On the Road to Find Out

The newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo published some amazing photos of Sao Paulo a few weeks ago to celebrate 457 years of the city (why they are celebrating 457 years is anyone’s guess!) You should check out the article to view all of them, but I thought I would just share those of Vila Mariana, where I am currently staying. Somehow the photographer has managed to make the city look a replica of itself, with the people simply little Lego men that have been placed in position, and the lighting seemingly coming from a strategically placed light bulb, illuminating each still.

I’m based just around the corner from this main street. It’s funny how Vila Mariana doesn’t really look anything like this on a daily basis. Somehow the smell, noise and heat completely changes its appearance.

See the rest of the photos here.

So, after two failed attempts at arriving at film premiere-style arrangements it seems that music really is my thing. The last three nights have heralded three concerts, all of which I actually managed to find and found before they had finished. First up was the double bill of Lulina and Dudu Tsuda.

Dudu was a bit of a strange cat. He had one of those wispy beards, like he’d taken an uppercut from an angry candy floss, that only Asian people seem to get away with. His music was an interesting melange of general avant-gardeness that never really went anywhere. I got the impression that he was some kind of conceptual mastermind, and I was most definitely not in on it. Here he is performing “Le Jour que Erik Satie a Rencontré Stereo Lab,” which in name alone speaks volumes:

I’m not really sure why I started off with my least favourite video, that didn’t make much sense. Anyway, we shall persevere. Lulina was great! Most definitely in a Jeffrey Lewis vein. I’d been listening to her last two albums and they are good without being great, however live she is spot-on. Track after track of pure pop gold, coupled I’m sure with ascerbic wit which I struggled to really get to grips with. This is “Balada de Paulista,” i.e. ballad of a Sao Paulo-dweller.

Friday night was all about Karina Buhr, whose “Eu Mentí Pra Voce” has been one of my favourite records over the last six months. Dressed in a gold-sequinned catsuit she danced around the stage, grinding whenever an opportunity arose, writhed on the floor in an attempt to disrupt the guitarrist, turned her mic stage into a weapon and set loose on the audience. She was ridiculously good, especially considering she was being backed up by some of the best musicians in Brazil (including Edgar Scandurra and Fernando Catatau) and those great songs off her debut album. This is her performing “Telkphonen,” a strange percussive kraut-rock piece that never gives up on the intrigue.

Tonight I went to see Cerebro Eletronico, an interesting band who have been getting a lot of hype in Sao Paulo, featuring highly in many of the Best of 2010 polls. Without being particularly innovative they are a band that seems at ease producing track after track of 80s New Wave full of funky synths and rousing choruses. This is “Pareco Moderno” which is probably one of my favourites.

It seems it only takes a day to Jimmy. After getting a message on my StumbleUpon account (I didn’t even know I had one) from a Brazilian fellow who was a big fan of Sounds and Colours I followed up his interest to discover that he was an Assistant Director of a film soon to be released in Brazil, that being O Samba que Morra em Mim (The Samba Within Me) and which would be having its release party on 8th February, tying in nicely with my first full day in Sao Paulo. After many emails discussing the film as well as finding out when and where the film would be, as well as discussing the possibility of interviewing the director, I set off to watch the film at 10pm, arriving at Espaco Unibanco at the Bourbon Shopping Centre at 11pm where a big party was being had. A quick question in the security man’s ear revealed that the film was over. Too ashamed to track down Heitor to tell him that I had missed the film, would have no questions for the director as I hadn’t seen the film, and the general sensation that I hadn’t quite recovered from No Sleep Airlines, I decided to head back.

Looking back at my emails with Heitor there are at least three times that he said the film starts at 9pm as well as a flyer that quite clearly says 9pm. Sometimes you can be too Brazilian.

