Regional Identity, Cultural Politics, and the Circulation of Musical Ideas: Alternative Popular Music in Northeast Brazil

John Murphy, University of North Texas Paper presented at the annual conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Detroit, 2001

Abstract Since the early 1990s, the production of alternative popular music has ﬂourished in Northeast Brazil. Alternative music, in the local usage, lies outside established categories of forró, samba, axé, and mainstream rock, and outside the parameters of most mass media outlets. It ranges stylistically from punk and hardcore, to electronica, to reinterpretations of local traditions, and circulates by means of CDs (mostly independent), festivals, and web sites. This paper will explain how alternative music communicates a contemporary regional identity, is aected by cultural politics, and circulates within the musical market, in order to show how the perceived demands of globalization, such as the need to consume the products of the global entertainment industry, intersect with the dynamics of a regional music community. Alternative popular musicians both arm and question received ideas about regional identity, including the stereotype of the Northeast as an economically challenged region whose role is to be a repository for traditional

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1 culture. They are linked to cultural politics, since many projects beneﬁt from government support and tax-deductible business contributions. And they have diculty getting airplay and eective CD distribution, since music industry people are guided by received ideas about what Northeastern music should be and what will appeal to their target audiences. This ethnographic case shows how one musical community responds to globalization by working to preserve its heritage while giving its music a contemporary voice. In this way, it negotiates a middle ground between, in Steven Feld’s terms, “anxiety” and “celebration” (Feld 2000).

Since the early 1990s, the production of alternative popular music has ﬂour- ished in Northeast Brazil. Alternative music, in the local usage, lies outside established categories of forró, samba, axé, and mainstream rock, and outside the parameters of most local FM stations. It ranges stylistically from reinterpretations of local traditions, to punk and hardcore, to electronica, and circulates by means of CDs, most of which are independent, festivals, and web sites. The goal of my research last year in Recife, the largest center of alternative musical activity in the northeast, was to understand how musicians reconcile their commitment to local regional traditions, on the one hand, and their desire to participate in global ﬂows of information and musical style, on the other. I learned that these issues are negotiated on multiple levels, including the musical style of individual pieces and local cultural politics, and that the most contentious debates center around the circulation of musical ideas, which is most often discussed in terms of festival lineups, radio airplay, and CD distribution, all of which are aected by Northeast Brazil’s marginal position within the national economy. This paper will consider one of the most prominent groups in today’s northeastern alternative music scene, DJ Dolores and Orquesta Santa Massa, who work in a hybrid of electronic and traditional styles. By doing so I hope to show how alternative music communicates a contemporary regional identity, is aected by cultural politics, and circulates within the musical market. I do this in order to talk about the way globalization is perceived and responded to by Brazilian musicians, as one example of what Appadurai calls “vernacular discourses about the

2 global” (2000, 2).

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In the early 20th century, Northeast Brazil was not distinguished from the North of Brazil. Beginning in the 1930s, the Northeast was treated by Brazilian scholars such as Gilberto Freyre and Josué de Castro as a special, problematic region. It was also idealized in the music of Luiz Gonzaga, whose nostalgic songs about leaving the drought-stricken Northeast were tremendously popular among Northeastern migrants in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The stereotype of the Northeast as an economically challenged region whose role is to be a repository for traditional culture is now being challenged by social historians, including Durval Muniz de Albuquerque, Jr. His book The Invention of the Northeast shows how the image of the drought-stricken, backward Northeast was elaborated in ﬁlms, literary works, and music, especially the music of Luiz Gonzaga, and argues against essentialized views of Northeasterners. Recent musical developments related to globalization have aected regional identity. This is especially apparent in terms of the democratization of information technology and the more rapid spread of musical ideas. Ten years ago the mangue scene began in Recife. Its symbolic image was a satellite dish planted in the fertile tidal mudﬂats that surround the city, which was intended to energize the popular culture of the city with global trends. The subsequent success of Chico Science & Nação Zumbi and other bands resulted in a dramatic increase in the self-esteem of musicians and average citizens alike (see Galinsky 1999). Today alternative popular musicians both arm and question received ideas about regional identity. They arm it by participating in the region’s rich collec- tion of traditional musics, such as maracatu, and in events such as Carnaval, and by reinterpreting these musical traditions in their own projects. They question it by refusing to limit themselves to regional musical styles. Instead, they embrace new styles and technologies and participate as equals in the global circulation of musical ideas in such genres as rap, hardcore, and electronica. As a result, a

