Emicida: AmarElo - It's All for Yesterday (2020) - full transcript
"The curious ones
will rejoice in my conclusions.
For those who dismiss me, it's no use
explaining what's already been rejected."
By Mário de Andrade
in "Paulicéia Desvairada," 1992.
There's an old Yoruba saying that goes,
"With the stone he threw today,
Eshu killed a bird yesterday."
This proverb is the best way
to sum up what I've been trying to do.
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY
Turn back home
And put up my picture on your wall
I wish I'd battle his ass one day
When he's got the mic
The rhyme goes only one way
He's the shit
I'm gonna tattoo his name on my hand
This brother is his own brand
When the mic's on
He's never gone
It doesn't feel like
my first time here. I feel like I'm back.
And that, somehow, my dreams and struggles
started long before I was here.
But we've got some contextualizing to do
before it all makes sense.
A picture of contemporary
Black thinking in Brazil.
That is what you'll be watching as of now.
One. Brazil was the last country
in the Americas to end slavery.
MAY 13TH ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
I DECLARE EXTINCT SLAVERY IN BRAZIL
Two. The city of São Paulo got its wealth
mainly from
the mid-19th century coffee boom,
and its production was slave-fueled.
Three. The end of slavery
left millions of Black persons
to fend for themselves.
It was followed by "whitening" policies
that encouraged immigration from Europe,
demonized African and Native cultures,
and sought to completely purge
not only the memory of slavery,
but each and every contribution
made by non-white people
to this country's development.
From the beginning, imperial authorities
tried to "whiten" Black blood,
in an effort to neutralize their culture
and keep them from ascending
to important positions.
Four. The rise of São Paulo
to the metropolis we know today
as the "land of opportunity"…
This is São Paulo,
the capital of hard work,
the giant made of reinforced concrete
that grows bigger by the day.
…is marked by
a violent process of gentrification.
Many areas ended up mischaracterized,
mainly the central ones,
which are traditionally Black.
Gala at the City Opera House!
Most of the Black population
got pushed to the outskirts.
Five. Poor people
from other Brazilian regions
came to the "land of opportunity"
to try their luck,
having the outskirts as their home, too.
Cosmopolitan and multicultural,
that is how the outskirts
of São Paulo were born.
Six. In the 1970s,
the hip-hop culture
is named in the United States,
but impacts the entire planet.
Through rap music,
break dance and graffiti,
young people from the city's outskirts
found a means for expression.
Their meeting point
is an area easily reached
by all of them, the historic city center,
more specifically
the São Bento subway station.
Seven. Their music spreads
across other outskirts in Brazil,
turning into a solid movement
that creates awareness
on racism and social inequality.
As dismissive
as the recording industry was,
it sold millions of copies
and became the first far-reaching means
of connecting the working class
to Black Brazilian intellectuals.
It's been linked to every working-class
accomplishment since then.
White people cannot understand
the flamboyant outfits,
with the caps and bright colors.
Eight. Although rap music
might be widely understood
as a platform for complaint,
it's been much more than that.
Everybody wants to groove to that sound.
In search of its essence,
rap music enters the amazing universe
of the Brazilian popular music,
especially samba.
The encounter is so powerful
that both worlds are forever changed.
The message couldn't be any clearer.
We can go even further.
Nine. Despite structural racism in Brazil,
the new culture emancipates
youngsters across the country.
Economically, too.
The digital environment
allows independent artists
to accomplish not only rare feats,
but unprecedented ones, too.
-The street…
-Is us!
The street is us!
Ten. Getting ahead in life
is much more than making money.
Fame is not the only thing
these kids aspire to.
They want to rewrite
our country's history.
One more thing.
You see, my mom calls me Leandro.
But everyone else knows me as Emicida.
I'm one of those kids.
CITY OPERA HOUSE
NOVEMBER, 2019
We're about to go on stage.
Fifty years from now,
we're gonna look back and think
that this night changed the lives of many.
This is our way of saying
to people like us that they belong here.
FOR RACIAL EQUALITY
We absolutely have to be present
in this space, this environment,
and all other spaces we've been kept from
throughout the history
of our country. You know?
