been inspired by modern Brazilian music.
The fascinating film Beyond Ipanema – Brazilian Waves In Global Music looks at how the cross-pollination of musical styles – as well as sampling and globalisation – have helped Brazil to secure a unique position in global music culture, influencing some of Europe and North America’s biggest stars.
Check out this video which includes an interview with the makers of the documentary.
MC Marechal (pictured), collaborates with UK rapper Akala at Southbank Centre as part of Festival Brazil.
What happens when two wordsmiths from different corners of the earth get together and collaborate over Shakespeare… with some of London’s young people… and a live band?
That’s what we’re about to find out at Southbank Centre tomorrow evening.
On Saturday 7 August MOBO award-winning Akala gets together with Rio’s most popular rapper/spoken word poet MC Marechal; and joining them are the Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company live band, a selection of young talent and big names from music, theatre and film.
Together they are performing songs inspired by Shakespeare plays and Brazilian literary greats as part of Southbank Centre’s summer long Festival Brazil.
With their shared love of hip hop, but coming from two very different backgrounds, we wanted to know more about their different perspectives on similar issues. So, we linked up Akala and Marechal by Skype. Here’s an edit of their discussion:
MCM [In Brazil]we don’t know the rich people.
AK London is complex because in London you go to school with the rich kids. Not the very rich – like billionaires – but some of the kids who went to my school, their parents were millionaires; but then also some of the kids who went to my school were very poor, for England anyway. They weren’t poor like favela poor.
MCM I don’t know anyone who is millionaire. Maybe I will be the first.
AK Yes.
MCM I have to show them, you know.
AK This is interesting because when I come to Brazil, I see the segregation but, because I haven’t lived in Brazil for a long, long time, I don’t get to see that no one mixes.
MCM It’s weird because for a lot of people I am rich, you know?
AK Yes. I understand.
MCM If I make 4,000 and I buy a van, it’s like I’m rich [compared to the] people who make 2,000 or less, you know?
AK I understand, yes.
MCM But it’s nothing because our rent… for housing you pay… A big house you pay 2,000 real or 1,000 real. It’s crazy. A car, if you buy a car, a good car, you pay 50K, you know? It’s a lot of money. For people like us…
AK Yes. I understand.
AK So, tell me, why is hip hop so powerful?
MCM A great friend of mine, who is one of the pioneers of freestyle here, a long time ago said ‘it has a modern global future’. I don’t know the right expression but, you know, we can respect [hip hop’s] principles, and with these principles make contact globally – we can understand each other. Right?
AK Yes. So, it’s about the culture first.
MCM I think so, because people connect over things they are familiar with. If we don’t have hip hop culture, maybe we would never know each other.
AK Yes. I like that.
MCM It’s the first thing to create a friendship. Hip hop is the first way for a lot of people to understand expression. If you know about expression, you can express yourself and people who are familiar with expression and have a feel for this can feel too. The samba has the same history. In the beginning… [it] was repressed by the state and we have this revolutionary feeling. I can’t express in English…
AK It makes perfect sense what you’re saying; the kind of rebellion against being oppressed, the struggle, the way to express yourself.
Singer, composer, politician – Gilberto Gil is one of Brazil’s most inspiring icons. On the eve of his performance at Royal Festival Hall tomorrow (Wednesday 21 July), Paul Heritage explains what is it is that makes him so unique.
“When Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced in 2003 that Gilberto Gil had accepted an invitation to join his government, The New York Times commented that it was like making Bob Marley Minister of Culture or putting Bruce Springsteen in charge of the National Endowment Fund. But few countries can boast about having had such a charismatic Minister of Culture. In Gil’s presence a political event became a cultural happening. Gil does not just enable the forces of culture in others, he embodied them in himself through his six years as Brazil’s Minister of Culture. A photograph of Gil in his first year of office, playing guitar and singing next to a seated Kofi Annan on drums gives some idea of where the man can stand when he sings – and the potential power of what he can make with his art. Torquato Neto, one of Gil’s earliest creative partners, once commented that ‘there are many ways to sing and make Brazilian music: Gilberto Gil prefers them all’.”
Below is a selection of quotes taken from throughout Gill’s career.
Gilberto Gil on himself ‘I’m a minister, I’m a musician but above all, I’m a hacker in spirit and desire.’
On diversity ‘We practise diversity as a right to identity and as a means of creating, as a recognition of the radical otherness, as the legitimate presence of that which we do not reach, but of that which makes us know and cultivate our own culture.’
On Brazil’s place on the world stage ‘Brazil can take advantage of its own paradoxes, of its own asymmetric tendencies in order to arrive faster at a central place in a world of shared paradoxes and globalised imbalances.’
