He was a plumed, sequined serpent, a beautiful and strange snake that scintillated as he danced to the beat of the music. He ondulated on stage, mesmerizing us with his tattooed body, the inky tribal rings around his thighs, his tight-fitting, majestic headdress, his gold mask, his kohl-rimmed eyes. His antique, blackened eyes flashed, throwing darts at us from a distance.
He was sensual, absurdly seductive when he changed costumes right there on stage, or rather, undressed, scandalizing us with his string thong, his strong buttocks, his bulge. He had firm, wide shoulders, slender muscular arms, and he liked to stand in profile and throw a leg out and set his foot on a velvet sofa to emphasize the outline of his leg, of his body in profile, like an Egyptian painting. Tall blue feathers bursting out of his head, he would turn suddenly with a swish, and like a feline demon prance around the stage. He pranced around like a hungry tiger, and lingered in a corner, singing, and almost dancing with one of his musicians, enticing him.
The tempo of the music increased, he started jerking, twisting, hopping absurdly about like a mad Indian god, a cross of a tiger and a divine monkey, reincarnating after his bird-snake life. He changed his adornments again, always seducing us with his poses. He lay a wide gold Egyptian necklace across his chest. He turned and gave his naked back to the audience. A tattooed back, wide black lines following his spine. An Aztec god he was, or perhaps a sacrifice, ready to be thrown into a great big cauldron in a distant mountain.
The artist, at sixty-something-years-old, was a spectacle that belonged to another time, to the decadence of pre-war cabaret life in Germany, combined with the decadence of 80s, new-to-AIDS Brazil, mixed with the eternal exhuberance of Amazonian animal life. He was the very embodiment of the carnivalesque, an ode to life, to primordial forces. He was an explosion of colours, shine, gloss, sparkle. He was an incarnation of macunaima, the trickster indian. He was Ney Matogrosso.
I remember the man from my Brazilian chilhood, the singer with the high voice. His recent show was on an August night; he performed in a cold, dark space, a theater with the name of a bank, an impersonal space with hundreds of tables where people sat eating their cheese and ham canapes and drinking their beers and caipirinhas. People did not stand during the show, people did not dance to accompany the beautiful bird-snake's rapturous flights across the stage. They sat and watched and consumed and asked for more cachaca and another round of beer and a few more portions of olives, please?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This whole scene symbolizes what happened to my dream of Brazil. The technicolor spectacle-dream of my birthplace seemed to turn grey when I started to settle into the reality of Sao Paulo. After the euphoria of arrival and the strangeness of culture shock, things morphed into a kind of oppressive flatness. A bit like the exhuberant bird-like singer I went to see a couple of weeks ago, trapped in the indistinct, soulless, corporate theater, trapped in the Zona Sul of Sao Paulo, old swamp land where new office buildings are built by the dozens or even by the hundreds, and where the grey-brown hazyness of condensed pollution hangs in the air permanently.
I have been searching for a way back to the exhilaration I associated with Brazil when I was most far away from the country.
My image of the country where I hadn't lived for twenty years was slowly built up, it was an amalgam of experiences and stories and symbols that I acquired in London only recently. As an adult, I hadn't been in touch with the culture at all, or if I had, it had been in a distant and formulaic way. When I watched the World Cup, I always rooted for Brazil. If I went to Portugal on vacation, I tried out my rusty Portuguese and was delighted to see that people recognized my accent as Brazilian.
I had memories of Brazil, but they were wispy and static, frozen scenes that felt as if I'd snatched them from a book or a movie or from somebody else's acid trip. I remembered the Bandeirantes monument, a mass of yellowish stone, a bunch of men standing in the middle of some avenue next to a park, a bunch of men pulling something but I couldn't recall what exactly it was that they were pulling. I remembered learning how to swim in the Clube Paulistano's huge swimming pool. I remembered my mother putting mascara on my lashes when I was four years old, readying me for my very important role as a bride at the Festas Juninas. But despite these memories, sometimes it really felt as if I'd made up my past in Brazil. Somehow it felt like I'd never lived there at all, or perhaps only in a previous life.
I came to know Brazil again in a beautiful yet most improbable way. In London, I started working at a Brazilian magazine doing their PR and organizing events. I was immediately thrown into a whirlwind of cultural life. Miraculously, I had landed a job that didn´t pay much yet felt like a permanent vacation.
