Episode 5 – Rio de Janeiro

Spotify: Episode 5 – Rio de Janeiro

[0:12] Domingos (Opavivará)
This is a Paradise and hell city. It’s beauty and chaos, at the same time. It’s true! Natural beauties, beaches, rivers, mountains and, also, a very huge social clash.

It’s very clear on the landscape of the city those places. When you go up on the hills, on the favelas, in the rich areas, you have another reality.

[1:04] Ynaiê (Opavivará)
Thinking on this idea of Joseph Beuys that every person is an artist, I think that in Rio we have that in so many ways because of this improvisation need all the time in what we named «gambiarra», it is like all these creative ways of finding solutions that I mentioned.

There are so many parallel realities, all of a sudden you can find out that there’s a huge parallel market, economy going on that you never heard of in the favelas.

[1:47] Domingos (Opavivará)
We live in this situation of hell and paradise, paradise, paradise. But there are people who are allowed to live the paradise and others that are denied to live this paradise.

Paradise, paradise, paradise; the beach is a very pleasurable place!

[2:06] Domingos and Ynaie (Opavivará)
Order shock, order shock, order shock, order shock
Pinapple
Shrimps
Lemonade
Corn
Ice cream in a bag
Bikinis
Lollipops
Rolling paper
Sunscreen
Beautiful butts
The beach is a very pleasurable place!
Cigarettes
Speakers!
Headphones!
Sunglasses, yeah, sunglasses
The beach is a very pleasurable place!

[2:53] Domingos (Opavivará)
For us, living in this situation and crossing those borders, it’s something that connects a lot with our practice and work in the public spaces, on the beaches, at the squares and streets of the city. I think we try to understand and respond to those issues in a work that talks about pleasure and this paradise part of the city...

[3:34] Ynaiê (Opavivará)
And somehow to bring this paradise even to the places where it’s not possible or not usually seen as a place to offer these pleasurable experiences.

[3:56] Cabelo Cobra Coral
I feel the same, but the same every day, it turns into different.
I feel the same, but the same every day, it turns into different.
I feel the same, but
Yeah my daily life, my common life is better when I have a day that I have to do nothing, and 
I keep on doing nothing.
I feel the same, but
That’s the principal of my art. You wake up in the morning and go to swim in the sea, and it’s like that, you have nothing to do and keep on doing nothing. It’s like that: you open a poetry book, a book of poetry, and you climb in a poetry tree, yeah? And in one of these branches there’s a beautiful fruit and you eat it, and then you stay in the hammock and...
I feel the same, but the same everyday, it turns into different.
I feel the same, but

Yeah, and reading poetry and eating the fruits of the poetry tree it’s like that! Makes me sleep in the hammock, and sleeping in the hammock I dream!

Streets, trees, trees trees....
I feel the same, but...
I do not really like to work.
I don’t think work makes a man more honorable or not, you know.
I feel the same, but...
I feel the same, but...
I’d like to tell you that had many, many craziest days in my life.
Not only one, oh
Not only one.
I thank God, I thank you, oh.
I thank God, I thank you.

God bless me with many, many craziest days in my life!

[7:02] Thaís Delgado
My day starts very early. I usually wake up at 6 or 7 o’clock. I drink my turmeric and propolis and lemon shot, and then my green juice. After that, I usually like to do my exercise at the Aterro do Flamengo, a beautiful place near my home. Then, I go back home and start to do my works and all the things that I have to do, like that.

We don’t have a lot of Black people working in the fashion industry. Now we have a different scene, and I think a lot of things are changing, but when I started, like seven years ago, we didn’t have the scene that we have now, with a lot of Black people, Black brands, and I think it was not just for the models, it was the whole concept about the fashion. It was not something that included us Black people in the scene.

When I start, I have always in my mind that I have to put a Black model in my shoots. I don’t make clothes just for Black people. I love to make clothes, designs, and piece, but I want to make clothes that my people, the Black people, feel comfortable to wear and feel satisfied and inspired that it was created by a Black woman, you know.

[9:57] Bruno Carvalho
To listen to a tradition significantly different from those to which you were exposed, you’d have to go to a place where you’d be among strangers. That’s something we’ve learned to take for granted in modernity and in the cities, but it’s not part of humans’ until we stopped being nomads, until we essentially started to move to cities and be among strangers all the time.

There’s this whole sort of cultural geography to sound that you couldn’t separate from the development of certain musical genres. People couldn’t actually think of the sound and the dance as separate entities, because they always came together. So, in this way, cities become platform for chance encounters and laboratories for music experimentation.

