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A diary by Chandrasonic and Dr Das
April 20th, Recife
After a press conference in Sao Paulo, the new eight
piece A.D.F. end up in what our new rappers MCs Aktarvator
and Spex describe as a "hotel in the middle of
a Bounty advert." It was somewhere in Olinda, a
hypnotically beautiful neighbourhood of Recife, the
capital of north eastern Brazil.
The next day are invited to a community project in one
of the poorest districts of Recife. An important part
of this British Council-funded tour is the series of
music workshops to be carried out in each of the four
cities we we're playing in. However, despite the best
of efforts of the British Council/Universal records
team, information on the format for these is scant to
say the least, so we don't know what to expect. What
we get in Olinda, is a performance by the Bale Afro
Majo Male, in a disused slaughterhouse that the troupe
want the council to convert to a community centre. The
group consist of three lads on percussion and 15 girl
dancers (who also play percussion and make their own
instruments) in their early teens. After a brief introduction
the beats begin: cyclic, hypnotic and hard as nails.
The girls spin, hiss, scream and chant in multi-layered
harmonies with a physical syncopation that defies description.
It is at once mysterious/ancient and militant/contemporary.
Basically, it is jaw-droppingly wicked, which is what
we tell the various press who seem to be there because
we are. We make the obvious point that it shouldn't
take our presence to alert the press to the immense
creativity amongst people who have next to nothing in
terms of resources and who live on their doorstep.
Afterwards, the girls take us to their stark but vibey
rehearsal centre, where they gently cajol us to dance
with them- a circular, ‘joined up’ kind of
pogo. Myself, Dr.Das and M.C. Spex acquit ourselves
pretty well, actually, considering the competition.
Later at the festival in Recife, we see the girls again,
in full costume dancing with the excellent afro/samba/hip-hop/drum
and bass crew Nacao Zumbi. As Dr Das puts it, they look
like the ‘Grandaughters of Sun Ra,’ dancing
on Starship Afro-Brazilia.
This, and the next two days convince me that Recife
and its sister town Olinda, are the music/art/dance/vibe
capitals of the world. I'm coming to live here.
April 23rd, Rio de Janeiro
In Brazil, one of the top ten most productive economies,
one-fifth of the population live in shanty-towns or
"favelas". For the government, this vast underclass
at best does not exist; at worst they are considered
human vermin for the police to exterminate by any means
necessary with tacit state approval. The real government
in the favelas, are the drug gangs- the armed "traficantes,"
who rule by the gun but also have a relatively benevolent
side, providing housing, materials, educational resources
and even clinics. It is with the latter's approval that
British Council manages to get A.D.F./A.D.F.E.D. invited
to a favela in the tourist no-go Northern zone of Rio.
In the back of the van on the way there, we are told
of the 1992 massacre where police fired indiscriminately
on residents killing twenty two people. At the time
of visiting, there is a war going on between rival drug
gangs and where we are heading is regularly visited
by masked men with machine-guns. As our excellent press
liason officer Luciano tells us this and other favelas
related horror stories, a collective gulp is heard from
the entourage. But trepidation soon turns to inspiration.
Our first stop is the favelas' arts centre. The centre
began to develop after the aforementioned massacre,
supported by the Britsh Council and bands like the excellent
Orappa (whose portraits adorn the centre) and tolerated
by the drug gangs. But most of all, it is the determined
creativity of the community that has made the centre
such a success. First off, the centre is visually stunning.
A riot of colour, sculpture and Afro-Brazilian splendour,
it immediately exposes the current crop of Brit-art
self-publicists for the cynical money-grabbers they
really are. We are lead to where the "workshop"
is due to happen to find the local band "Afro-Reggae"
set up and ready to go. We plug in what we have with
us and a kind of refined musical chaos sets in, with
spontaneous jams starting up all over. M.C. Spex and
Aktarvator manage to begin to explain how a sampler/sequencer
works (Akai MPC2000) to a very enthusiastic fourteen
year old whom we find out later lost both his parents
in the massacre.
Then Afro-Reggae begin in earnest, proceeding to blow
our minds. The band consists of
guitar, bass, drums, DJ and an army of percussionists,
singers and dancers. They combine hip hop, drum and
bass, samba, ragga, punk, bossa nova, reggae, caporeira
and theatre with an ease and passion the like of which
we have never seen before. They at once knock down every
preconceived musical barrier and create a radically
new form without even thinking about it. And this is
taking place in one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods
in Brazil, if not the world. This is clear in Afro-Reggae's
set. At one stage, the dancers bring in a huge prison
gate to illustrate the lyrics
of a song. The finale is an audio-visual re-enactment
of the dreadful massacre that spawned the band where
they don balaclavas and charge into a jungle-punk assault
backed up by helicopter sounds and a whirlpool of feedback.