The next generation of judges, doctors,
lawyers, and also the next presidents,
are sitting in there right now.
Let's restore their right to dream.
Okay?
Thank you so much.
This is what AmarElo is all about, y'all.
We're in this together. Peace!
Today I can consider myself a lucky guy
Besides being very young
I feel safe and strong
And I've been thinking
God is Brazilian
And walks next to me
I can't keep suffering
For what has happened
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Last year I died
Not this year, though
My dreams fly higher than drones
What fuels me? Hunger
To wreck everything like a cyclone
Tomorrow cannot be the same old yesterday
With a new name
The vulture preys on us eager for a fall
When sorrow is gone
I'm so much more than this shit
Body, mind, soul, Ayurveda-style
Like water, I can flow through rocks
I'm the playwright in this plot
Every drama is hidden
Urging you to step out of mud
While flaming the world
No melodrama, I'm after money
God's plan in sight
Capulanas, katanas, nirvana is the goal
Though it's a rigged game for us
Losing is not an option, right?
From where the wind takes a turn
Real talk sprouts
Ain't gonna leave it alone
Nor let it slide
For we're about to baffle
Those who laughed when we were down
My grandma's
never set foot there. She's 80.
Wednesday is gonna be her first time.
Will you play a song for me?
-Is the camera really on?
-Yep!
That's what's dope about this.
My mom, my aunts,
my daughters, both of them,
are gonna be there
and see it in a different light, you know?
Many of the boys and girls
who will be there on Wednesday,
they've never been
to the City Opera House.
That's why the venue matters,
having a majestic venue matters.
This is big and it's here, you know?
It's not something new.
We need to mark this occasion.
I want them to leave thinking,
"I won't let this get lost
in the digital world."
He's made the sun rise!
He's back!
The lunch lady gets off
The bus leaves
Miss Maria is far gone
Only then the sun rises
Spiders weaving their webs
During the night, in darkness
Breathless lovers in the grasp of Morpheus
And the sun, it only comes out later
The sun only comes out later
It's the king star, I know
Still, it only comes out later
The sun only comes out later…
I'll give you a literal example
of the natural order of things.
The sun rising on Sezefredo Avenue
and setting on Fontalis.
You feel me?
Because Sezefredo Avenue stands higher.
Watching from the hill,
you can no longer see
the shape of the houses at night.
There are only the stars in the sky
and the lights coming
from every house in the hood.
The lunch lady gets off
The bus leaves
SINGER
Miss Maria is far gone
Only then the sun rises
Spiders weaving their webs
During the night, in darkness
Breathless lovers in the grasp of Morpheus
And the sun, it only comes out later
The sun only comes out later
It's the king star, I know
Still, it only comes out later
The sun only comes out later…
MUSICIAN
Is it going to be a single?
I don't really believe in singles.
You do what you gotta do. You're right.
The better the song,
the less it plays on the radio.
Word.
I'm gonna do what I feel like doing,
then it's up to them.
I like to…
Zeca! Zeca!
Hurry! Come on!
FILM - BLACK ORPHEUS
-Here, play for the sun to rise!
-I can't!
-Of course you can!
-I shouldn't!
None of that! Just play!
He's made the sun rise!
Wow! Just like in the movie.
And now you are the movie.
The album is structured around a dream.
You know what I mean?
This guy goes to sleep,
and in his dream,
everybody is helping each other.
It's a beautiful dream
where people understand
and support each other.
That's his dream.
"Principia" is that dream…
Literally.
That's why the beginning
feels ethereal, wavering, even.
OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY OF THE BLACK PEOPLE
It starts out smooth.
You can hear those old ladies
from old-school neighborhoods, singing…
It takes you back
to your childhood, you know.
Like a bedtime song by your mom.
He's dreaming of this time
when he felt cared for and understood.
He starts connecting
with plants like rue, and with religion,
things that will help him have faith
when the world is telling him not to.
All we got is each other,
and we gotta fight for it.
All we have is
All, all, all
All we've got is each other
All, all, all
All we have is…
You feel me? That's what I'm saying.
