2024-01-10 09:04:24
These are nine happy musicians who take to the tiny stage of the Duc des Lombards in this tropical month of October 2023. Five years after their last international tour, the Brazilian collective Bixiga 70 finally returns to European venues and launches their fifth album, Vapor, imbued with new sounds and new influences. The Paulista big band, famous for its festive live performances as well as for its clear political positions in favor of freedom, has nevertheless come a long way.
And Brazil sank
On October 28, 2018, shame fell on Brazil: 57,797,847 voters had just placed at the head of the country an obscure deputy who was openly misogynist, racist, homophobic and nostalgic for the dictatorship, Jair Bolsonaro, whose name would quickly become around the world. In such a context of political chaos and uncertainty about the future, how can you launch a new album and perform concerts while continuing to campaign for democracy? This is the question that we asked two of the members of the group between the two rounds of this election which will prove catastrophic for the country. “ It’s hard to talk about music at a time like thisexplained Cuca Ferreira, saxophonist and founding member. How can you not feel venal when instead of saving your country you try to release your record? ».
In 2018, despite a certain international notoriety, Bixiga were still boxing in the underground category. Coming from punk, reggae, rock or electro projects, all the musicians had experienced the emergence of the new Paulista scene of the 2000s, deeply united against fascism. “ Although our music is instrumental, underlined Mauricio Fleury, the keyboard man, it contributes to the debate that we would like to be more amplified on the future of Brazil and it expresses our position. » And to add: “ Our music is a music of community, of congregation, of friendships, of celebrations, everything that poses a problem today “. This festive color came to enrich their fourth opus, Puzzle (puzzle), crossed by a few layers of electro here, a few Indian percussions there, and marked by elaborate arrangements and an affirmed Brazilian identity: carnival, street parties and brass bands made a thunderous entry into their repertoire.
Occupy São Paulo
Like Rio or Salvador, the city of São Paulo has not escaped the revival of carnival in Brazil. In the once deserted streets, millions of people now gather around small improvised stages, which promote human contact, the collaborative system, integration and solidarity towards minorities. In the city center, where – after the former slaves, many emigrants settled: Italians, Nordestines, and more recently Bolivians, Nigerians and Congolese, the historic district of Bixiga, celebrated in particular by Adoniran Barbosa and Elis Regina lives to the rhythm of these demonstrations. Every April 7, in Calle 13 de Maio, the date of the abolition of slavery, Graffiti Day takes place, which consists of repainting almost all the buildings on the street white to allow artists to renew their street art.
With its shocking slogan “ The street belongs to us all », the collective of residents Ocupai Bixiga (Let’s occupy Bixiga, Brazilian avatar ofOccupy Wall Street), whose objective is to make the neighborhood a center of cultural excitement, is at the initiative of this great free festival in which the Bixiga have long and actively participated. Traquitana, the studio founded by their guitarist Cris Cabello, is located in the middle of Calle 13 de Maio, at number 70. This is where the group was born in 2010 and recorded its first three albums, all recorded live , without frills or additions, including the aptly named Occupy (Occupy here), released in 2013, on the eve of Dilma Rousseff’s re-election.
The Bixiga are part of these fiery musicians who campaigned for the second term of the one who succeeded Lula, which notably earned them a general brawl at the end of the concert with supporters of military intervention. They committed themselves against the institutional coup of 2016, which ultimately led to the impeachment of the president. The same year, the group participated in the Music for Democracy movement, alongside artists like Tom Zé, Tulipa Ruiz, Curumin and BNegão, who occupied the large Largo da Batata park in São Paulo for eight days, mixing performances of street and debates around citizenship. At the time of the elections and faced with the Bolsonaro danger, Cuca Ferreira held numerous neighborhood meetings: “ it no longer had anything to do with music, we went there as citizens to try to convince people, to explain to them what was happening “. To hope to achieve collective awareness of the meaning of citizenship and democracy, we might as well start with our neighbors.
Resistant to Covid and Bolsonaro
If the name of Bixiga 70 comes from the very address of their recording studio, it obviously refers to Fela Kuti’s group, Africa 70. The Nigerian icon, whose group has been peddling afrobeat since its beginnings, is their model in many respects. Mauricio Fleury spoke about it with respect: “He said that he transformed the sadness of some into the joy of otherscThis is what we also do in our own way. ». On stage, to gain strength and intensity, the group has always applied the felakutic principle of a subtle balance between celebration of the collective and apology for freedom, without ever dramatizing. “ Fela’s lesson is that of resistance, Mauricio added. It is only by remaining free that we can give the best of ourselves “. A warning which unfortunately did not carry much weight in the face of calls for hatred from supporters of “ Trump of the tropics ».
Bolsonaro’s mandate has had a dramatic impact on Brazil. Four years after these naively optimistic words, the list of abuses committed by the former president and his team is endless: embezzlement, assassinations, destruction of culture, health and education, deforestation, stigmatization of minorities, a terrible toll, accentuated by criminal management of the Covid pandemic which will throw tens of thousands of people onto the streets and make Brazil the second most bereaved state in the world, with more than 700,000 deaths. The Lula government even opened an investigation for the crime of genocide on the Yanomami Indian population, left without assistance in the face of diseases and violence from gold miners who were never repressed under Bolsonaro. It was really a complicated time. We saw the tragedy coming and there was nothing we could do », recognizes Cuca. For someone of my age, who has experienced the end of military rule, the return to democracy and popular government, going back to square one has been very frustrating. » Daniel Nogueira, the second saxophonist, is even more bitter: “ Everything I had dedicated my life to was falling apart. »
During the pandemic, due to lack of audiences and therefore lack of revenue, theaters closed one after the other. This disaffection calls into question the raison d’être of groups like Bixiga 70, who fundamentally depend on their live concerts. A decade after its creation, the collective is at a standstill and each of its members gets by as best they can, giving lessons or serving as session musicians. As for Mauricio, mired in a dark history of domestic violence, he preferred to distance himself. Bitter way to celebrate 10 years of existence. Believing that they have reached the end of a cycle, three other instrumentalists in turn decide to leave the ship. Like Brazil, the group is on the verge of dislocation.
Back to Bixiga
Hope is reborn among the Bixiga at the end of 2022 with Lula’s victory. The group reconnects with its connections, finds its feet in the neighborhood, new musicians are approached. After believing for a time that they could resume the same project as before, the six survivors end up realizing the obvious: the reconstruction of the group requires this rupture which almost took it away and by recalling its fundamentals. “ Bixiga has always been a collective where everyone contributed with their ideasinsists Cuca. Those who join us must have this state of mind. “. It is precisely by claiming a certain way of making music that the group has forged its personality: playing, without preconceived ideas, unlearning with each new encounter. A eulogy of the fascination that we found in the pianist João Donato, who died in mid-July, special guest on Puzzle : “The way he composes has a lot to do with our desire to preserve a certain ingenuity when it comes to melodies, to just feel things and let them flow quietly. He influenced us enormously », testified Mauricio Fleury. This time, the salvation of this sound community came from the new recruits: the drummer Simone Sou, expert in traditional rhythms, accustomed to the Paulista scene and familiar with the Traquitana studio; the young percussionist Valentina Facury; and the king of electrobrega hack Pedro Regada who gives Vapor (steam), that’s the name of the new album, a very particular Northeastern color, all in all even more Brazilian in its way of sounding.
« Vapor translates all this illusion in which we almost dissolved, summarizes Daniel Verano, the trumpeter, who found the title. At the same time, this vapor is the water of which we are made, which connects us, unites us and makes us strong. This great fragility which also allows human beings to mobilize to help each other, that is Bixiga 70. »
Vaporby Bixiga 70 is available here via Modulor.
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