I still remember my first boat party on the Thames. We hired a boat that stayed moored, yet threatened to take off into never-never land, such was the glowing energy that the party produced. Three different dance rooms, playing funk carioca, tropicalia music, hits from the eighties, Seu Jorge, forro,afro-grooves, and downstairs, in the hidden depths of the boat, under the water, it was heavy-duty electronica, minimal and trance, and other types of mushroomy sounds, where people got off on laughing gas and lost themselves in the pumping beats. And in the other rooms, samba-rock, most importantly, beats, beats, beats, and warmth, people touching, smiling, laughing.
And there were such lines to get in! Of course there were the regulars, and those who had read about the party in our magazine or in TimeOut. But there were also people leaving the infamous (and cheap) Australian pub across the street, and people who had been strolling along the Thames after a river-side dinner meal, and East London kids heading for Schoolnight parties in West London, and young boys from out of town looking for some action: everyone seemed to be eager to check out what it was all about. Any party with a long line to get in MUST be out of this world. As the clock struck twelve, the line became even more absurdly long, and the people at the entrance, at the caixa and with the guest list (which included me) went into a frenzied mode to get everyone in and take in the much-needed dough. It seemed as though from the street, people literally saw the fumes of happiness steam or a rainbow aura around the boat.
Brazil in London, Brazil from afar, collapsed all social and cultural differences into one big colourful happy party. There were Brazilians, Brits, Spaniards, French, Indian and other London variations of lost nomads from the world over. There were people from the embassy, from sponsoring companies, from the business world, and there were artists, musicians, officer workers, motoboys, manicures, pub workers; they were black, white, brown, young, old, cool, nerdy; it was a beautiful zoo.
I want to find the Brazil that I knew in London, the hallucination that possessed me and that compelled me to come back, to feel it all pulsating in me.
Here are some mementos from that happy time, press releases I sent out to the media, exaggerating, embellishing and yet providing a true snapshot of Brazilian life in London.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
COLLAGE N 2
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
AUGUST 2006
TWO OF THE BIGGEST NAMES IN THE UK BRASILIAN SCENE JOIN FORCES TO BRING YOU THE HAPPIEST DANCE BASH OF THE SUMMER HELPING STREET CHILDREN IN BRASIL
------------------------------------------------
JungleDrums Magazine, purveyor of London’s best Brasilian-flavoured boat bashes, has joined forces with special guest DJ Cliffy of Batmacumba fame to host the happiest party of the summer, with part of the proceeds going to Ruas e Praças, a Brasilian charity for street children.
The notorious Cliffy is a music writer, producer and one of the most successful global beat deejays in Europe. This Brasil-lover has deejayed in over 25 countries from Canada to China and hosts Batmacumba (usually at the ICA), the longest running Brasilian club-night in England (9 years), a multi-media event combining films, photography, graffiti, dance, capoeira and much more. We’re very proud to present the Batmacumba Room, featuring the man himself playing the amazing sounds he’s collected from down under.
But there’s loads of wicked stuff going on in the other rooms too! Just fresh off the coolest outdoors festival on the Thames this year, JungleDrums will be back on the boat with the sounds and DJs that most roused the crowd. The DJ sets at Brasil Tô Dentro! (our festival that pulled over 30’000 people to the South Bank on July 2) attracted every dancing creature in London from aging Elvis impersonators to hard clubbers willing to brave the sub-tropical temperatures and sunshine to bounce around joyfully.
Our downstairs Reaction Room will bring back this electric atmosphere, with funky, progressive and electro house care of crazy collective Djs Marcio Groove, Lucas Datt and Alec Fasani. This is the zaniest room, gathering shiny, happy people turbo-charged with energy.
And last but not least, Booty Beats Room is back too! Why change anything when the recipe works? Stay in this room and you’ll shake your booty all night to badass Baile Funk, and new contemporary urban music, with a dash of Drum’n ’Bass thrown in, courtesy of DJ S.P.Y., and the unbeatable Herman ♥s Pauline.
As we’re all warming up for carnival, the dress-code is pre-carnival, so bring out the exhuberant bird of the night in you: dress up and go way over-the-top in true Brasilian style. Masks, sequins, feathers, body paint, translucent fabric, tiny outfits and vertiginous heels are encouraged!
(check out some of the artwork for these parties at http://www.jungledrums.org/boatparty/ or http://www.jungledrums.org/sambatralia/)
Assinar:
Postar comentários (Atom)
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário