"Brazil" and "football" are words that go hand in hand together. It's almost impossible to think of one without thinking of the other. It's the national pastime in every sense: playing, watching, and talking about it. For some, it's a religion; for others, it's a waste of time. Either way, there's no denying that football is truly a way of life in Brazil, from the kids playing barefoot in the streets to international stars like Kaká or Ronaldinho. And who could forget the World Cup, the period every 4 years where the entire country stops for a month (and that's no exaggeration: during the 2002 World Cup, due to time differences between Brazil and Japan, matches would be shown here in the early hours of the morning meaning that most people simply wouldn't bother going into work the next day). Aside from producing anything from countless spontaneous and unorganised street parties to a national day of mourning in Brazil, the World Cup has cemented Brazil as pioneers and exporters of the "beautiful game", with fans at all four corners of the globe and beyond. Brazil is football and football is Brazil. And yet, 51 years ago, it was a very different story.
Jump back to June 1958: Brazil had still not been World Champions, having lost in their own backyard 8 years earlier in the final against Uruguay and going out in the quarter-finals in '54. Eager to prove themselves in Sweden, they arrived with relatively little support, least of all from the Brazilian press who expressed very low expectations of its national team. It wasn't long until the other teams, along with the rest of the world, began to see the elegance and skill these players displayed. Among them were the likes of Dino Sani, Gino, Joel, Mazzola, Zagallo, Gilmar, Bellini, Garrincha, and an 18-year old Pelé (pictured above, centre). Together, they led Brazil to victory and sparked a new stage in development for the country, both internally and within the international community.
Of course I've come to learn about all this over many years, mostly through my dad. The first World Cup I remember was '94, Brazil's fourth title. I was 7 at the time, the same age my dad was in 1958. Some memories remain very clear in my head as if they were from yesterday; my most vivid one is watching Roberto Baggio missing his penalty against Taffarel in the final, meaning that Brazil were champions again. As part of the same generation as Kaká or Ronaldinho, 1958 seems a world away from me, even more so because archive footage is more difficult to come by. Thanks to filmmaker José Carlos Asbeg, this should never be a problem again.
I went to see documentary of his last night at the Football Museum in the Pacaembú Stadium (São Paulo's equivalent of Wembley) entitled '1958: O Ano Em Que O Mundo Descobriu o Brasil' (1958: The Year The World Discovered Brazil). Whilst it was primarily about Brazil's campaign during the 1958 World Cup, throughout the film director José Carlos Asbeg demonstrates how it was more than just a victory at an international sporting competition, it marked a turning point for Brazil culturally. Through interviews with journalists, football commentators, politicians, and the actual players themselves, we learn that 1958 was when Brazil truly established itself as a country of value and worthy of recognition within the world. A national inferiority complex was done away with once Bellini lifted the Jules Rimet. Yet what makes Asbeg's documentary so genuine and soulful is the clear admiration he has for the players, his childhood heroes. In a talk after the film, he commented on how he struggled to find archive footage to show entire plays that led to Brazil's goals rather than simply showing the final kick. For Asbeg, it's not the goal itself that matters as much as the whole team working as a single unit to produce that goal.
Towards the end of the talk, someone asked whether Asbeg had considered analysing the "art" of Brazil's football and what impact that had on the world afte 1958. Asbeg replied that his intention with his documentary was never to theorise, it was simply to pay tribute to those players who he had venerated when he was younger. Perhaps this is exactly what we need to remember our forgotten heroes, to feel the emotion and energy that the fans felt then. I may not have been there, but after watching Asbeg's documentary, I'm sure I won't forget 1958.
Why is it that musicals have such a bad reputation amongst the majority of the general public? If you ask the average person (and as far as I can tell, you could do this in any country and it'd be the same), they'll say that they don't like musicals because they're over-the-top and too happy and colourful and they don't understand why everyone's singing and dancing for no reason. In all honesty, I used to be one of these people as well. Never giving musicals a chance, brushing them aside with the wave of a jazz hand. But then at university, I spent an entire term watching musicals for my film course and I subsequently fell in love with with them, head first. Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, Vincente Minnelli, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, all of these were new heroes in their own individual way. And when you put a few of them together, well, you just get something truly amazing such as this:
But the glory days of the musical have passed and unfortunately these days, we have only turgid efforts such as those with Zac Efron and co. Perhaps it's because musicals are always associated with high-budget production values that it's hard to imagine an independent musical, much less a short-film one. So it was to my surprise when I found that the São Paulo Internation Short-Film Festival this week had dedicated three screenings to musicals.
