The Most Well Connected Poorman in America: Megacity sounds Over 20 million people live in São Paulo. What are they listening to?

Text and photos by Alex Robinson

Over 20 million people live in São Paulo. What are they listening to? Mondomix tunes in to Brazil’s largest city.

São Paulo

www.alexrobinsonphotography.co.uk

Some twenty million people live in São Paulo – crammed into a jagged concrete sprawl that stretches unbroken to every horizon. And there is a planet of cultures here - from Lebanese to Japanese, African and native American, to Anglo-Irish and Greek. Their heritage mixes with that of the internal migrants who pour in daily on flat-bed trucks and buses from the Amazon and desert back lands of the North East in search of a new life. Together they produce a unique musical culture that mixes the sounds of the entire world with the rhythms of continental Brazil, fuelling an intensely creative independent music scene. Its sound is played out nightly in an astonishing diversity of venues – chic, neon-lit cocktail lounges, trashy beer bars, art deco theatres, spit and sawdust samba clubs and state of the art concert halls. While art critics favour the Oscar Niemeyer designed Auditório Ibirapuera, musicians hang out at Bar Genesio in Vila Madalena.

Rock Brasileiro

The only place you’ll hear Bossa Nova in São Paulo is in a five star hotel cigar bar or a lift. In São Paulo rock reigns supreme. As it has done since local heroes Os Mutantes burst onto the scene in the late 1960s. Or since Brazil’s biggest-selling metal band Sepultura launched their international career with a huge impromptu concert in front of the Pacaembu football stadium. Other established local bands like Titãs continue to draw huge crowds. And in October 2009, emerging act Megarex (who sound a like a fusion of XTC and Los Lobos) - came third in the ‘Download Music Awards’ produced by British Music Week from over 10,000 entrants. Their biggest hit in Brazil, ‘El Fuca Vermejo’ is a satire and a homage to the locally produced VW Beetle – loved by all Brazilians and yet loathed as a symbol of Latin America’s impoverished past.

Os Mutantes ‘Bread and Circuses’ Documentary trailer

Vanguarda

São Paulo has been the nexus of Latin American experimental music since Itamar Assumpção invented a new Brazilian avant garde in the late 1970s. His unique blend fused theatre, polemic and word play with rich music filled with unexpected rhythmic and melodic twists. It was as surprising and quirky as a Frank Zappa concert. Itamar’s legacy lives on in the baroque experimentations of André Abujamra and his band Karnak, the quirky whimsy of Vange Milliet – both of whom have recently released CDs and the eccentric experimentations of MTV VJ Jupiter Maca – a multi-instrumentalist who looks like a cross between David Hockney and Kurt Cobain, and whose most famous song is entitled the Psychotic March of Dr Soup.

Júpiter Maçã - Marchinha Psicótica de Dr. Soup

Underground MPB and electronica

Céu’s gorgeous silky voice, and urbane song-writing have helped to establish her as one of the biggest selling new Brazilian artists overseas of the last two years. And São Paulo has been producing intelligent women songwriters whose sound is as sit-down as it is get-down for decades, such as MTV Brasil’s 2007 artist of the year, Mariana Aydar, irreverent, theatrical electronica singer Madame Mim, Cuban-Brazilian salsa-sambista Marina de la Riva and roots samba singer Luz MariNa Espindola.

Madame Mim - Bla Bla Bla

Samba-funk

Carioca (Rio born) singers like Tim Maia were the first to fuse samba with US soul to produce an effortlessly slick and energised new Brazilian dance music. And whilst Rio still lays claim to the genre, the truth is that many of the tightest funksters are from São Paulo. They include Max de Castro’s brother Wilson Simoninha, Paula Lima, Funk Como Le Gusta and Clube do Balanço – all of whom play regularly at clubs like Grazie o Dio and DaQuinta – just down the road from Seu Jorge’s home in Vila Madalena. In their wake come a wave of exciting new acts, Banda Glória who pack out the Aldeia Turiassu dance hall in Perdizes most weekends and two São Paulo Japanese funk combos - Farofyno and Samba Sonics fronted by high octane sparkle-dressed showgirl, Francine Missaka.

Funk Como Le Gusta - Manual do Funk Nacional

Hip Hop

São Paulo’s uber-urban landscape powers a huge hip hop movement along with dynamic street graffiti and break dance scenes. Many acts emerged with a social message from the city’s favelas, especially the Zona Sul. Since the late 1980s hip hop pioneers Racionais MC’s hard hitting lyrics have spoken out against institutionalised racism and police violence, galvanising a mass following among the disenfranchised youth of the periferia. Their 1998 album ‘Sobrevivendo no Inferno’ sold half a million copies, marking Brazilian hip hop’s decisive entry into the mainstream. São Paulo’s hip hop gained new dimensions with Rappin’ Hood’s collaborations with artists from other genres like Caetano Veloso and Jair Rodrigues. While the underground collective Instituto produce diverse left-field sounds with the hip hop sensibility that has become a crucial part of Brazilian popular music.

Rappin Hood - Rap o Som da Paz

The Trash and the Indie scene

Cansei de Ser Sexy – who recently announced that they are changing their name to the satanic shirts - Blusas Satanicas - were born from São Paulo’s infant trash turn of the millennium scene. It is now thriving - particularly in grungy Consolação – a grid of streets near the old city centre, coloured by garish grafitti-scrawled shop fronts, the deep velvet-red of open bar doors and the flashing neon of go-go clubs. The zone is packed with thousands of young intellectual Paulistanos downing bottles of cooler-fresh Bohemia beer at rickety metal tables. Clubs like Studio SP, Vegas and the Hotel Cambridge – showcase bands like Trash pour Quatro who offer kitsch Bossa Nova re-workings of eighties classics and more interesting avant-garde singers like Analis Assumpção and angst-ridden indie MPB singer Andreia Dias, both of whom are recent signings to one of the city’s most exciting independent labels, Scubidu records.

Andreia Dias - O Fio da Comunicação

Described as ‘Pavement meets Fela Kuti’, Holger are fast becoming the it-kids on the indie scene and were a hit at Austin’s SXSW.

Holger - The Auction

Latino-EMO

Whilst Rio de Janeiro or Recife are just too extrovert to be emo, São Paulo’s claustrophobic concrete invites introspection. And Consolação’s lovers of trash rub sensitive shoulders with unsmiling, black-haired twenty-somethings with tight jeans and floppy fringes. Their favourite bands are Fresno and NXZero – both of whom sport diagonal haircuts covering two thirds of their faces and play loud grungy music with inaudible guitar rifts and neurotic lyrics. But the scene has produced some more interesting and original talents – notably 17 year old Mallu Magalhães whose sensitive, 3 chord, finger-picked tunes, sung in husky Portuguese and English recall a young Caetano or Suzanne Vega.

Mallu Magalhães – Tchubaruba

Travel

Tam and British Airways fly to São Paulo from London and Paris. Air France fly from Paris. Stay in Vila Madalena or Jardins for the best accommodation. Recommended guidebook, with music tips: Footprint Brazil.

Text and photos by Alex Robinson

Madame Mim plays Kings Place, London 06 November 09 as part of LIFEM Festival.
Céu plays ULU, London 06 November 09 at the Jungle Drums 7th anniversary party.

Comments(0)