Rio had more enslaved Africans than any other city in the world for much of its 19th century history and it was, of course, a city with a lot of Europeans and lot of native-born peoples, and each of these peoples brought with them very different heritages and traditions.

And in Rio’s case which was already an extraordinarily divided city along racial and social economic terms, if you are a wealthy person, or an intellectual or an aristocrat or whatever, if you’re interested in these sounds, you got to be there.

Samba was criminalized like blackness was criminalized and poverty was criminalized. So, the vision for the future of Eurocentric Brazilian elites in the early 20th century was essentially to turn Rio into a Paris in the tropics. So, you had urban reforms modelled after Paris that had laws like, you’re not allowed to be here unless you’re wearing a coat, this in a tropical, almost a Victorian dress code, or if you’re not wearing shoes...

[12:55] MC Bruna Alves
Me desculpa pai, me desculpa mãe,
hoje eu vou sarrar pro chefe da cintura ignorante
Me desculpa pai, me desculpa mãe,
hoje eu vou sarrar pro chefe da cintura ignorante

I’m sorry father, I’m sorry mother,
Today I am going to hump the boss
that has a hot waist

[13:42] Bruno Carvalho
You know, samba is an affirmation of life in a country that is shaped by some very violent ideas. But even then, even in the face of horror, life affirms itself. And that’s samba to me.

Is there something samba formally that would lend itself to how wildly successful it was in the 20th century, or in the first half of the 20th century? I mean, it’s hard for me to answer that because I just, I love samba, I can’t imagine a world without samba. Samba spread so successfully because it is extraordinary, because it’s great!

Once samba becomes part of the musical star system then I think the racial cleavages become much more evident, because you have white musicians that are becoming celebrities and making a lot of money out of these musical genres. And then, you have Black musicians that are doing the compositions or in the background and not financially benefiting nearly as much from the commercialization of the genre.

[15:14] Cabelo Cobra Coral
My favorite place, is a combination of time and space.
My favorite place, is a combination of time and space.
My favorite place, is a combination of time and space.

[15:37] Sabrina Fidalgo
It’s a big lie! We are living a big lie since six hundred years! And nobody has the ability to think about it and to fight against this, come on!

[15:49] Cabelo Cobra Coral
My favorite place, is a combination of time and space.

[15:55] Sabrina Fidalgo
The older I get, I’m more sensible about this topic, about the ecologica, topic. And we are surrounded by nature in this city, even though, the Mata Atlântica (Atlantic Forest) is almost completely destroyed here. We have some focuses of Mata Atlântica in the city of Rio, but very few. Imagine that everything was about this before, you know. And, now I live in Laranjeiras and my house is very close to a hill and I am in touch with many birds, animals, I have some monkeys trying to come into my home.

And yes, I’m thinking more about this you know, and for me, when you arrive, when you get into this old buildings, old colonial places in Rio or other cities of Brazil you realize that it is all about wood, everything is built by or with wood.

It is disgusting! It is unbelievable! It is a big lie!

It’s unbelievable that we have such a fascist dictator in power because that’s what he is you know. Fascist dictator! It’s a big lie! They are conservatives, they are racists, they are homophobics, they use the religion to manipulate poor people. They want to destroy everything, they want to sell the whole country, they don’t give a damn to the nature, they don’t give a damn to the originary people from Brazil.

I cannot explain the feeling I have when I think about it you know, I don’t want to talk about this, I don’t want to talk about this aesthetics because it is aesthetics too you know, it’s all about aesthetics. They have this horrible aesthetics, it’s everything horrible about them.

So I cannot be inspired by this. I want to talk about beautiful things, great things, not horrible things.

[19:18] Thiago Lanis
So, I’m from favela, a typical favela in Rio. It’s not a dangerous place. The first time I went to Europe, I was so happy and interested, because it was the first time I was outside of Brazil. I was so happy and curious as well. I don’t know, it was really, really nice. Nice time, nice moment to discover other things, you know. I was so, so happy that time!

I was discovering more of myself because I was completely alone and at the same time not. So, I was discovering more about myself because I was really, really alone, with nobody. You can find more about yourself when you’re happy or really, really sad about any situation. I never felt like that, so that’s why I’ll never forget that kind of feelings the first time. Interesting to be here, so far away from my house and... it was nice as well.

Hard and also nice, you know?

[21:17] Domingos (Opavivará)
I think that Rio is a spiritual city not in a way connected to a religious feeling of Christianity or something like that, but more connected to the body, to the... this feeling of this beat of samba.