On Brazil ‘I travel the world and I notice that the reporters only ask me: “Brazil? Brazil?” And I wonder, “What am I going to tell them?” I have nothing to say. I am Brazil (laughs).’
On finding Brazil’s unique voice ‘What Brazil needs to have is the ability to speak, to have a voice, to have the courage to talk, and that voice has to draw on frequencies that come from various sectors, from various parts of Brazil. Geographically, sociologically, anthropologically, that voice has to come from the various Brazils that are out there, protesting, needing space, needing to speak.’
On the importance of culture ‘Cultivated from Nature by human labour, culture is the domain of human life, produced by the hand of Man from the planet’s limited wealth. Cultivation requires constantly returning to the land to honour the natural matrix of what we do… Culture is freedom, innovation and disruption, but also regulation and tradition, the sediments that constitute who we are in the deep, tectonic movements of what it is to be human.’
On everything ‘O melhor lugar do mundo é aqui e agora.’ / ‘The best place in the world is here and now’ [From Gilberto Gil’s song Aqui e Agora / Here and Now]
Paul Heritage is Artistic Director of People’s Palace Projects (PPP), Festival Consultant for Festival Brazil. PPP is an arts organisation established at Queen Mary, University of London, to advance the practice and understanding of art for social justice. Paul collected the quotes spanning Gilberto Gil’s life, with thanks to Rodrigo Faria.
Back in 1993 when Nirvana toured Brazil, Kurt Cobain called for the reunion of 1960s Brazilian Tropicália band Os Mutantes. After trying unsuccessfully to meet with bassist and singer Arnaldo Baptista, Cobain wrote to him, reportedly saying ‘Arnaldo, best wishes to you, and be careful with the system. They swallow you up and spit you out like a maraschino cherry pit.’
It wasn’t until 2006 that Os Mutantes reunited, and now they come to Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall for a special gig.
Cobain discusses Os Mutantes about two minutes into this interview clip. Enjoy!
For Beck, the discovery of the 1960s Brazilian band Os Mutantes was ‘one of those revelatory moments you live for as a musician, when you find something that you have been wanting to hear for years but never thought existed. I made records like Odelay because there was a certain sound and sensibility that I wanted to achieve, and it was eerie to find that they had already done it 30 years ago, in a totally shocking but beautiful and satisfying way’ (quoted in The New York Times, 2001). Beck’s album Mutations, containing the song ‘Tropicalia’, pays homage to the group.
Kurt Cobain even tried to reunite Os Mutantes in 1993 without success, writing a personal letter to band member Arnaldo Baptista. The band would finally play together again in 2006 in London. A reviewer for The Independent wrote of the show: ‘Long after the lights have come up, the crowd are still chanting “Mutantes! Mutantes! Mutantes!”… In a way, Kurt Cobain was lucky that Os Mutantes turned down that support slot – Nirvana getting out-rocked by a bunch of mad, middle-aged Brazilian hippies would have been a sight to behold.’
Os Mutantes were pioneers of the 1960s Tropicália movement in Brazil. Tropicália was a brief cultural explosion – encompassing music, theatre, poetry and other forms – that happened in the shadow Brazil’s 1964 coup and the dictatorship that followed.
Os Mutantes’ psychedelic cut-and-paste approach to music took in influences from all over the world: ‘In Brazil we were influenced by things like The Beatles and Picasso,’ founding member and singer/guitarist Sergio Dias explains. ‘But we didn’t know what The Beatles were singing about and we didn’t know the history of Picasso. We were in the middle of a very bad situation and we were responding to all of this. We only had bits and pieces of everything and so we formed this image of what rock and roll was supposed to be. Our music is like a patchwork quilt made up of all these different pieces from different places. We put all these elements together and just let them cook in this witches brew and that became our sound.’
Fellow Tropicália pioneer Gilberto Gil was closely linked with the group, playing with them prior to his arrest and subsequent exile in 1969. Other artists who have championed Os Mutantes include Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, Devendra Banhart and The Flaming Lips.
Bringing the vibrant, dynamic culture of contemporary Brazil to the heart of London, Festival Brazil at Southbank Centre will celebrate the country’s rich cultural heritage – including music, visual arts, dance, literature, debates and food.
Performers will include cultural icon Maria Bethânia, superstar singer song-writer Gilberto Gil, the legendary psychedelic rock band Os Mutantes and tropicália star Tom Zé. And look out for the many free performances that take over the Southbank Centre site during the Festival.
Gigs Community | Southbank Centre 