3 region that a decade ago seemed to be a place where oral traditions had been strongly maintained, due in part to the region’s economic and cultural marginal- ity, has now established a national and international reputation as a center of musical creativity that reaches from traditional to avant-garde.

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DJ Dolores is the artistic name of Hélder Aragão, a musician and graphic designer whose principal instrument is the Akai MPC2000 sampler/sequencer. (“Dolores” is the plural Spanish word, not the name.) His group Orquesta Santa Massa includes KSB, the turntablist from the rap group Faces do Subúrbio, drummer Jamilson Silva, percussionist Karina Buhr, vocalist Isaar França, both of whom are part of the band Comadre Florzinha, guitarist and vocalist Fábio Trummer of the band Eddie, and Maciel Salustiano, who sings and plays the rabeca, a Brazilian fiddle. Incidentally, the band performed last night in Rio at the Free Jazz Festival (named for a cigarette brand not a musical style) along with electronica stars Roni Size and Aphex Twin. DJ Dolores and Orquesta Santa Massa combine the practices of electronica with live and sampled Northeastern music, speech, and street sounds. A dis- tinctive element of the band’s sound is the rabeca played by Maciel Salustiano, the son of one of the most famous practitioners of traditional music in the state, Manoel Salustiano. Here is an excerpt from their piece “A Dança da Moda,” which is a remix of a song by Luiz Gonzaga; I’ll play a bit of the original first. Hélder Aragão views electronic music as a medium, not a style, while he recognizes that dance-oriented uses of the medium predominate. His music for Orquesta Santa Massa is conceived as a hybrid of two “educations”: his own, in the medium of electronic music, and that of Maciel in traditional music. He disdains electronic music that simply samples traditional music without inte- grating it structurally. Instead, he has identified traditional styles whose intrinsic “loopiness” is compatible with his techniques of sampling and looping on the sequencer. What attracts him to maracatu rural is the presence of multiple tempos:

4 the slow tempo of the vocal call and response, which is doubled in the refrain played by the trumpet and trombone, and doubled again in the percussion (metal bell, snare, cuíca). To illustrate this blend I’ll show two video excerpts. The ﬁrst comes from a project called Pernambuco in Concert, the third annual edition of a showcase for traditional and popular groups from all over the state. Mestre Zé Duda, a singer of maracatu rural, was honored for his work with Maracatu Estrela de Ouro. In this excerpt, we hear his greeting to the audience, the choral response, and see some of the costumed dance. [video excerpt 1] The second video excerpt features DJ Dolores and Orquesta Santa Massa at the Rec-Beat festival during Carnaval. Like the ﬁrst example it took place in the recently revitalized port area of old Recife. The maracatu percussion is incoporated into a drum and bass groove, which pauses to allow Maciel to sing two verses about romantic love, and then resumes, with Maciel’s rabeca providing the refrain as the brass do in maracatu rural. [excerpt 2] As a further sign that traditional practices are integrated into the group’s work rather than remaining at the level of a sample, a performance by this group at the Abril Pro Rock festival in São Paulo featured an extended session of improvised verse in which Maciel was joined by Siba, rabequeiro and lead vocalist of the group Mestre Ambrósio, who is also an accomplished poet and singer of maracatu verses.

