The Brazil you don't expect. Not the one pining with melancholy, dreaming of lithe girls from Ipanema, but the one holed up in the basements of the megalopolis of São Paulo, exorcising its demons. This is the Brazil of "The Sexual Life Of The Savages", the compilation from the ever-praiseworthy Soul Jazz that captures the São Paulo post-punk scene across 17 tracks from 1980 to '88, with a touch of justified pride (the title pokes fun at the obtuse perception foreigners often have of Brazilian musicians). Yes, because that breath of fresh air from the late '70s known as new wave swept through these latitudes too, and with the force of a tornado, judging by how deeply the twelve bands featured on the compilation were influenced by their colleagues from the Northern Hemisphere.
Take Akira S Et As Garotas Que Erraram, for instance, and you'd swear you'd stumbled on the tropical reincarnation of Joy Division. Obsessive rhythms, murky bass lines, desolate vocals, funereal layers of synth: that's "Sobre As Pernas", a rough diamond of green-and-gold dark, with its tale of urban decay, crime and prostitution, and its effect-laden ending, where a terrifying blast of horn shatters a wall of timpani; and then there's "Eu Dirijo O Carro Bomba", which likewise lurches along on sinister cadences, propelled by a "dub" bass line straight out of Jah Wobble.
New York new wave also found converts in São Paulo. A Talking Heads-style approach leads Patife to blend polyrhythms, acidic guitar work and pop sensibility into the jazz-rock of "Teu Bem", while it's the nervy weave of Television and the hysteria of Gang Of Four pulling the strings of "For A Daqui" and "Mediocridade Afinal", the two tracks by Smack. In other cases, native rhythms serve as a pretext for even bolder experiments. Chance, for example, first dissect a samba with a drum machine, twisting it into an electro-goth piece full of atmospheric vocalizing and dissonant chords ("Samba De Morro"), then stage a horror cabaret worthy of Bauhaus on "Striptease De Madame X", amid tolling piano, ghostly voices and flashes of drums. Nau's "Madame Oraculo" is an unsettling flamenco/death-disco number that wouldn't look out of place in the Pil catalogue. With the sweet tongue-twister of "Zum Zum Zazoeira", Fellini (already featured with the hit "Rock Europeu") dress the retro charm of a Farfisa organ and a harmonica in a beat arrangement. And what the band of the same name serves up on "Ilha Urbana" is anything but "Muzak", with napalm-style guitars in the vein of Pop Group.
The synth-pop strand is also well represented: following in the footsteps of New Order, Japan and co. are Gang 90 with "Jack Kerouac", amid swirls of synth and female choruses, Gueto with "Borboleta" (disco-pop driven by a samba rhythm), Cabine C with "Tao Perto" (perhaps the finest melodists of the bunch), and the glossier Harry with "You Have Gone Wrong".
And then there are the women. More than half the bands feature at least one. Sometimes they do it all on their own, like Mercenárias, an all-female quartet poised between Slits and Esg: they even made it to London to promote "Panico", the political invective that, along with "Inimigo", opens the compilation: barely over three minutes across two tracks, but high-tension stuff. And finally, there's the chanteuse Vange Leonel, belting it out amid the sharp riffs of "Madame Oraculo".
Julio Barroso, leader of Gang 90, called it "anthropophagy", the idea of "cultural cannibalism as a positive force for transforming art". And the plundering of Anglo-Saxon models is plain to see. But these waver artists from the Tropics manage to reinterpret moods and sounds in an original key, helped along by the musicality of their language and a forceful rhythmic streak. After all, one need only mention the name of Arto Lindsay, the Carioca guru of New York no wave, to understand how this "transplant" was not so unnatural after all. A process of assimilation and creative reworking akin to the one that, straddling the '60s and '70s, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and the other standard-bearers of the Tropicália movement carried out with contemporary English and American psychedelia.
A South American counterpart to "In The Beginning There Was Rhythm" (also curated by Soul Jazz) and an ideal "second chapter" to the "Não Wave" anthology (released by Berlin's Man Records), "The Sexual Life Of The Savages" is a historical document, but above all a collection of great music. From Manchester to São Paulo, by way of New York. Globalization, after all, wasn't born yesterday.
Ride the wave of great music
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02/10/2009
This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Claudio Fabretti, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.
Tracklist
- 1. As Mercenarias - Inimigo
- 2. As Mercenarias - Panico
- 3. Akira S Et As Garotas Que Erraram - Sobre As Pernas
- 4. Akira S Et As Garotas Que Erraram - Eu Dirijo O Carro Bomba
- 5. Fellini - Rock Europeu
- 6. Gang 90 - Jack Kerouac
- 7. Chance - Samba De Morro
- 8. Patife - Teu Bem
- 9. Gueto - Borboleta
- 10. Nau - Madame Oraculo
- 11. Chance - Striptease De Madame X
- 12. Smack - For A Daqui
- 13. Smack - Mediocridade Afinal
- 14. Fellini - Zum Zum Zazoeira
- 15. Muzak - Ilha Urbana
- 16. Cabine C - Tao Perto
- 17. Harry - You Have Gone Wrong
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