I went to a screening last night that showed 5 films: 'A Estória de Clara Crocodilo' ('The Story of Clara Crocodilo'), 'The Man from 301', 'Heartbeat', 'A Caixinha do Amor' ('The Little Box of Love'), and 'West Bank Story'. Before the films, there was an introductory speech by one of the festival's representatives who commented on the Brazilian musical tradition which I had been unaware of, so I was looking forward to seeing the two Brazilian shorts among the selected films.
First up was 'The Story of Clara Crocodilo', a sci-fi musical from the '70s about a freedom fighter who'd escaped from prison in a totalitarian state and who was being chased by the police. As he flees from the cops, a radio DJ is broadcasting his show on a pirate station, narrating the story. Crocodilo manages to escape the police and the film ends with the DJ revealing himself to be none other than Clara Crocodilo. I'm not really sure if I'd call it a musical since I always assumed that one of the main aspects of the musical was that the characters themselves sang. In this film, the soundtrack was constant (it was pretty much all tropicália) with the narrator speaking over the top whilst a chorus occasionally sang as well but none of the characters did. The film was evidently an allegory for the current political climate at the time (not a very subtle one) and it did have a very camp feel to it throughout, especially Clara Crocodilo's make up à la Ziggy Stardust. I wasn't quite sure whether this was intentional and purposefully provocative or just because it was the '70s. Probably both.
Next was 'The Man from 301', an Irish musical about 3 prisoners who tell the tales of their crimes and who all blame the man from 301, the true criminal behind all 3 crimes. In the end, it's revealed that there has never been a man from 301. Musically it worked very well since the main style used was blues, reflecting each character's depression at his incarceration. Thematically, it was somewhat confusing: the first prisoner is seen shooting up whilst telling his tale (suitably depressing); the second was a rather large, tough-looking man with his tranvestite roommate who together sang the song 'I Hate the Bitches'; and the third involved a man talking to his only friend, a dummy called Arthur. Were it not for the middle section, the film would work well as a portrayal of these characters' attempts to escape from their guilt by creating this figure and projecting their crimes onto him: the first prisoner uses heroin to help convince himself whilst the last one is evidently mentally ill and has convinced himself already. The bitch-hating prisoner just seems misplaced, possibly only there to add a touch of humour to the film, even if that humour is ultimately sinister.
'Heartbeat' was without a shadow of a doubt the best of the 5. A Swedish musical about heart surgery and immigration, it manages to tell a full love story with heroes, villains, and jumping acrobats in the way you can only do through a musical. A helicopter arrives on the roof of a hospital, the pilot gets out carrying a small briefcase, inside of which is a heart on its way to the operating table. The pilot rushes with the doctor to the OR, pushing his way past patients singing for attention. The pilot pleads to the doctor to let him see the recepient but she doesn't. In the OR, the surgeon is about to start the operation when immigration officers storm through the doors and declare that the patient is an Iranian woman who must be deported at once. After some negotiation, they allow the woman to receive the heart but state that she must still leave the country. The pilot, who sees all this happening through the door and who has fallen in love with the woman, decides he will marry her so she can stay. With the help of all the doctors, the patients, and some nifty choreography, he manages to bring the woman to the helipad before the officers get to her. Meeting each other for the first time, they are instantly enamoured and fly away into the sunset, with everyone waving them goodbye from the roof (including the immigration officers). What on paper seems like a bizzare topic for a musical, in practice works wonderfully. The filmmakers move from love ballads to rap to fully-fledged musical numbers seamlessly and as absurd as the whole thing is, it's thoroughly entertaining. The best moment is probably when the heart itself starts talking and orders the immigration officers to back off and let the patient receive him. Who would've thought that a hospital could be a place full of pirouettes and chorus dancers?