We only have each other.
If we let go of each other, we're screwed.
All, all, all
All we've got is each other
All, all, all
All we have is…
Can't remember the other chorus!
MARISSOL MWABA, INDY NAÍSE
AND NINA OLIVEIRA - SINGERS
All, all, all
All we've got is each other
All, all, all
All we have is…
The Catholic church bell would
wake us up very early…
SINGER
…which is a paradigm shift,
since the Catholic church
condemned Candomblé.
It was a beautiful message
about how we're here to live in unison,
not disconnected from one another.
Nature has its own rules,
but morality is a human thing.
And humans use morality
to drive each other away.
I meant
for the whole album to have this vibe
of making us feel like one again.
To bring us together
based on what we have in common.
So that's the first track.
Towards the end, a pastor friend
says these beautiful things.
Really? That's awesome.
What does it mean when Jesus says
we should renounce ourselves?
He's actually
talking about our inflated egos,
the egos produced by our society.
Empowered by false pretenses
and deeply lonely.
Hello, my friend.
-You good?
-Yeah.
It's as old as eternity
Love is spirituality
Latent, potent, black, poetry
A shoulder in the quiet night
A cozy lap to start the day
Son, hug your mother…
I started working
on this song four years ago.
I'm tearing up a bit, bro.
Damn.
Yeah, it could be
If it weren't for love…
The first time I was in Africa…
my friend Chapa took me
to the
National Museum of Slavery in Angola.
There, I found a basin…
and the text on the wall read,
"This was the basin
used to christen Black people."
"And because
of a twisted Christian notion,
they were led to believe
they had no soul."
I looked over at my pal
and realized what my mission was.
Every time I grab my pen or mic,
I wanna be able to return
to each of my brothers and sisters
the soul they thought they didn't have.
With the sweet scent of rue
I think about Buddha, calm
I'm very tense, so I seek help
Sometimes I think about a psalm
Clear my vision of all illusions
Like an ophthalmologist
And I, the one who sees beyond
For myself, for you, ubuntu, a balm
If I need to put my faith in something
Gonna rely on what I can see
Summarizing this world, small, little
Mundane, dirty, hell, and poison
Cold, winter, night drizzle
Repression and regression
Being calm is a luxury
Life stresses us out
I try to read souls beyond pressure
Nations falling into those Barabbas hands
Where the miracle lies
This only proves the urgency of books
In the face of the wreck caused by a saber
In deep greedy debts
Ignoring the meaning of blessings
In a time
Where the only thing running free
Is our tears
I came back to kill, like a heart attack
After a resurrection, like a childbirth
I rebuild myself, fed up, I put away
Just an ordinary man, rooted in reality
If I receive a blessing, I share
I break into cells, living rooms, bedrooms
I traveled the world, and now I'm sure
That everyone is one
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
ACT 1
PLANTING
Nothing can teach you
about time like soil can, bro.
And this is no hippie talk.
When you plant a seed,
you gotta water it
and wait around 15 days for it to sprout.
Once it's there,
you gotta take care of it, you know?
You gotta watch out for pests
and venomous animals.
It's crazy how you find yourself
having to deal with spiders and snakes,
and how you come to understand
that they won't
bite you out of spite, you know?
The last thing they wanna do is bite you.
Spiders won't bite you
because they feel like doing it.
They do it because they get scared.
And fear will push you to do things
you don't wanna do, you know?
While I worked on my album,
having a garden taught me so much.
I was being interviewed before the concert
and the dude asked me,
"Why the City Opera House?"
"Because there's not a single beam,
there's no bridge,
there's no street,
there's no important building
that hasn't been touched
by the hands of Black workers."
When I said that, I was thinking
of manpower, bricks, cement and so on.
But this is only half of the story.
To get the full story, we gotta
rewind the tape and time travel, really.
And the best time machine for this journey
is an old samba-enredo
by Geraldo Filme about Tebas.
While doing some research on him,
you quickly realize why he got his name
from Thebes, a hood in Egypt
from back in the days of the Pharaohs.