***

The lack of a coherent, eective cultural politics was a frequent topic of conver- sation among musicians and producers in Recife. While hybrid popular musics attract the most attention from musicians, journalists, and musicologists, they are not what usually gets promoted abroad by the government in its eorts to attract tourists to the state. Instead, the state promotes traditional musics such as maracatu, along with regional crafts and food, at European festivals such as Expo 2000 in Hannover.

5 Orquesta Santa Massa, like most alternative groups, reaches its local audience primarily through festival appearances and infrequent gigs in small clubs. The Recife music festivals depend on public patronage, whether they have paid admission or are open to the public. This patronage may be direct, in the case of city or state sponsorship, or indirect, in the case of companies that use the Cultural Incentive Law, which was passed in the mid-1990s, to direct part of their taxes to speciﬁc cultural projects. The Rec-Beat festival, which is free to the public, was supported primarily by the Recife city government in 2001. Abril Pro Rock, which charges admission, was sponsored in 2001 by the state government, a beer company, and two utility companies, including the recently privatized electric company CELPE, which is owned primarily by the Spanish Grupo Iberdrola, and BCP, a cellular phone company owned primarily by Bell South. Artists and producers who wish to use the law must go through a long bu- reaucratic process to receive permission to seek contributions, which does not guarantee that they will receive them—many projects fail to get enough contributions. The complexity of the process has created a market for independent producers, who guide a project through it in return for a signiﬁcant percentage of the funds. Public relations sta within the companies choose which projects they will support based on the audience and the media exposure the project promises to attract. The city and state governments view these events as incentives to tourism, which bolster the state’s image as having both abundant traditional musics and an active popular music vanguard, and as ways to maintain the population’s self-esteem, a dramatic rise in which during the 1990s is widely credited to the success of Chico Science. For state secretary of tourism and economic development Carlos Eduardo Pereira, music and culture in general are the raw materials for the promotion of tourism. While he did create opportunities for Chico Science to perform during Carnaval in 1995 and 1996, he overlooked the mangue scene, by his own admission, when presented with opportunities to present artists from Pernambuco

6 at international events, choosing more mainstream artists instead until recently, when he is sending the band Cordel do Fogo Encantado to several European festivals. He regards the new popular music scene as having “more media attention than they do audience.” The alternative bands get more written press than they do radio exposure, and in building a large audience it is radio exposure that matters. Maracatu was speciﬁcally identiﬁed as something the federal government would like to promote internationally as an image of Brazil in the context of globalization. Joatan Vilela Berbel, Secretary of Music and Scenic Arts with the Ministry of Culture, was quoted as follows in the local press (Joaquim 2000):

It is necessary to take advantage of the much-discussed globalization. This is where the government can enter, by supporting projects like Pernambuco In Concert. . . . Once a CD has been recorded, put on the Internet, and promoted internationally, the demand will auto- matically follow for the simple reason that no one else in the world produces maracatu, and no one will ever be able to produce legiti- mate maracatu outside of Pernambuco.

The federal government hopes to use traditional culture to educate potential tourists who have other images of Northeastern Brazil. Together with the ministry of education, his ministry hopes to “use maracatu as a way of selling the image of Brazil internationally, to remove the image of Brazil that the foreigner has in his head, that of child prostitution in the coastal capitals.” When asked whether globalization could have a negative inﬂuence on traditional culture, Berbel replied: “Yes, but even this has a positive side. If not for this imminent danger, this alert, we might not be so concerned to promote regional culture, as we are doing now.”