The second Brazilian film I saw was 'The Little Box of Love', a pastiche of '30s musicals down to every last detail, even the opening credits. A storeowner in a small shop announces to her 4 staff members that whoever sells the most stock by Christmas will become the new manager. Veronica (Cristina Mutarelli) is determined to grab the position since she considers herself the best salesperson of the 4. But when a young man, Fred (Marcos Pando) comes in and is charmed by the other young saleswoman Jane (Regina Rheda), he decides he will buy the shop's whole stock. Jane becomes the new manager and the shop begins to thrive, much to the chagrin of Veronica. Fred even asks Jane to marry him and the two begin a happy life together. But Veronica is selfishly persistent and decides to trick Jane into leaving the shop so she can take her position. After convincing that Fred only wants Jane for her money, Jane staggers out of the shop into the night and is never seen again. A year passes and the shop has gone bankrupt under Veronica and the workers all wander miserably out into a cold winter's night. Veronica goes to a bar where she happens to find Jane, who is now blind and is selling matches. The barman tells Veronica that he and his wife found her after she suffered some sort of psychological episode and they decided to help her until they could find out who she was. Veronica decides to repair the damage she's done and brings Fred (who's now become a priest) to Jane. Upon hearing his voice, Jane miraculously regains her sight and the two are reunited once more. Like with the other Brazilian, the musical factor seemed relatively small. In fact, there was only one musical number in the whole film. Nonetheless, the film is a terrific pastiche of the acting styles and stories of Hollywood films from the '30s. It's a film that manages to pay tribute and simultaneously poke fun at the melodrama and sentimentality of that period, and does both very well.
The final offering was Ari Sandel's Oscar winner 'West Bank Story' (picture above). A parody of 'West Side Story', the film follows two neighbouring rival falafel stands, Kosher King and Hummus Hut, who each day confront and fight each other. Amidst all this conflict, David (Ben Newmark), an Israeli soldier, and Fatima (Noureen DeWulf), employee of the month at Hummus Hut, are in love. Together, they try to bring peace between their families and end the conflict once and for all. The film is a successfully enjoyable musical in every sense, parodying West Side Story with all that finger-snapping and even poking a bit of fun at the genre in general. If the story takes a very clichéd route then it's symptomatic of the genre it's acknowledging, because after all, we always know how a musical will end (well, almost always). The focus here should be on the music, the dances, and the comedy, all of which Sandel pulls off superbly. As a final note, it's interesting to know that before the night of the Oscars, Sandel received a phonecall from the ambassador of Israel saying that if his film won, it would be the first pro-peace film to win an award, and it would speak for all those in Israel and throughout the world who are working to bring end to the conflict there. Perhaps the UN should take note: forget trade sanctions, you'll get a lot more attention if you make musicals. Mark my words.
Breaking up is never easy. That final face-to-face confrontation when you bring out the old "it's not you, it's me" line and you hope the other person doesn't burst into tears in the middle of the restaurant; it's a situation no one ever wants to go through. So thanks to technology, people can avoid that unnecessary awkwardness and discomfort of their (ex-)significant others breaking down in front of them as their feelings are torn to shreds by sending an email or a short text message : "things not going gr8. reckon we shud c otha ppl. soz x p.s. its not u its me". You can imagine that their reaction would be 10 times as bad if they were to receive a message like this, but at least you don't have to be around to see it.
In reality, all that this new technology has done is make us more cowardly; taking the easy way out and just writing them a quick note and then erasing them for one's life. Even a phone call takes more courage since the other person has a chance to respond, even if he or she is not there with you. Perhaps more to the point is how one is supposed to react to something like this. You'd know that if this is how they've chosen to end the relationship, the chances of you getting in contact with them in the near future are slim to none. So what is one supposed to do? What exactly are you supposed to do with that text message or that email?