[21:45] Ynaiê (Opavivará)
Rio is definitely a spiritual place. I think that the landscape already inspires it in so many ways. Being at the beach, being at the mountains, being around the nature is a very spiritual experience.

[22:28] MC Don Juan
Amar, amei, gostar, gostei, mas agora não quero nem de graça.
Não dá mais.
Era um briga em cima da outra.
Ô moça, Não dá mais.
Era um briga em cima da outra.

To love, I loved, to like, I liked, but now I don’t want it no even for free. 
I can’t anymore.
It was one fight on top of the other.
Hey lady, I can’t anymore.
It was one fight on top of the other.

[22:58] Bruno Carvalho
Samba was persecuted, it was a source of embarrassment for a lot of rich, wealthy, Eurocentric Brazilians, but in many ways, it won out. So, a lot of the urban spaces that were designed to keep out Black Brazilians and poor Brazilians, became the spaces that are now used for street «blocos» (carnival blocks) that are now central to grassroots samba during carnival.

[23:40] MC Don Juan
Vai com suas amiga pra lá, vai pra lá
Cuidado prela não te dar perdido e vir aqui me dar.
Vai com suas amiga pra lá, vai pra lá
Cuidado prela não te dar perdido e vir aqui me dar.

Go away with your friends, go away.
Be careful so she won’t deceive you and come fuck me.
Go away with your friends, go away.
Be careful so she won’t deceive you and come fuck me.

[23:55] Sabrina Fidalgo
If we really want as a country to go forward, we really need to look back and reanalyze the situation and try to change things. I think it is really time to change. It’s impossible to go forward.

[24:40] Cabelo Cobra Coral
In the evening, if I’m not sleeping, If I’m not dreaming, I’m dreaming awake. And I like to be awake in the evening, and I like to cross the evening until it dawns. There are not too many frequencies affecting your body.

My body is affected by many many, many, many, many frequencies, freak frequencies that affected my body! Oh, I can’t stand with too much information, you know!? I don’t like to be busy, I like to be easy.

Thiago Lanis is a model as well as a self-taught singer and composer born in Arará, a favela in Northern Rio. Having loved samba, Brazilian popular music and international pop all his life, Thiago uses bass-loaded and delicate rhythmic sounds as his main inspirations and materials for his creations. Thiago is a composer at Estúdio OSSO, a film score studio in Rio de Janeiro.

Opavivará is an art collective from Rio de Janeiro that develops actions in public spaces all over the city, in galleries and in cultural institutions, proposing inversions in the use of urban space through the creation of relational devices that provide collective experiences. Since its creation in 2005, the group has been actively participating in the Brazilian contemporary art scene.

Cabelo Cobra Coral is a Brazilian artist who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Cabelo is a poet, musician and visual artist. He considers his drawings, paintings, sculptures, songs, performances, videos and processes of instaurations as manifestations of poetry. He is currently working on the ongoing project “Luz com Trevas”: an exhibition, a show and a disc that, mixed together, form one single work.

Thaís Delgado is a fashion designer based in Rio de Janeiro and the owner of VERKKO, a brand founded in 2015 that is inspired by her own subjective universe, memories, feelings and understanding of her context as an Afro-Diasporic woman.

Bruno Carvalho is a professor of literature at Harvard University. He works on cities as lived and imagined spaces and studies relationships between cultural practices and urbanisation with a focus on Brazil. Carvalho’s interdisciplinary approaches bridge history, literary analysis and urban studies. A Rio de Janeiro native, Carvalho received his Ph.D. from Harvard University (2009) and was a faculty member at Princeton University (2009–2018).

Sabrina Fidalgo is an award-winning Brazilian filmmaker. Her films have been showcased at over 300 national and international film festivals. She studied at the University of Television and Film (HFF) in Munich, Germany, and also studied screenwriting through ABC Guionístas at the University of Cordoba, Spain.

Vivian Caccuri is a sound artist based in Rio de Janeiro. She is interested in sound and music as vehicles to combine experiments in sensory perception with issues related to history and social conditioning. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with musicians such as Arto Lindsay (USA/BR), Gilberto Gil (BR) and Wanlov (Ghana). Her works have been shown at the Venice Biennale, Serpentine Galleries, the Kochi Biennale in India, the Ming Museum in Shanghai and others. Together with Thiago Lanis, she composes music at OSSO Estúdio Sonoro in Rio de Janeiro.

Follow Vivian on Instagram or Substack.
Contact: viviancaccuri@gmail.com