Not only did Tebas
lay bricks with his Black hands,
but he was also a crucial part
in the stylistic re-do
that São Paulo went through
in the 18th century.
He built the steeples for the Carmo Church
and the old São Paulo See Cathedral.
TEBAS, FIRST BLACK MAN
TURNED ARCHITECT IN SAO PAULO
He built the Fountain of Mercy.
All those panels at the See Square
are credited to the artists.
SINGER AND COMPOSER
Neither the See Cathedral
nor the Fountain of Mercy
are credited to Tebas.
But we know he made them.
He's also the artist behind
the foundation stone
in St. Benedict's Monastery.
The area around the monastery
served as a foundation stone
for our hip-hop, and that's crazy.
Whether building or designing,
the people who have always fought
so that art and beauty could
bring life to our city's cold concrete
were ourselves.
We, we, we
We, we, we…
We're free here
Sweet-ass sneakers
Some sweet-ass bling
The whole thing flashes
It bothers their asses
Black people gathered around
Are the GPS of what's dope
If the ghetto's awake
The rest can go to hell
Sweet-ass sneakers
Some sweet-ass bling
The whole thing flashes
It bothers their asses
Black people gathered around
Are the GPS of what's dope
If we're here at the City Opera
The rest can go to hell!
Love
Free, free, free
Love, free
We're free here
I like to rewind the history tape
100 years back
and think about how the year of 1922
turned shit upside down.
As we celebrated
the centennial of our independence,
people from different origins
born in Brazil
reclaimed their right to dream
and to transform this place,
ignoring the ghost of colonialism
that still haunted it.
For example,
a cultural movement of African roots,
a modern and original one,
is the precursor
of what we now call brasilidade.
It went straight from the favelas
to the heart of the artistic avant-garde.
I'm talking about samba,
which was widely
persecuted here in Brazil.
Despite the strong disapproval
showed by the local bourgeoisie,
Pixinguinha and Donga introduced it
to the modern city of Paris.
And that's how Oito Batutas made history.
We're the Batutas, Batutas, Batutas
CONDUCTOR
We come from Brazil
All is well here
We're the Batutas, Batutas, Batutas
We get everyone to dance samba
You know what's crazy?
The same year samba conquered the world,
a seismic shift occurred in our art
and its epicenter was precisely the stage
where I'm about to perform.
The Modern Art Week of 1922.
The notion of art around here
was forever shaken.
Sambistas, who are undeniably
modern, and modernists,
who, without realizing it,
wanted more samba in our art,
both broke with traditional ideas
in a way that
still echoes today and beyond.
Although they were mainly an elite
group of white men, but not limited to it,
modernists reclaimed Brazilian art
with Brazilian colors,
and the Modern Art Week
was only the beginning.
Green and yellow were not forgotten,
immortalized in the painting
The Yellow Man,
by Anita Malfatti.
As for the sambistas,
mostly poor men and women,
almost all of them Black or biracial,
they stood for what Machado de Assis
would have called "the real Brazil."
Both movements
took a leap of faith with their art.
They were saying, "We're all we got."
I leave my tambourine to my friends
They asked me
if I'd ever met Mário de Andrade.
I had the honor…
SINGER
…to have been his friend…
and to have him quote me.
You'd pay no attention to mine
To me, you no longer have value
Deixa Falar was the name
given by Ismael Silva,
Bide, Brancura and others
to what would become
the basis for samba schools.
Why the name "samba school"?
In this neighborhood,
we had a normal school…
where you could become a teacher.
So the neighborhood Estácio de Sá
spread the word
that the neighborhood itself
was a samba school.
Estácio de Sá was a samba school.
Bide created the surdo drum,
and making it the heart of the percussion,
as well as the tamborim.
SINGER
We're not sure who invented the tamborim,
Bide or Ismael Silva.
But old-school folks say it was Bide.
He built a surdo drum
using a butter can…
and paper from a cement bag.
He took the cement bag,
then wet the paper,
put it over that 20-kilo butter can,
fastened it with wire,
finished wetting the paper,
warmed it up a bit with fire,
just to improve the sound.
Then he went down to Estácio Square.