It's this question that became the foundation for French multimedia artist Sophie Calle's latest exhibition, 'Take Care of Yourself'. In 2006, she received an email from her last boyfriend in which he ended their relationship. A lot of points were made, about what they had agreed upon at the beginning of the relationship, things that had changed and things that hadn't changed, and so on. But basically, it boiled down to "it's not you, it's me". Not knowing what to do with the email (and always one to put her own personal life at the very heart of her art), she decided to send it to 107 women and asked each one to respond to it according to her profession. The result is a smorgasbord of analyses and interpretations, some of them so different from each other that one wonders whether they were even reading same letter. Among the 107 women, there were a few famous names (or at least that I recognised): musicians Feist, Peaches, and Miss Kittin; and actresses Miranda Richardson and Jeanne Moreau. There were also diplomats, criminologists, judges, lawyers, psychiatrists, and so on. Many of these gave very analytic profiles of the ex-boyfriend, picking up on specific phrases, form and style, tone, etc. These profiles would be displayed on the wall in huge prints, as seen in the photo above. For the artists she had asked to respond to the letter (this included everything from opera singers to performance artists as well a variety of actresses and musicians), there were a total of 33 TV screens showing their videos on loop with a bigger TV alternating between them all and allowing the public to listen to them too. Most of the actresses did a reading of the letter in their own way whilst the musicians choose parts of the letter and turned them into lyrics; Feist's interpretation was a particularly interesting one as she choose a single phrase from the letter and sang it over and over again, using a guitar pedal to add overlays and overdubs, creating an entire choir singing this single phrase. The ongoing, infinite chanting put across that anger that would be endlessly building upon reading the letter.
However, the more imaginative and more fascinating responses that I found came from the more unusual professions. A professional marksman responded by sending Calle the boyfriend's printed email back with 3 bullet-holes, each one over the word 'amour'. A cartoonist sent a short strip which in one panel had a man looking pleased with himself after finishing an email, surrounded by quotations books, philosophy books and thesauruses, and in the other panel, a woman looking miserable, reading an email in a dark room. A children's author sent back a short story that was a fable about a young man who, with the aid of the Devil, tricks a beautiful queen into falling in love with him. An 18th century historian compared him to a libertine, one who wished to break free from amorous passions but who could not control his lust. My favourite one was from a chess player who compared their relationship to a chess match: a picture of the board at the end of the match showed a white king (Calle) surrounded by 2 black, ineffective rooks while the black king lay fallen on the board witout a single white piece nearby. She commented on how it's an unwritten rule that chess match should never be abandoned. Since this one was, she didn't what to make of it.
As I looked at all these different responses, I began to wonder about the reason for the exhibition. Comparing a criminologist's psychological profile to a headhunter's description of the boyfriend may bring up some questions of self-perception and how we are viewed by others, but that didn't appear to be the motivation behind it all. Then it dawned on me that perhaps there wasn't actually any real meaning to it. Or rather, it was simply to show what all these women had thought; from an emotional point of view, all of it was unnecessary. Calle had been looking for an answer and in asking these women for their opinions, she had been looking in the wrong place. What she needed to do was ask herself and deal with it herself. One writer made the point that she was mistaken in thinking that she could deal with this emotional pain with "a squadron of women". This would only surround her with more contempt and anger. As she puts it at the end of her response "the choir you've formed around this letter is the choir of death". It's a reminder that at the end of the day, you're the only person who's going this painful experience and you're the only one who's going to be able to truly deal with it.
Of course my opinion is just another response to the letter, and were it to be followed, there wouldn't be any exhibition to talk about in the first place. Considering all the responses, if we examine and compare them, there's probably none that's more sensible, mature, and reassuring than that of Calle's mother. As she answers her daughter's letter, she says (in the way that only mums know now, I'm only paraphrasing of course), "These things happen, you just have to deal with them and try to move on. You'll meet many more people in your life, don't worry about that. And after all, maybe you can use this in a new art project of yours."
To see what your own response to the boyfriend's letter would be, here it is.
This weekend marked the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, hailed as the greatest music festival of all time. 600,000 attended, 3 million claimed they did. For some, it was a transcendental, once-in-a-lifetime experience they'll never forget; for others, all they can remember is that it rained all morning, and then cleared up in the afternoon. In any case, it's undeniable that it was home to some of the most renowned musical performances ever, the most famous one evidently being Jimi Hendrix's. Even so, one can't ignore all the other great performances over those 3 days, including The Who, Joe Cocker, Richie Havens, Sly & the Family Stone, Grateful Dead, among many others. For those of us who did miss it, the best we can make do with is Michael Wadleigh's film 'Woodstock', a 4-hour documentary that captures not only some of the great performances from the festival, but also takes a look at many other aspects of the event: the organisation, the crowd, the locals, the politics, the idealism, everything about Woodstock that made it more than just another music festival (a 40th anniversary DVD recently released includes an extra 2 hours of rare footage).