As in Recife, the centre is swarming with journos and
TV crews, most of who by their own admission wouldn't
go near the place if A.D.F. hadn’t made it newsworthy.
We make the point that the best band in the world has
come out of a slum project in Rio and the media should
deal with its prejudices quicktime. After Afro -Reggae's
set we met some local activists and take a photo opportunity
to smash up a gun with a hammer as part of a campaign
to reduce violence in the favelas.
The hospitality and warmth that we are shown in the
favelas is incredible and we have all made friends for
life here. The day's experience reaffirms for us the
A.D.F./A.D.F.E.D. belief in the transformative and iberating
power of music that is sometimes difficult to hold onto
in the cynical and ego-driven British scene.
Later that evening, Aktar, Spex and Pandit G mash it
up in a plush nightclub on the affluent beachfront of
Rio. The scene couldn't be different from where we’ve
spent the day. Rich, mainly white Brazilians mingle
with fashionable Europeans (including some stereotypically
obnoxious drunken Brits) in a setting that reminds me
of "Buck Rogers in the 25th century". The
class/racial divide is painfully apparent; but when
the Invasian hit the decks, I dance my ass off anyway.
April 24th Rio
Tonight we play a show with the excellent Rio rock/rap
band Orappa, who have also supported much of the activity
in the favelos.The show is advertised on huge billboards
all over Rio and is sold out completely. We start our
set with a track specially written for Brazil called
"19 Rebellions" which features samples from
people involved in the co-ordinated uprisings that took
place in 19 Brazilian prisons. Beforehand, we had been
concerned with what kind of response this might create
but we find an astonishment that we were at all concerned
with what’s happening in Brazil; the track goes
down a storm. Before our last track we invite a local
activist to talk about the situation in the
"favelas" and then engage in some more symbolic
gun-breaking in front of 3,000 people. Then we do "Witness"
and the percussionists from Afro-Reggae join us on stage
and we go headlong into conscious party mode. Heaven.
Chandrasonic
April 26th
Anarchy in Sao Paulo
Within 45 minutes of reaching Sao Paulo, having left
Rio very early in the morning, we’re off again
to do another workshop, though by now we have renamed
it 'jamshop' after our wicked experience with Afro Reggae
in Rio. The venue this time is a massive ex-factory
called the SESC Belenzinho. The SESCs are community
arts venues in Brazil supported by businesses.
The first space we see is actually where we are to
play the following evening, a room big enough to accommodate
two thousand people. Above the dance floor there were
hundreds of CDs suspended from the ceiling like it’s
a DIY disco. Lee Perry would love it. The all-wooden
stage looks fragile, but we bounce around on it a bit
and it feels was solid enough, though it’s probably
be a bit of a bass trap. Wondering through the place,
we find a skateboard park, a sculpture studio with giant
wicker animals under construction, a spacious and airy
reading area and cafés with bizarre statues of
people either sitting reading or drinking. We take the
obligatory photographs of us in conversation with these
characters. There is a compelling water sculpture inside
a kind of square muslin tent, comprised of several spheres
and, I think, not in the least "poncey." The
last time I'd been in an art environment that felt that
comfortable and accessible was when I went to see Tingley's
exhibition at the Tate twenty years ago.
We are lead into a theatre space where the Meninos Morumbi
samba group has been preparing a presentation for us.
Initially, it is rather formal. People from the British
Council are there (their headquarters are in Sao Paulo)
and journalists and a film crew and we feel a bit like
dignitaries. On the stage, there are two rows of young
women and behind them, about twenty percussionists,
of both sexes. The women dance and sing simultaneously.
Both the moves and the music seem to be informed by
funk rhythms as well as more traditional ones and became
increasingly intense. We are once again, as in Recife
with the Maje Mole group, lead into a trance like appreciation.
The most memorable part for me is when the leader indicates
the music to fade to silence but the dancers continue
their highly rhythmic rotational move as if the music
is still there. It’s like watching dance on TV
with the volume turned right down. Gradually, the drums
fade back up again, perfectly in time- a really simple
idea but breathtaking. This is the kind of innovation
we come across many times in Brazil, where it isn't
so much about innovating for the sake of it, but trying
out ideas because nobody is saying it cannot or should
not be done.
Flavio, the group leader now has a thousand students.
Looking out of his window, he had seen boys in the favela
adjacent to his block of flats, banging on tin cans
in the alleyways and went down to ask them if they were
interested in learning samba. The students are also
encouraged to engage in conventional study. The troupe
usually numbers three hundred or so for the carnivals.