Bide went down there with Deixa Falar,
and he's credited
with inventing the surdo.
They called on me
Here I am, what's going on?
They called on me
Here I am, what's going on?
I came from there
When I was little
I came from there
When I was little…
SINGER
-I'm all about samba, bro!
-You can say that again!
-You can say that again.
-Let's try it one more time.
We only trust samba folks.
-Only samba people can be trusted.
-And is the only one trustable.
Samba is Brazil at its finest.
And there's no way our country can win
if it moves away from samba.
I am samba…
Our band, Os Sete Modernos do Samba,
performed in Mexico.
It was also known in Spanish
as Los Siete Diablos de la Batucada.
I am samba…
I'm a Rio de Janeiro native…
I'm the one who spreads joy
To millions of hearts…
From Jovelina Pérola Negra
to Jackson do Pandeiro,
including Wilson Batista,
and last but not least Jair Rodrigues,
besides many other samba greats,
Hip-hop was already there
long before we existed.
This bittersweet fruit we call rap
grew from a big tree.
If you examine its roots closely,
you'll find samba there.
I am samba…
Samba really is out of this world.
It can reach places
no other living being's been to.
For example, in 1997,
the samba song
"Ô Coisinha Tão Bonitinha do Pai"
was chosen to wake up the Sojourner Rover
in its space mission.
Before any other cosmonaut,
our samba touched Martian ground.
Aren't you Daddy's little cutie pie?
Aren't you Daddy's little cutie pie?
Sambistas have always been
avant-garde, true trailblazers.
With all their weight,
they could still bring on a light touch.
An example
is Johnny Alf's piano and voice.
You know very well
I'm a good fellow…
Dubbed "GeniAlf" by Tom Jobim
and regarded as the true father
of bossa nova by many,
he ended up an influence on musicians
such as Elis Regina and Wilson Simonal.
Pinky.
Now I'm thinking of it as a movie, Nave.
The way the album is put together,
-it tells a story.
-Right.
It just hit me that
"Principia" is about the brother's dream.
-You know?
-Damn…
Damien's song is, when he wakes up,
"A Ordem Natural das Coisas,"
which is like a "good morning."
He sets out early morning for work.
Suddenly,
as this brother's leaving for work,
his wife runs to the gate to say goodbye.
"Pequenas Alegrias da Vida Adulta."
For real, bro?
We have to be careful
While on the trapeze
Even if modern times' desperation
Weighs on us
If a "like" is a call-out to hate, man
In this case
The message of common sense is simple
COMPOSER
If we stick together, we'll be fine.
We'll outnumber them.
We just have to stick together.
"Pequenas Alegrias da Vida Adulta"
has a little secret to it,
and my man Oga Mendonça
was the first person to uncover it.
He grinned and said,
"This song could use a sauce
that rap doesn't
enjoy enough, samba-rock."
The birthplace of this type of samba
is a tiny piece of Africa
in the wacky-ass city of São Paulo,
better known as North Side.
Am I being provincial? Hell no.
This was where the first recording
bringing samba and rap together
was officially born,
with The Brothers Rap.
Da Cor do Pagode made the introductions
Pumping up this rap of the next generation
'Cause I wrote this rap
That's kind of weird
With a beating tambourine
And a cavaquinho's chords
Throughout the years,
other artists tried the sauce,
like Athaliba e a Firma, Rappin Hood,
Marcelo D2, Quinto Andar,
and Racionais MC's, among others.
They gradually thinned out
the Americanness in it,
proving that it's impossible
to appreciate the Brazilian melting pot
without being influenced
by the local spirit.
Ambitious as I am,
I say we climb up a step.
As this whole movement matures,
we're asked to move past
the blend of styles
to make way for a new genre,
a new artistic language,
something I've been calling
"neo-samba" in AmarElo.
"Alvorada no Morro" by Cartola,
"Sonho Meu" by Dona Ivone Lara,
"Bandeira da Fé"
by Luiz Carlos da Vila,
or even the famous "Trem das Onze"
by our beloved Adoniran Barbosa,
paint spot-on pictures,
working as reliable historical documents,
as hard-hitting as those songs
by rappers to come,
but in a different context.