However, the day was not without fail. Especially as I had managed to pack in a few museum visits in the day, essentially discovering a few artists that actually made me feel quite warm inside, a response that I very rarely have to art. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that both Classicism and Modern Art turn me off in many different ways. Which is what makes the discovery of Adailton Fernandes Lopes and Aurelino dos Santos so thrilling, both indigenous artists from Brazil. Adailto Fernandes Lopes built a circus from paper, papier-mache, nylon and wire that was connected to a car stereo for power that made all the performers come to life. Aurelino do Santos on the other hand, painted a number of canvases that existed somewhere between an overhead view of a city and an absurdist fantasy, a place where a fish can be as big as the hospital is it resting next to. Unfortunately, I’ve had to use completely insufficient words to describe these amazing things as I can’t find any pictures of paintings from either of these two artists anywhere on the where. However, for a glimpse of what they are all about this is the picture being used by the museum on their flyer:

This is all part of the “A Arte do Povo Brasileiro” exhibition at Museu Afro Brasil, which you can find out more about HERE

A trip to MASP (Museum of Sao Paulo) was not quite as revelatory despite a great photography exhibit by Wim Wenders and the discovery of Hieronymous Bosch lurking in the Romanticism section. This guy really is special, as The Temptation of St Anthony pretty much single-handedly proves:

Over 9,000km, 11 hours in the air, a series of yellow, brown and grey things disguised as food, one rubbish rom com, an equally rubbish horse racing adventure starring John Malkovich, an hour on the bus, two trips on the Metro, and I’m in the Oca Hostel in Sao Paulo, i.e. I’m back in Brazil. One shower, sleep and breakfast later, and I’m human again.

On my previous trip I flew to Rio. This time I’m starting with Sao Paulo. I figure that if you’re gonna do something, i.e. write about South American music, you might as well do it properly. And seeing how many of the artists I’ve been listening to recently, e.g. Karina Buhr, Tulipa Ruiz, Tom Zé, Mauricio Takara, are all based in Sao Paulo, it is the perfect place to be.

On 24th December 2010 the Second Edition of UruguayNow (the first English language travel guide to Uruguay) was launched. If I hadn’t been stuffing hundreds of mince pies into my face at the time I would have mentioned this earlier. Well, the mince pie hangover has died off and so I bring the news!

The Second Edition can be viewed HERE. Just a few changes to the first edition, namely a couple of articles I have written about the upcoming Montevideo Carnival and about the Uruguayan Invasion, when a number of Uruguayan bands got so enthused by The Beatles they started to take over the continent (they got as far as Argentina) before people simply got interested in other things. It was an ever-chaning climate those days.

You can read the new edition of UruguayNow right HERE.

I’ve been meaning to write about this ever since the press conference happenened in Santa Cruz in Bolivia last week. Essentially, on the 23rd November Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, spoke out against the US, blaming them for recent coup attempts in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, as well as asking them to stay out of their foreign affairs. This was documented in BBC News:

Mr Morales said US policies to combat drugs and terrorism were pretexts for “intervention” in the region. He was addressing a meeting of regional defence ministers, including US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. Mr Gates listened but made no public response to the accusations. The US embassy later expressed disappointment at Mr Morales’s remarks. In an hour-long speech, Mr Morales accused the US of backing failed coup attempts in Venezuela in 2002, in Bolivia in 2008, and in Ecuador this year. He also accused it of involvement in the ousting of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya in 2009.

Instead of getting into the nitty-gritty of the background behind his statements I first wanted to get into the actual reporting of the incident, as this was one of the things I found most interesting about this story.

Now I’m well aware I’m not going to get a balanced argument from Fox News but I wasn’t quite ready for the poor quality of the journalism involved. Mike Gonzalez, who was arguing that all aid to Bolivia should be cut, started with the following:

Especially after that former union leader, President Evo Morales, spent an hour berating our Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at a regional defense conference on how Bolivia’s democracy is superior to America’s and how Bolivia has the right to team up with Iran on nuclear projects. Gates, speaking earlier, had warned about the wisdom of tying up with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran.

He then carries on:

Gates probably should count himself lucky that Morales did not behave toward him as he did last week to a player on a soccer pitch last month. Suffice to say that Morales’ opponent doubled over in pain and fell to the ground after the el lider applied his knee to a part of the other man’s body. Just search YouTube for “Morales and soccer” to see the president’s thuggish behavior toward opponents.

You always have to question when a journalist uses a tackle in a football game as to why the US shouldn’t give aid to one of the poorest countries in South America, one with 60% of people in poverty.