We've just heard some awesome rhythms and sounds and
are now expected to play ourselves. How do you follow
that? We get our amps and drum kit quite close in together
and briefly deliberate about what to do about the lack
of a hi-hat. Then thinking, 'what the heck' we launch
into “Naxalite." Pritpal the dhol player doesn't
even play on this track but just does his trademark
junglistic style and it makes up for the missing hats.
Aktar and Spex rap like it was completely normal version
and the audience go for it. After that, ten or so of
the dancers join us on stage and we kick into "Buzzin."
Within a few bars, they are copying each other's moves
and developing a uniform movement as if the whole thing
has been choreographed. It looks like ADF has joined
forces with S Club 7, only a lot better. We all have
massive, joyous grins on our faces and just pogo. The
dancers' final move is to encircle the band several
times. The whole thing is caught on camera and shown
on TV the following night, perhaps bemusing any ADF
fans.
We continue by jamming with the percussionists, with
Flavio conducting instruments in and out. Sometimes
we lose the 'one,' but we don't really go out of time.
Some of the vibe gets close to that of Miles Davis'
"On the Corner." The session really uplifts
us. We have a lot of fun and yet are the ones being
thanked as we are perceived as an international touring
band taking time out to visit a community arts project.
The next day I visit the Museum of Contemporary Art
at Sao Paulo University with Patricia from the British
Council. The university is South America's foremost,
attracting people from all over the continent, though
with education not being free at any level, only students
from moneyed backgrounds can ever hope to go there.
I tell Patricia that I feel Britain is becoming more
like this, edging-in denial- towards the third world.
I find some awesome abstract paintings by a Japanese
Brazilian artist here. (There is incidentally, a significant
Japanese population in Sao Paulo.) I forget to write
their name down thinking I could buy some prints but
there aren't even any postcards., so I've some investigation
to do. I do however, get a book of the paintings of
Paulo Pasta, some of which resemble wicked vertical
Rothkos.
Twice whilst travelling back to the hotel, the cab
had two near misses, one with a bus pulling out suddenly,
across our path and another with a car inadvertently
cutting us up. The driver signals an apology with the
Brazilian 'thumbs up.' Despite the very fast and very
close driving that has us constantly gasping, 'road
rage' seems to be a non-existent phenomenon.
We see a lot of graffiti type paintings depicting politicians,
quite rightly, as asses or criticising gun culture.
An omnipresent hieroglyphic type graffiti, peculiar
to Sao Paulo has us fascinated. Then someone tells us
it looks like that, because the writers are simply using
rollers. We'd imagined a long lost Egyptian tribe.
That night's gig kicks off again with "Nineteen
Rebellions." Our friend, 'musical activist' Patrick
A sent us news commentary and raps about the recent
prison uprising that had started in Sao Paulo and was
co-ordinated using smuggled in mobile phones. Friends
and families remained behind after visiting time when
they got wind of what was going to happen in order to
try and prevent a massacre of prisoners, as had happened
a few years back, though the media were quick to refer
to them as hostages. The insurrection and its level
of organisation shocked the Brazilian government. Pat
said the Sao Paulo audience would react the most to
this track, and they do especially when they hear the
sampled berimbau (the one stringed instrument used in
capoeira.) I meet one the rappers on the track afterwards
who gives me a CD-R. Pat says it’s rare for a hip
hop musician to turn up in a non hip hop environment,
let alone hand over beats to be remixed.
The placing of barriers has for some reason been deemed
unnecessary but by the second tune, "Charge"
people are on stage, someone even grabbing the mic and
diving back in. We are concerned with people at the
front especially women, getting hurt, but they manage
to deal with it alright. With security and crew trying
to get punters off stage, it resembles a cross between
"Gladiators" and "It's A Knockout."
We try to calm things down by attempting to not move
or pogo but it’s extremely difficult to stay rooted
to the spot with such a vibe in the place. And anyway,
rappers Aktarvata and Spex are constantly whipping up
the audience like it’s a 1995 jungle rave. We don't
properly realise till later, there’s a big anarchist
contingent in the house. The feigned conflict between
DJ Pandit G and dhol player Pritpal on "Dhol Rinse"
is perfectly acted out. Pandit G even receives pantomime
type boos for cutting in on Pritpal's rhythmic flow.
A lot of the proceedings are caught on Sun-J's mad
fish eyed digicam, which he operates with one hand whilst
operating his mixing desk and dubbing the beats to oblivion
with the other. Our friend Sarbjit has filmed the entire
trip, getting more than enough footage to put together
a documentary.
The vibe we felt in Brazil was that many people there
understand the motivational and life changing potential
of music, and art in general. The cynicism in this country
(the UK) that 'music will never change anything' is
based on a very narrow view of what constitutes 'change.'
The Brazilian trip reaffirmed our reasons for having
got involved with music in the first place and why we
remain engaged- it is the ultimate form of communication.
Dr Das
Brazilian photos to follow soon...
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