That's why
there will always be partideiros.
And the verses, even offhand ones,
shall reflect the truth
in each individual's soul.
You know what I find
so beautiful about sambistas?
They never forget
the little joys of adulthood.
I will…
Face everything for her
Face all battles
For the little joys of adulthood
I will…
I will…
Be on the front like a warrior
Even if I have to take on
The entire planet
Or run a marathon and win
Shout out, "This is for you, babe!"
I will…
Face everything for her
Face all battles
For the little joys of adulthood
I will…
I will…
Be on the front like a warrior
Even if I have to take on
The entire planet
Or run a marathon and win
Shout out, "This is for you, babe!"
-I like that.
-Me, too.
-Well…
-Beautiful!
-Beautiful!
-That was a no-brainer.
-Good one.
-It's got a lot of swing to it.
-Cool, right?
-Damn good.
-Really good.
-Bro, press Ctrl+S
and save this shit, for God's sake.
Can you imagine all of it gone?
-Shall we?
-One, two, three…
Go!
Play the rattle like you mean it.
Got it?
PESSIMISM PROHIBITED
Sometimes I feel like a photographer,
but not an ordinary one.
I feel like the brother
from Manoel de Barros's poem,
who describes himself
as a "photographer of the invisible."
To me, writing is like
being blessed with time-traveling.
I can be right here, right now,
but I can also visit
the past and the future
and share its feelings.
I learned that from watching
my mom work the soil.
After I read about what it meant
for Mandela to have a garden in prison,
I was moved by the realization
that so many wonderful thoughts
could be enclosed in a seed.
It was my mom Jacira and Nelson Mandela
who taught me to respect time
and connect to the cycle of life.
This intensive exercise I did for years
made me feel whole as a human being.
Nothing in the world
Could be more beautiful
From the bottom of my heart
From the deepest corner of my core
To this wrecked world
My writing is like a love letter
Kids, laughs, windows
Flirts, braids, yellow cotton
The red shades of roof tiles
The crackle of the spark
Makes you feel inside a painting
Hope paints itself in watercolor
The white noise of the radio
TVs and soap operas
A trail of bees
The murmur of sheep
In your ears
And life goes along
On the paving stone
Intrepid worker
Impetuous driver
Where it all starts
The wind calms the speed down
For every eclectic new sound
Record players spin the classics
Beautiful absurd
Suffocating metropolis
They are necropolises
That never touch one another
So they collide with someone's dream
Sunday killers
Pausing every beautiful thing
Everyone who feels the same
Is also my friend
This one comes
From the bottom of my heart
From the deepest corner of my core
To this wrecked world
My writing is like a love letter
From the bottom of my heart
This one comes
From the bottom of my heart
From the deepest corner of my core
To this wrecked world…
I've always hung out
at second-hand record stores.
I'd look for records for hours on end
with the little money I had.
There was no room for mistakes.
I'd read the spec sheets
on the back of the records
until I came up with a simple
but effective methodology.
If a certain name was on it,
I could buy the record without a worry.
His name became a seal of approval.
He was my guardian angel of good music.
So I started collecting records
by this great musician.
One day, I went to see my bros
play at the Brasilintime festival,
where rap DJs
and big-time drummers played together.
Only the bad boys.
Ladies and gentlemen…
it is my pleasure, my honor…
and a dream of mine to introduce to you
one of the best drummers
in Brazilian history.
Wilson das Neves!
DRUMMER AND COMPOSER
I was watching from up top
and couldn't look at anyone else.
All I could see
was that baldy bringing it home,
looking sharp as he played his drums.
Years later, I was invited to a project
where I could choose
any artist to record with.
I had my mind made up.
I immediately remembered
the name on the record covers.
But what could I possibly offer someone
who had already recorded
with the titans of Brazilian music?
I had to cheat.
I wrote a song made entirely of phrases
from songs he had
recorded in the past. A tribute, truly.
That's how I came face to face
with the monster in the flesh.
And we never parted ways.
Lucky me!
So thank you, Mr. Wilson
For your sacred music
Leninha wanted me to listen to the song.