Gonzalez continues to demean Morales and Bolivia throughout the article, which makes a lot more sense when you get to the bottom and find out the he is a former journalist and current vice president of The Heritage Fund, an organisation “whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.” You should always be slightly skeptical when you see the phrase “traditional American values” in there. Ultimately, Morales has got his abuse for questioning the power of America and stating that he has no obligation to do as he is told. Obviously this could be taken two ways, as either a President asking for freedom, or as one who is out-of-control. As Morales has consistently tried to improve working conditions for Bolivians and become allies with other South American countries, it seems rich to imply that they could be a threat to a country like the USA.

The backdrop to all of this is the struggle of the new socialist regimes of South America to break away from the stranglehold the USA has on Latin America. Morales has been at the fore-front of this through his constant resistance to pander to the US’s policies, with his love of coca one of the main points of controversy. As a former coca-grower, Morales believes in its positive uses, and has encouraged growth of coca since he began his presidency, seeing it as a way of poor farmers to increase their income. Obviously, the US has differed in this view, asking for the country to desist its growth due to its potential to be turned into cocaine. This article was detailed well in the Washington Post here. Due to its coca growth Bolivia has been ear-marked as a major threat to the US, despite the fact that Colombia and Peru are capable of producing far more cocaine and have more resources to deal with the problem. The fact that both of these have agreed to aid the US’s counternarcotics campaign have meant that they have not been listed as a threat. Go figure!

So, it’s obviously a deep-rooted problem, which needs much discussion, discussion which Fox News or the Heritage Foundation are not interested in indulging. They prefer to label a President as a thug and then neglect their country. Proving however that it is possible to have non-biased opinions on the matter in the US press is the article by the LA Times, which opts for taking a fair view of things, and seems like a place for me to finish this article.

One of the fascinating aspects of Uruguayan culture is the fact that through colonisation it managed to keep intact customs passed on from the slaves. Candombe is a style of drumming, which also incorporates dance and costumes, that was brought over by African slaves in the early 19th century. It has strong links with drumming practices in the Bantu regions of Africa, countries now known as Nigeria, Congo and Zimbabwe. Whereas in most instances of colonisations the activities of the slaves were marginalised in Montevideo they were eventually adopted by the middle and upper classes (although there is history of some defiance) in the 1860s and 1870s. The people were so enamoured with the style that they went so far as blacking up their faces and wearing the same basic clothing as the slaves.

Now, candombe is completely integrated with the whites of Uruguay, and is one of their proudest customs. Montevideo is continually thriving with the sound of drums. Every neighbourhood within the city has their own group who will parade the streets once or twice a week, with one performance normally on the weekend. In addition, the Wise Men’s Parade just after Christmas and Montevideo carnival allow the groups to compete to be the best group in the city.

The heritage of Uruguay is something I find infinitely interesting, but has always been quite hard to find information about, as aside from my time in Montevideo when I would very slowly read about it in Spanish, it is hard to get information. Which is why I was very excited to find out that a book has now been published. It’s called Blackness in the White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay and has been written by George Reid Andrews. You can check out the book HERE. And below, is an extract with some more, very interesting information about Uruguay’s Afro-origins.

Though its roots are African, candombe was created in Uruguay and exists nowhere else, my friends told me. Upon learning that I had joined a comparsa and paraded in that year’s Llamadas, a city cultural official whom I met toward the end of my stay smiled delightedly and said that I could not possibly have had a more profoundly Uruguayan experience–which I think is probably true. But as they embrace candombe as a core component of national identity, no one ever mentions feeling under siege by internationalization. The drummers seem to come to candombe not from feelings of defensiveness but for purely positive reasons, and for love of the music itself.

As we have seen, Uruguayans love candombe, and for good reason. Like samba, salsa, merengue, jazz, funk, hip-hop, and all the other African-based “national rhythms,” it is a musical form that, in the words of one informant, “won’t let you sit still.” And over the last hundred years, the comparsas have developed methods of playing it that enable them to take people with limited musical experience and turn them into juggernauts of rhythm. The music is played on three types of drums–chico, repique, and piano–each of which has a different voice–alto, tenor, and bass, respectively–and plays a different rhythmic figure. The piano hits heavy downbeats on one and four, with intervening syncopated eighth and sixteenth notes; the chico leaps in immediately following each beat with a sequence of three sixteenth notes. Both drums pound out the same stuttering phrases over and over again, in a deep aesthetic of monotony; the repique players have more freedom to improvise, and drive the group forward with their counterrhythms.