This sense of Woodstock being something more is delved into in this article with some of the key figures that brought the festival to fruition. Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld talk at length about the impact they feel the festival has had culturally and politically, and the impact it continues to have to this day.
On top of all this, Woodstock is remembered this year with another film, this time a fiction feature-length. 'Taking Woodstock' is inspired by the true story of how the festival's location was decided upon. Based on the book by Elliot Tiber, the man who offered his 15 acres to the festival organisers, the film follows Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin) as he struggles to keep the bank from taking away his parents land and their motel. On hearing about the festival being banned from its original site, he contacts the organisers and offers his land. But as the festival starts to be set up and the people start coming in droves from around the country, it becomes clear that neither Elliot nor any of the other organisers truly knew the scale of their festival and the consequences it would have.
Whilst the idea of a Hollywood movie about Woodstock might be something to be suspicious of, especially considering the cliché representations of hippie culture that it's sold for so long, this film seems to have that idealism at its very core. Director Ang Lee, known for more sombre works showing American society such as 'The Ice Storm' or 'Brokeback Mountain', said in an interview he always wanted to make a comedy film with a heart and that this film was is it. The film comes out in the UK in November, so until then we've only got this trailer to go by.
Last Friday, on the 7th August, São Paulo introduced a smoking ban in all closed environments across the entire state. There had already been a smoking ban before but it wasn't widely enforced. With this new ban, any establishment caught with someone smoking will be fined heavily. Clearly, this time they mean business. Yet, as too often with these laws, the pendulum has perhaps swung too far the other way.
Under the new law, "closed environments" are defined as anything that resembles a roof, even if that's an awning. This means that any bars, restaurants, cafés, etc. with outdoor areas in front are also subject to this new law. Smokers will be forced to be entirely outside the establishment's property to light up. Which to me, just seems like an overreaction. It's understandable that the state government wants to present a firm stance against it, but it seems unwise to demonise all smokers to the point of kicking them out in the street. There has to be some leeway, surely.
The interesting thing is seeing how clubs are tackling the issue since many of them don't have outdoor smoking areas. One solution I've heard about is to confiscate cigarettes upon entry of the club. Obviously they don't want to take the risk of someone having a sneaky cigarette but why not punish the offender instead of everyone? It'll be pretty obvious someone's smoking in a club by the small cloud above their heads. A friend of mine suggested that clubs without outdoor areas will end up suffering since punters will head to those that do have them. I doubt that's going to be the case since people aren't really going to stop going to their favourite haunts just because they can't smoke. No matter how adamant these smokers are, in the end, they will end up smoking less. It's inevitable. After all, humans are creatures of adaptation and can learn to adapt to any environment. And at the end of the day, between enjoying a drink with your friends or listening to your favourite DJ and smoking a cigarette outside in the street, what would you really pick?
Tied to this whole smoking issue is a film I saw last week, 'Thank You For Smoking'. It's a biting satirical look at the smoking industry's public relations department, spearheaded by the unflinching Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart). Born with the gift of the gab, Nick can convince anyone that the issue of smoking is not about health but it's about choice, freedom of expression, the foundations of America yesterday, today and tomorrow. And what is the America of tomorrow if not the children of today? With a cigarette in their hands, of course. The film takes a purposefully ambivalent position on the matter: it's hard not to love Nick Naylor because he's so effortlessly cool but at the same time you know he does his job simply because it pays the mortgage, he couldn't care less about the state of health of the thousands he's convinced to buy a pack of Marlboro or Lucky Strike. Equally, we know that those politicians who are in favour of crippling the tobacco industry are also doing it for their own gains (William H. Macy delivers a hilarious performance, a world away from the defenseless characters he's known to play). Choosing sides is clearly not the aim of the film, it's simply to show how it works. So if you've ever wondered how, in today's age, after all the information we know about tobacco and the harm it causes, how so many people are still smoking, it's all thanks to people like Nick Naylor, the true patriots of America.
By the way, the reason why sign above has that strange shape rather than just a circle is because it's the design of São Paulo's emblematic pavements, as seen below.