I told her I only listen
to the songs when I record them!
SINGER
I'll forget by the next day.
-Can't remember what I ate yesterday.
-Remember Wilson das Neves?
My buddy Wilson, sure.
We'd been traveling around
and working together--
-He wrote the melody?
-Yeah.
-Holy fuck!
-We used a sample of his.
-I think I should listen to it, then.
-Don't worry.
I should've listened to it.
For a long time we fought
to prevail as a relevant art form.
We've built that over the past years,
like the last ten years, feel me?
Now for the last decade,
even a little before that,
we've had nothing to prove to anyone.
But surely, our art
is in constant evolution.
We've been able to develop
a form of expression,
defining the contours
of Brazilian rap music.
When you have a friend
You have everything
When you have a friend
You have everything
I pity the fool who messes with us.
I've been tripping over this idea
for the last five years.
Even before it got this bad,
I realized we needed
something to hold on to.
There are certain values
that needed settling,
like the importance of believing.
This one's gonna fuck me up!
It's like rappelling
If you're out of rope, you die
AVUÁ FASHION SHOW
Chilling
Even with darkness around the corner
Damn, I almost forgot!
I design clothes every now and then,
and we put on fashion shows.
It was late night and I was finishing
some pieces for our next show at SPFW.
The last edition had been amazing.
We paid a great tribute to samba.
On the most important runway in Brazil,
we featured my mom, Mrs. Jacira,
Fabiana Cozza and Wilson das Neves.
Ladies and gentlemen, Wilson das Neves.
Samba in the flesh!
What a wonderful feeling it is
to present people you admire with flowers
while they can still smell them.
A call came in that night,
while I was working.
My wife brought me the phone
wearing a serious look on her face.
I answered the call, and my friend,
Margarete, gave me the sad news.
Our beloved master, Wilson das Neves,
was no longer among us.
I cried for days.
But my grief was always cut short
by some funny memory.
I'd remember him saying,
"Only scoundrels die, son!"
And Wilson
couldn't be more right, as usual.
A few months later, I was able
to pull out a cassette he'd sent me
and listen to all of it without crying.
I listened to all his tunes non-stop.
Thiago Jamelão and I headed to the studio
and we tried to harmonize them.
Once in the studio,
we had a dreamlike moment
testing chords for a long time,
and when I woke up,
we had a perfectly round cycle.
His music filled the studio
and I could feel his presence
with us, as strong as ever.
I smiled as I thought,
"When you have a friend,
you have everything."
When you have a friend
You have everything
If the well devours you
He rescues you from the bottom
The feeling is so amazing
That all the stress seems easy to overcome
It's a safe place
For when things get too insane
When you have a friend
You have everything
When bullets are flying, brother
They turn into a shield
Ready for anything, for real, anytime
A shoulder to cry on after the Armageddon
Being brothers like Gil and Caetano
Is a rare thing in this crazy world
I've found so many hardships
But I made it back
And I'm gonna keep on going
It's like the Baroque Rococo style
Of which Aleijadinho was king
The gift of gods
So many laughs
Like in catechism
I've asked Oxalá and Our Lady
Hey, what floor do you live on now?
Gonna pay you a visit someday
These are my favorite verses.
So, Mr. Wilson passed away.
So I ask,
"What floor do you live on now?"
My favorite parts until now…
Going through all that
gets me thinking of Oswald de Andrade,
another modernist.
In his Anthropophagic Manifesto,
he said exactly that.
"Other people are all that interests me."
After all, there's no meaning
in our existence without others.
Samba knew that from the start.
ACT 2
WATERING
Jaime de Almeida
was a fullback for Flamengo.
Five-time champion with his team.
During one of his practices,
Jaime's family got a proposition
from one of the club's managers.
He wanted one of Jaime's little sisters
to work as a maid in his house.
Years later, during an interview,
this is how the little girl
would tell the story.
"We had just lost our father."
"I babysat for rich women for a while."
"Black children start working
early on, you know."
"This manager from Flamengo
offered me a job at his house
working as his little maid,
the type who becomes the house pet."
