Alberto Martins’ solo show “Eem Transito” at Estacao Pinacoteca” in Sao Paulo, Brasil in September 2007. Download for ipod.

Alberto Martins is a poet and visual artist. His books include Cais (poetry, Editora 34, 2002), Goeldi: história de horizonte (MAC/Paulinas, 1995 – winner of Jabuti Prize for best literature book for young adults), and Poemas (poetry, Ed. Duas Cidades, 1990).

Stones are much slower than animals. Plants give more smell when the rain falls. When winter comes, swallows fly to summer. Pigeons love corn and breadcrumbs. The rains come from water the sun evaporates. When people come from far away they carry bags. When fish swim together they form a school. Larvae become butterflies inside cocoons. Toes keep you from falling. The wise keep silent while others talk. The machines for making nothing aren’t broken. Monkey tails work like arms. Dog tails work like smiles. Cows eat the same food twice. Pages were written to be read. Trees can live longer than people. Elephants and dolphins have a good memory. Words can be used in many ways. Matches can only be used once. When glass is very clean you almost don’t see it. Gum’s for chewing but not swallowing. Dromedaries have one hump and the other kind has two. Midnights last longer than mid-days. Turtles are born in eggs but they aren’t birds. Whales live in water but they aren’t fish. When we brush our teeth they get white. When hair gets old it gets white. Indian music makes rain fall. The bodies of the buried dead fertilize the earth. Cars take many curves to climb the ridge. Kids like to ask questions about everything. Not all answers fit in a grown-up. (translated from the Portuguese by Chris Daniels) 

As pedras são muito mais lentas que os animais. As plantas exalam mais cheiro quando a chuva cai. As andorinhas quando chega o inverno voam até o verão. Os pombos gostam de milho e de migalhas de pão. As chuvas vêm da água que o sol evapora. Os homens quando vêm de longe trazem malas. Os paices quando nadam juntos formam um cardume. As larvas viram borboletas dentro dos casulos. Os dedos dos pés evitam que se caia. Os sábios ficam em silêncio quandos os outros falam. As máquinas de fazer nada não estão quebradas. Os rabos dos macados servem como braços. Os rabos dos cachorros servem como risos. As vacas comem duas vezes a mesma comida. As páginas foram escritas para serem lidas. As árvores podem viver mais tempo que as pessoas. Os elefantes e golfinhos têm boa memória. Palavras podem ser usadas de muitas maneiras. Os fósforos só podem ser usados uma vez. Os vidros quando estão bem limpos quase não se vê. Chicletes são pra mastigar mas não para engolir. Os dromedários têm uma corcova e os camelos duas. As meia-noites duram menos do que os meio-dias. As tartarugas nascem em ovos mas não são aves. As baleias vivem na água mas não são paeixes. Os dentes quando a gente escova ficam brancos. Cabelos quando ficam velhos ficam brancos. As músicas dos índios fazem cair chuva. Os corpos dos mortos enterrados adubam a terra. Os carros fazem muitas curvas para subir a serra, Crianças gostam de fazer perguntas sobre tudo. Nem toas as respostas cbem num adulto.  

ARNALDO ANTUNES has been doing music, poetry, performances and interventions in other media since 1980. He has published five books: OU E (1982); Psia, Ed. Expressão/Ed Iluminuras, São Paulo (1986/2nd edition); Tudos, Ed. Iluminuras, São Paulo (1990/3rd edition); As Coisas - Jabui Poetry Prize, Ed. Iluminuras, São Paulo (1992/3rd edition) and 2 ou + corpos no mesmo espaço Ed. Perspectiva São Paulo (1997). In 1982 he founded the rock group Titans (Titãs) and performed with them until 1992. They released seven albums by Warner/Brazil, winning many gold and platinum L/P’s. In 1993, after leaving the Titans, he released NOME, a multimedia project developed from his poems and songs. Recently Arnaldo took part in the event Dentro Brasil (Inside Brazil), with a poetry-installation, an exhibition of his visual poetry and the video NOME, alongside a multimedia installation by Bruce and Norman Yonemoto and a program of 23 videos by Brazilian video artists, at the Long Beach Museum of Art in California.     

PEDRO ALMODÓVAR REKINDLED DYING ART FORMS in his ncredible Talk to Her, a theatrical tour-de-force sprawled across a two-hour cinematic landscape. Reviving ballet, silent movies, and bullfighting, he gracefully shoved back instant-gratification culture’s impatient dogma, reminding us of beauty in temperance, dedication and determination. The film was utterly beautiful; Almodóvar’s fierce softness a contradiction necessarily poignant.

It’s no surprise, then, that Talk to Her’s highlight featured one of the world’s most socially prolific, gut-wrenchingly tearful songwriters. At 60 years old Brazil’s Caetano Veloso continues to record his homeland’s most important music, a natural fusion of sound and poetry, his opaque acoustical backdrop and crystal, almost androgynous, vocals still stopping audiences silent in their tracks.