So the big news is that I'm a godfather now. I was asked a few weeks ago by my cousin to be godfather to her son. Like me, he shares cultural influences from England and Brazil since his dad is British and his mum is Brazilian. As we have this similar cultural mish-mash, she thought I'd be the perfect candidate for the position. Unfortunately, I couldn't be at the baptism myself as I was working on that weekend, so I was represented by someone else. Nevertheless, I'm a fully fledged godfather now (aside from a few signatures here and there, but let's be honest, that's just bureaucracy). So as a godfather, I thought my first act of duty should be to actually meet my godson. He was born in February of this year, in London, so I hadn't had the chance to meet him. I decided, then, to go to the small town of Itambacuri in the state of Minas Gerais, where my cousin and her (whole) family had decided to hold the baptism. My visit there coincided with the town's main religious festival, a celebration of its patron saint, Our Lady of the Angels. I remember going to it 6 years ago and being overwhelmed by the number of family members I hadn't met and who were just itching to see me for the first time. I also distinctly remember a lot of shouting, mainly because everyone there equated having a sound opinion about a topic of conversation with who could shout it the loudest. And judging by how most people handle arguments, they're probably not alone in thinking that. It was an... eventful weekend, shall we say, one which I wasn't prepared for. This time, I was ready.
So off I went to Itambacuri, 18 hours on a bus. Yes, that's right, 18 hours. Consider that I was going to make the same trip several days later; for a weekend away, 36 hours on a bus is dedication, right? The trip was mostly filled by sleeping with the added luxury of a film screening: 'Big', dubbed of course. I normally hate dubbing but ironically, it made watching Tom Hanks for an hour and a half a lot easier. The only truly torturous stage of the trip was in the last few hours, when I wasn't tired or sleepy anymore and my book just wasn't doing it; to quote Addison DeWitt from Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 'All About Eve', it was making minutes fly like hours. Eventually, the driver put on another film to pass the time, 'Stuart Little' (incidentally, I didn't know that was co-written by M. Night Shyamalan. Never would've guessed it). The first few minutes of the film were fine until it started skipping, not just a few seconds but whole chunks of the film. The 90 minutes were over in quarter of an hour, the cinematic equivalent of speed-reading. Someone alerted the driver to it and he put the film on again to see if it would work; the same thing happened except it showed slightly different bits so you could sort of fill in the holes. Just about. The driver eventually gave up on the film and decided to remedy the situation by putting on a CD of Brazilian Country music. On repeat. A fair few people around me were singing along with it. Those were the longest 2 hours of my life.
We finally made it to Itambacuri and it was the complete opposite of what you'd expect from a small town; there were shopping stalls absolutely everywhere around the bus station on account of the festival. In fact, the bus barely managed to squeeze past them for us to get off. These stalls were selling anything you can imagine, from spare washing machines parts to those little lazer pens that were really popular when I was about 12. Weaving my way through the countless shoppers looking for the best deals on pressure cookers and colourful kids' socks, I made it to where I would be staying. Thankfully I got in just in time for lunch and was greeted with a plate of beans, rice, chicken, beef, and four different types of salad: exactly what I needed.
Most of the weekend was spent eating, sleeping, and sitting around talking. And spending time with my godson, of course. This consisted mostly of watching over him whilst he looked curiously around this new environment, with hundreds of wrinkled faces looking at him and making silly noises in the hopes that he'd giggle back (most of the time, he would). Most surprising was how unphased he was by the whole thing: random fireworks at odd hours of the day, cars slowly going past blasting church music on the radio, lots of people shouting about nothing in particular, and not once did he cry. He's even more laidback than me, and that's saying something.
In the evenings, there were concerts in the main town square with "Brazil's biggest musical acts" playing, none of which I had ever heard of. Curiously, rather than having only one stage, there were two stages set up within less than 100 metres of one another, facing each other. As one band would finish on one stage, the next band would start within a few minutes on the other stage, resulting in the entire crowd running from one side to the other. I suppose that it saves some time but I doubt it was worth it, financially or infrastructurally. I was told by one of my cousin's (a different cousin) friends who lived there that it's how concerts are normally done. I thought about correcting him but then I decided against it.