The result, when played at maximum volume and with maximum force and authority, is irresistibly powerful and compelling. Here we might recall Tomás Olivera’s memories of the 1956 Llamadas: “The cheering and applause were like an earthquake; and . . . with the thundering of the drums, the shouts of the spectators, the bombs and rockets shooting up into the sky, one had the sense that the buildings on each side of the street were about to explode into thousands of pieces.” This is an accurate and not at all exaggerated description of what it feels like to march and drum with a comparsa. The waves of rhythm put out by our drums did indeed feel strong enough to demolish the buildings around us. As we marched along on our weekly practices, we set off every car and building alarm en route; yet the whooping alarms could barely be heard as tiny yawps above the thunderous din.

Several of the drummers I talked to described the feeling of being “transported” while marching; and as we marched and drummed, digging deeper and deeper into the groove, I did feel simultaneously rooted and floating. The force of gravity and the steady reassurance of the ground had never seemed so necessary, to keep us from levitating off down the street on the cresting waves of rhythm. Yet the ground provided no rest, and was itself charged with surging electrical forces that flowed through us in a steady pulsing voltage. Everything was suffused with rhythm: the air, the ground, the universe, our bodies, our organs, and of course our drums. We were simultaneously the source, the conduit, and the recipient of that rhythm, I and fifty other drummers, hands rising and falling, legs stepping and marching, all together, all as one.

Yes, obviously the feeling is sexual–how could it not be, with these rich currents flowing through you? At the end we were exhausted, drenched with sweat, yet refreshed, relaxed, and glowing. Everyone felt good after drumming–unless, that is, we had suffered injury or exhaustion along the way, which are frequent parts of the enterprise. The marches “are a test of exceptional physical strength,” notes one analysis of the comparsas, “and psychic strength as well.” That is an exaggeration, I would say; anyone in reasonable physical condition can carry and play the drums. But there is no question that doing so while marching, listening to the rest of the group, and maintaining perfect rhythm (or trying to) for an hour or more is intensely demanding. And all drummers, even the most experienced, can tear skin off their hands as they pound the leather drumheads. Ever “the good warriors” invoked by Lobo Núñez, drummers are expected to ignore their wounds and play through the pain, heads held high and gazing coolly into the distance.

Bloodshed is just one part of the military character of the comparsas. The experience of preparing for the Llamadas is not unlike going through boot camp. There are clear lines of authority and command, based on the age, experience, and ability of the different members. Our instructor Miguel, his colleague Sergio, and their lieutenants, all work to instill a kind of martial discipline. Miguel and Sergio in particular adopt a classic good cop/bad cop approach. As we march, Sergio stalks up and down the ranks, bawling us out for our numerous shortcomings. Miguel looks on gloomily, leaving us to guess whether he is more saddened by Sergio’s ferocity or by our clumsy mediocrity.

As in any military unit, we pass long stretches of boredom and inactivity punctuated by brief bursts of intense action and excitement. Since comparsas field a lot of people, we routinely spend an hour or more waiting for everyone to show up, for drums to be tuned, for ranks to form, and so on. We pass the time smoking, joking, complaining about our “officers”; and then it is time to go over the top, into action.

These experiences produce their intended results, and gradually one becomes part of the unit, bonded to one’s fellow drummers.

From Blackness in the White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay, by George Reid Andrews. Copyright (c) 2010 The University of North Carolina Press.

Read more from Blackness in the White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay HERE

Very interesting new article on SFMOMA by Darrin Alfred, looking at the Campana brothers, two artists practicising the Brazilian art of transforming waste items into something useful, practical or simply aesthetic, as Darrin explains:

In Brazil, the Portuguese expression gambiarra is applied to the peculiarly inventive approach to problem solving that is ubiquitous throughout São Paulo.

This style of making art is something Vik Muniz, another Brazilian artist, has become famous for. He was the recent subject of Waste Land, a film that was showing as part of the BFI London Film Festival and which I wrote about HERE.

To read the whole article about the Campana brothers by Darrin Alfred go HERE.