It wasn’t the first time the pair had worked together - after meeting in Madrid in 1994 Almodóvar asked Veloso to contribute a track for his The Flower of My Secret. Veloso offered a recording of Simon Diaz’s “Tonada de Luna Llena,” used for the film’s closing scene. It was midway through Talk to Her, however, that the Brazilian balladeer crooned a full rendition of “Cucurrucucu Paloma,” a moment so biting and romantic MTV could only dream a video so grand.

Veloso is one of the world’s few living troubadours of global renown. For 40 years — since his first musical assignment scoring the play O Boca de Ouro in 1963 — he has melded poetry with music so powerfully his potent lyricism caused Brazil’s government to exile him in 1969. Today, living in a time (2003) and culture (America) whose top hits could very well include the lyrics “Overthrow the Government” and/or “Democracy in Inaction,” the idea of banishment seems quite archaic. Media ostracizing, parental warning stickers, even jail time mark our societal reactions; but booted from our boundaries for words?

Co-founding the Tropicália movement alongside Gilberto Gil and Gal Costa in 1967, Veloso’s aim was to redefine Brazilian music, taking traditions started by his inspirations (among them, Bossa Nova legend João Gilberto) and propel the culture’s artistic heritage ahead. Tropicália was a reaction against both the oppressive limitations imposed by the government, as well as lack of musical innovation. Drawing from the anthropophagic philosophy of modernist Oswald de Andrade, partial agendas included reprocessing foreign information to create original art, as well as establishing common ground between urban citizens and rural neighbors, closing the economic rift.

In other words, Veloso wanted to feel something other than the militaristic government’s agenda, and he wanted his culture to do the same. Obviously this was not the politicians’ platform, and on December 27, 1968 Veloso and Gil were arrested for supposedly disrespecting the national anthem and Brazilian flag. Having their heads shaven at Army Headquarters in Marechal Dedoro, they were temporarily imprisoned and banned from making public appearances. After performing two farewell shows in July, 1969, the pair left for exile in England, not returning for almost two years.

While this brief history barely touches the surface of Veloso and Tropicália’s importance, it gives an overview of the power of the spoken (written or sung) word. While Veloso’s creative bent stretched into theater, film, politics, and obviously concert, at root was his piercing use of imagery and rousing calls to social revolution. To this day his lyrics walk a brave line between romantic ecstasy and anarchic motives, the two blending seamlessly. His sense of community and charity puncture each syllable, his voice a harmonic reflection of the swirling poetry inside his chest.

Is there any irony that many of history’s exiled have been poets? On one side exists government, backed by armed forces, thousands of soldiers brandishing guns, knives, scientists with nuclear and atomic knowledge, policing units and prisons able to contain endless dissidents. On the other: a human and their word choice. The humor lies not in the political motive of exile, but in the mass fear of introspection; that is, a poet is a mirror, and few want to be reflected upon.

What else could explain a governing entity banishing their citizens? Imprisonment is a wicked display of cruelty; exile cuts physical roots from body, a true severing of umbilical from amniotic. Had they expected Veloso to cave, lay down forever his pen and voice and lead a suburban life in Chelsea, London; maybe pick up a job in office or baking bread around the corner? After his initial shock (in which he contemplated suicide), Veloso’s lyrical fire was stoked; by the time he returned in January 1971 to attend his parents’ 40th wedding anniversary, his journals were full of new verse, his voice strong — and piercing — as ever.

Veloso’s catalog is a roving, explorative testament to deeply progressive, social poetics. His most recent album, Live in Bahia (Nonesuch), features two discs of some of his most beloved, important works to date; in this single collection one begins to understand the depth of Veloso’s influence. “Tropicália,” the theme song of their movement (with Veloso himself claiming rights: “I organize the movement, I lead the carnival, I inaugurate the monument on the central plateau of the nation”), sounds as vibrant today as the 1967 original.

Veloso’s songs contain more footnote than lyric. “Sugar Cane Field Forever,” for instance, is only three lines long but points to a plethora of subjects: the Tropicália movement in general, Bahia’s once slave-owning population, the singer’s long-standing appreciation of the Beatles. Every track is loaded with historical relevance, inevitably pointing to one of the most dangerous aspects of literate culture — the attempt to define poetry, to confine art within singular context.

With Veloso’s universal appeal (though rooted in social and physical events), the temptation to constrict “meaning” of his words is fatal. True, any poet who can incite revolutions certainly has a message. But there is something so primordially basic, so moving in his voice mere words fail to convey, or capture, the grandness of his work. When tears fall across Marco’s cheek in Talk to Her, one need not understand Portuguese to be moved by his quiet beauty.