The main feature of the festival was on the Sunday evening, with a large procession walking around the whole town in honour of Our Lady of the Angels, culminating at the church on the hill (pictured above). At the back of the procession was an effigy of the town's patron saint, atop a float decorated with all kinds of flowers. All the houses along the procession's route were also decorated, each one in its own style. These varied from a few ribbons and candles to more intricate adornments; one house set up a small backdrop and had lots of little kids dress up as angels holding candles, a bit like a live representation of a fresco or something. If that sounds cheesy or corny from a more secular point of view, seeing it live is a more humbling experience since you see how important a religious festival like this is to these people. The procession was estimated at 20,000 people, almost the entire population of the town. As this festival has become so popular over the years, people from all around come to participate in the celebrations; I wouldn't be surprised if there were 40,000 people on that weekend, if not more. The house I was staying in happened to be on the route and we stood there for nearly an half an hour watching all those people walk by. I'm not a particularly religious person myself but it's hard not to feel the faith and importance they have for their beliefs.
And so the weekend was over and it was back to normal life for the folk of Itambacuri. The streets vendors were packing their pirate films and cheap underwear whilst all the friends and family who came to visit were slowly making their way back to their respective homes. My journey back to São Paulo was actually better than going there. My bus wasn't as nice as the other one so I was denied a few luxuries, such as a TV showing films, or a seatbelt. And there were quite a few kids crying for most of the journey (remember now, 18 hours). I did, however, manage to sleep about 17 hours (somehow), so it made much quicker. All in all, a great relaxing weekend and one which I would definitely do again. Thank god it's only one weekend a year, though...
"Musical genius", "ahead of his time", "misunderstood": these are terms that probably have been thrown about too much since the dawn of time (or at least the dawn of music). Too often have musicians who show even the slightest bit of originality that differs from the norm been praised as torchbearers of creativity, especially with music's current state of affairs which sees the well of ideas dried up as bands are seemingly happy to rehash 80s electro pop again and again and again. So it's always refreshing when you come across an artist who merits those terms. Tom Zé, however, has been ahead of his time for about 30 years.
Originially from the northeast of Brazil, Tom Zé is a charismatic songwriter who fuses various types of traditional Brazilian genres such as samba, bossa nova, baião together with rock and funk to create a sound that is simply impossible to pigeonhole. He was part of the Tropicália movement of the 60s along with Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil but didn't reach the same heights of fame as they did and slowly isolated himself off from the music community, especially after the Brazilian military (in power at the time) began to imprison Tropicália musicians. Whilst Veloso and Gil eventually returned from exile in London to major commercial success in the 80s and beyond, Tom Zé remained in relative obscurity. This carried on until the 90s when David Byrne came across an old album of his and decided bring him back into the music community to record new material. Since then, Tom Zé has found a new much younger audience in Brazil, discovering his old records as well as his new ones, and a large international fanbase in the United States.
I, however, knew absolutely none of this on Wednesday night when I went to see his show. My friend invited me and I knew the name Tom Zé but had no idea what the show would entail. But I was told that he was like a Brazilian Frank Zappa, so at least I knew it was going to be something different. It turned out to be one of the best gigs I've seen in a long time. Despite not knowing any of the songs, there wasn't a single moment when I wasn't totally captivated by the energy of the music. It was melodic, it was percussive, it was soulful, it was humourous, and most of all, it was vibrant. Even at the age of 73, Tom Zé jumps about the stage frenetically as his makes his declarations about love, politics, and his favourite football player. Fortunately for me, this show was retrospective of his career, a bit like his greatest hits, so I got a very good overall impression of the man and the music. It was astonishing to see how his both his old material and his new material both sounded so fresh and exciting. It's as if he'd already started with a revolutionary musical formula and is now slowly developing and fine-tuning it.
Whilst this was certainly the best introduction I could have to Tom Zé, now comes the task of seeking out his albums which are much more conceptual than the concert was. Several of his albums are actual studies of Brazilian genres, such as 'Estudando Samba' and his most recent effort 'Estudando Bossa'. Deconstructing not only the music itself but also the history and the politics of it, he offers an ironic and irreverent tribute to these musical genres. Evidently, this is not easy listening by any means. But then when something is this creative and, to put it simply, this good, it certainly warrants a bit more effort on the patr of the listener. Even if that includes learning portuguese.
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