Very exciting news that Argentina and Uruguay have put forward tentative plans to host the 2030 World Cup. Their main hope with the bid is that the organisers won’t be able to resist the temptation of hosting the tournament on its centennial year at the place where it all began. That final of that first ever tournament in 1930 was contested between Uruguay and Argentina at the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo. There is no way Uruguay could hold a World Cup these days so it makes perfect sense to propose a joint bid with Argentina, whose Estadio Monumental (home of River Plate), Estadio Gigante (home of Rosario Central), Estadio Ciudad de la Plata, the potentially refurbished La Bombonera (the chocolate box, Boca Juniors home) and at least five other stadiums, off the top of my head, with a capacity of over 40,000, would instantly be ready for hosting a tournament.

After announcing the bid on 30th May Argentina and Uruguay have received the unanimous backing of their fellow CONMEBOL nations and then submitted the bid formally to FIFA when Sepp Blatter visited Colombia in September. He was presented with the bid document as well as a shirt made up from the two nations’ national team shirts with the phrase ‘history unites – sport too’ included in the presentation box. This is what it looked like:

The only problem I could see the bid as ever having trouble would be if the Brazil Would Cup in 2014 proved to be an absolute failure, souring the idea of having another World Cup in South America for some time. It is also in Argentina and Uruguay’s favour that the rule of one tournament in Europe followed by one worldwide will work in their favour. It looks likely that either England or Russia will host the 2018 World Cup. Following that, Australia, Japan and Qatar are all in the running for 2022 (with the amount of money that Qatar are pouring into the game it’s very easy to see them getting that one) which will be followed by another European tournament. Personally, I think that could be a nailed on Spain/Portugal World Cup 2026, though obviously there are a few politics in the way of that one.

It would be great for the Centenario to host another World Cup Final, especially since the Uruguayans are still talking about their Semi-Final appearance in South Africa; it would definitely bring a lot of joy to the nation.

When I was last in Montevideo (in January and February 2010) I met quite a few Americans who had come to Uruguay in order to make some dollar. Their main objective was real estate, buying cheap land near the cost and building some fancy dan apartments there. For Americans of retirement age it couldn’t really get much better than Uruguay. They have coast aplenty which stays at a pretty decent temperature for the majority of the year, there’s hardly any cars on the roads, the cities are very quiet, meals are cheap and rather large, everything an old couple might want.

As well as real estate though these American entrepeneurs had increasingly taken an interest in the production of hemp and marijuana. It is legal to smoke weed in Uruguay, although it is still illegal to sell it. It’s rather strange how the smell of weed eventually comes to permeate any kind of gathering you’re at, whether in the park, outside a bar or at the carnival, people are smoking it everywhere. If you then factor in that it is legal to buy cannabis in California and that Uruguay has the perfect growing conditions for the drug it is clear to see why they were taking such an interest. It is very possible that if the use of cannabis increased in the US one of the cheapest and easiest places to grow it would be in Uruguay.

I still think this might happen but it seems as if, before we get to that eventuality, Uruguay will instead focus on hemp production, as an alternative to soy beans, which is currently their main export. The quite obvious problem with soybean, as has been largely reported elsewhere is that most of the soy seeds being planted are made by Monsanto, “the evil destroyers of all things good”, as I like to call them. Their soy seeds are specially designed so that they are resistant to their own herbicide Round Up, which kills everything in its path, be it plant or animal. A shot of this stuff would kill a human in a couple of hours. Not a great thing then to put on your fields. The great thing about hemp is that it simply grows without need for any fertiliser or herbicide; it outgrows everything. It seems like it could be the best option for Uruguay, especially as many of their small farmers have started to struggle after damaging their land due to over-use of Round Up. Here’s a little more about hemp:

Industrial hemp, with its fast growth and dense foliage, needs no herbicides to compete with weeds and other plants – it simply outgrows them. This alone would be a massive boon to both the farmers and the ecology of Uruguay. Hemp has proven effective in cleaning pollutants and heavy metals from soil; it is feasible that it could also work for removing agrochemical toxins. Hemp’s composted foliage makes an excellent fertilizer which can replenish vital nutrients in soil, while its deep root system aerates and improves the land. Hemp can actually improve the yields of many other food crops when grown in rotation.

This paragraph was taken from the Marijuana and Cannabis blog, that goes into this whole subject in a lot more depth. You can read about it HERE. The only thing I am still unclear on is exactly how useful hemp is, it’s no good in cooking, but can be used in beauty products such as soap. If anyone knows more ways in which it can be used I would be glad to hear it.