It is of little irony, then, that Veloso’s work is both revolutionary and romantic. The genres are inseparable; to be a poet of one is to work within the other. Both politics and relationships speak to the potential freedom of humanity. The opportunity to build within another, create community based on respect and trust, and evolve is the foundation of both society and family. Two of Pablo Neruda’s most loved collections span these topics: Canto General, his political opus, and The Captain’s Verses, a starry-eyed, heartfelt classic. His pen was sword and sooth, a soft lover tempering the flames of hell within. Veloso carries the same weaponry. [more in Rattapallax issue 9 ]

Derek Beres was the managing editor of Global Rhythm and has written for The Village Voice, Urb, Trace, Relix, and Blue. He is currently working on his first book, Global Beat Fusion, about the electronic fusion of South Asian classical music. He is a globa l beat DJ and plays nationally as part of the Globesonic crew and is one-half of DJ duo Baroque Monad. He also served as a featured journalist for the “Picks of the Week” segment on Metro TV’s The Daily Beat and has recently launched a clothing line, Bhakti. He is also the music editor of Rattapallax. For more info check www.earthrisearts.com.

ELECTRONIC MUSIC IS NOT THE FUTURE. IT IS THE MOMENT. Romantics need not worry, for, to dispel the mystique, there requires as much human input and creativity into making a progressive, inspired club cut as any piece of music. Computers are yet another extension of earthly possibility; sounds rendered are further progress into our potential.

The Now Sound of Brazil references an incredibly expansive electronic revolution occurring for our southern neighbors. This dozen-deep compilation on Six Degrees Records (licensed from Brazil’s Zirigulboom/Crammed Discs) features top-notch artists stretching bossa nova and samba sounds with futuristic vision, poignant, tasteful melodies adrift in an electronic landscape.

The next phase of national music - a move to the dance floor via digital a la Tropicália to politics — Now Sound presents artists pushing sonic boundaries with experimental groove tunes. Not that the experiment is unknown; Brazil has long been a hotspot for getting down. Swerving from acoustic, soul-moving dynamics to upbeat, explosive anthems made infamous in club and football games alike, rhythm is not acquired, it’s genetic.

Steady textures of percussion mesh with lilting vocals throughout Brazil’s history. Now Sound features top artists doing such: Bebel Gilberto, Bossacucanova, Trio Mocotó, and Zuco 103, as well as two posthumous tributes via Suba (aka Mitar Subotic), the great producer unfortunately killed in a studio fire in November 1999.

The disc opens with Suba’s “Tantos Desejos (Nicola Conte remix)” a brilliant downtempo club cut capturing the essence of electro-fusing. Weaving jazz sensibility into bossa-layers, featuring the soft-spoken vocals of Rosalia de Souza, it’s the kind of song to sit back with and nod, tap out the rhythm and float into gorgeous instrumentation.

Segueing into the Bossacucanova track, we hit full-on samba jazz (epitomized later by the Trio Mocotó track “Os Orixás”), turning from digital to live players. Integrity maintains through Now Sound, be it performance or technological-driven; in fact, the most interesting aspect of this collection is how brilliantly the two fuse, as if no separation existed. “Influência do Jazz” moves easily into Peter Kruder’s beloved remix of Bebel Gilberto’s “Tanto Tempo” (also featured on the incredible global beats compilation Sultan32 Presents: Earth N Bass), a titled, bouncing track led by a phased-out bass loop contrasting light piano tones.

From here the disc varies, maintaining a strong lounge feel rooted in chest-opening rhythms. The Brazilian/ German/ Amsterdam connection gets wicked with Zuco 103’s “Outro Lado (Charles Webster remix),” and Cibelle, featured vocalist on Suba’s early Brazilian work, plays backbeat on “Dia de Yemanjá.”

The Now Sound is, as far as titles go, pure marketing. Its attempt to define a movement gives it a point of reference, but (as with most artistic expressions) cannot define or limit the smooth, softly expressive music being imported from down south. A boggling contradiction to the economic and social disparities the country has faced, this compilation points to the great testament of human will: light in the face of darkness, yielding in forceful collapse. And, most of all, a shimmer of hope sung through a divided nation in cultural braise. — Derek Beres 

Derek Beres is the managing editor of Global Rhythm and has written for The Village Voice, Urb, Trace, Relix, and Blue. He is currently working on his first book, Global Beat Fusion, about the electronic fusion of South Asian classical music. He is a globa l beat DJ and plays nationally as part of the Globesonic crew and is one-half of DJ duo Baroque Monad. He also served as a featured journalist for the “Picks of the Week” segment on Metro TV’s The Daily Beat and has recently launched a clothing line, Bhakti. He is also the music editor of Rattapallax. For more info check www.earthrisearts.com.