***

While I was aware that popular music vanguards are not typically commercially successful, I was nevertheless surprised by the limited circulation of the music

7 that had drawn me back to Recife, the music of Nação Zumbi, Mundo Livre, Mestre Ambrósio, Otto, Cascabulho, DJ Dolores, and Chão e Chinelo. Live per- formances by the most well-known bands were infrequent. Recent CDs by local alternative bands were available in specialized downtown record shops, and a few showed up in larger record chains, but some of the most important recordings of the Recife scene are available only in the form of rental CDs at one downtown shop, CD Rock. Mundo Livre S/A’s CD Por Pouco, for example, released on the Abril label, which received a critics’ award for best album of 2000, was usually absent from local stores and received little airplay. Interviews with radio programmers conﬁrm what many involved in the scene believe to be true, which is that radio time is committed to releases from Brazilian branches of the multinational record companies and the large Brazilian companies, in return for prizes to use in promotions, or for payola, known in Brazil as jabá. Those Recife bands that are on major labels do not receive enough support to get airplay, and those on independent labels can’t aord it. It is against this background of media exclusion that Hélder Aragão’s com- ments on cultural politics should be understood. He is not in favor of a paternal- istic style of government support for and control over the arts. He points to the lack of an ecient and coherent cultural policy that would give local musicians, producers, and sound engineers the opportunity to increase their professional- ism, such as training and credit incentives, so that they can create products that can compete better on the national and international markets. Festivals and other single events that attract tourists and media attention are not helpful in creating a sustainable musical scene, which requires the formation of new bands and a steady increase in quality.

***

Steven Feld has characterized two broad responses to globalization in music as “anxiety” and “celebration” (2000). The music of DJDolores and Orquesta Santa Massa goes beyond mere citation of the regional in electronica. Their balanced

8 hybridity integrates two musical worldviews in a way that avoids both the “anxiety” that the global will eradicate the regional and the “celebration” that would hold up this music as the way of the future and a spiritual oasis for foreign listeners. Moving beyond this group’s music to consider the Recife alternative scene, we find cause for both anxiety and celebration. Globalization is typically discussed in Brazil in anxious terms, as a process whose primary outcomes are the imposition of global, often American products and words, and as privatization, which often means internationalization, since Brazilian capitalists find it dicult to compete with international capital to purchase utilities and other formerly state-owned companies. Much anxiety surrounds the circulation of alternative music, and Hélder has expressed anxiety about the younger generation of popular musicians in Recife. He sees them as subject to a glut of musical information that crowds out the reflection and crit- ical thinking that give rise to creativity. By contrast, in the late 1980s, when the mangue scene was beginning and information about musical developments else- where was more dicult to get, people would come to parties in order to hear the newest vinyl from overseas, such as a Talking Heads album, or little-known recordings of Brazilian folk music, such as recordings of banda de pífano music on the Marcus Pereira label (as Chico Science did at one party). The scarcity of information increased its value and its impact on creativity. Worth celebrating, however, is the fact that alternative music festivals are supported by the government and by globalized corporations to a large degree. The festivals supported by recently privatized and globalized telecommunications companies and utilities, such as Abril Pro Rock, are crucial sites for the continued reproduction of the alternative music community, even though festivals alone are not enough to sustain a musical scene. The case of DJDolores and Orquesta Santa Massa does not represent the full range of “vernacular discourses about the global” as they concern alternative popular music northeast Brazil, but it has shown that:

1. this group is working with a hybrid notion of what Northeastern music can

9 be;

2. the local cultural politics favor traditional genres such as maracatu as symbols of local identity to be promoted abroad, while providing limited opportunities at home;

3. the circulation of alternative music is both complicated and aided by the patronage of globalized corporations.

References Albuquerque, Durval Muniz de, Jr. A Invenção do Nordeste e outras artes. Recife: Editora Massangana; São Paulo: Cortez Editora, 1999. Appadurai, Arjun. “Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination.” Public Culture 12, no. 1 (2000): 1–19. Feld, Steven. “A Sweet Lullaby for World Music.” Public Culture 12, no. 1 (2000): 145–171. Galinsky, Philip. “‘Maracatu atômico’: Tradition, modernity, and postmodernity in the mangue movement and ‘new music scene’ of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil.” Ph.D. dissertation, Wesleyan University, 1999. Joaquim, Luiz. “Ministério da Cultura quer transformar o maracatu na imagem do Brazil no exterior.” Jornal do Commercio (Recife), December 22, 2000.