"I put up such a fight
that they had to bring me back."
The little girl grew up.
She majored in Philosophy and History,
becoming a major thinker
and a reference
for extraordinary individuals of our time
through her beautiful and powerful ideas.
Her name is Lélia Gonzalez.
The Egyptians were a Black people.
Thus, the Egyptian civilization,
the first civilization ever
to exist on planet Earth,
passed on all the knowledge
to the so-called Western civilization.
PHILOSOPHER AND ACTIVIST
To Lélia Gonzalez,
the key contributions made by Black people
created Brazilian culture itself.
As a result, we don't
speak Portuguese around here.
We speak Pretoguese.
Many people believe that Lélia
is a pioneer in intersectionality studies,
which is how social identities overlap
and relate
to structural oppression, sort of.
RACE, SEX AND CLASS OPPRESSION
A theory that has only recently
become popular in our society.
Let us fight, comrades!
So that exploitation and oppression
in our country may come to an end.
NATIONAL BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS DAY
Brazil is not a racial democracy.
Before it could ever become
an actual racial democracy,
our country needs
to effectively become a democracy.
Lélia explained that oppression
against Black women is even harder…
AGAINST BLACK WOMAN'S EXPLOITATION
…as it's underlined by gender,
class and race discrimination.
They're discriminated against
three times more.
In its almost 450-year history,
the city of São Paulo
had only seen two Black women
elected to the State Assembly.
The first woman to ever be elected
was Theodosina Ribeiro,
and the second is a sambista…
SINGER AND COMPOSER
…who also performed
in the City Opera House in 1975,
the godmother of rap, Leci Brandão.
A new leader is rising
On Pau da Bandeira Hill
A new leader is rising
On Pau da Bandeira Hill
On Pau da Bandeira Hill
On Pau da Bandeira Hill
Let me hear you clap!
As I see it, this achievement
by Leci was as daring…
LECI BRANDÃO:
WOMAN, BLACK AND HOMOSSEXUAL
…as when she became the first woman
to be a composer for Mangueira.
The initial reaction
was pretty predictable.
A girl wanted to join
the very traditional Mangueira composers.
No woman had ever knocked on their door.
When I did, I got my message across
and managed to convince
those distinguished gentlemen.
Candeia founded the Recreational Club
Black People's Art Quilombo Samba School.
It wasn't just a samba school.
As the name implies,
Quilombo stood up for freedom
during the years of lead,
both in verse, such as the samba-enredo
"Ao Povo em Forma de Arte,"
and in prose, by giving rise
to organic intellectuals
such as the masters Elton Medeiros,
Paulinho da Viola,
Wilson Moreira and Nei Lopes.
It worked
as a true school of popular culture.
Professor Lélia Gonzalez
was also a master at this school.
Lélia offered Candeia a seat in her jalopy
to join her on
an important trip to São Paulo.
Candeia was already in poor health,
so he wasn't able to come along.
Her jalopy let her down, too,
and broke down on the way there.
But that didn't stop
Lélia Gonzalez from coming here
to represent Candeia and Quilombo.
Her destination
was the front steps of this building.
She attended
the first public demonstration
of an organization
that would transform our history.
It was the founding
of the Unified Black Movement.
FOR RACIAL EQUALITY
But there's more to be said here.
Forty years before the gathering
in front of
the City Opera House, in 1938,
a celebration of the 50th anniversary
of the end of slavery
organized by remaining members
of the Brazilian Black Front
was also scheduled to happen
in the vicinities of the Opera House.
Unfortunately, the event never took place,
in spite of every effort made
by the head of the Municipal Department
of Culture at the time, Mário de Andrade,
our favorite modernist.
The fact that we're here in this place
that was denied to our ancestors,
is thanks to the sweat and blood
of people along the way.
At the height of military dictatorship,
there were people
who were brave enough to rise up
against the Brazilian state
and its murderous racism
and say that this country
needed to acknowledge
the leading role of people of color
in Brazilian society.
Some of the people here today
were also at the front steps
of the Opera House in 1978,
fighting racism.
This is a magical time for me
because you are here.
Because our presence here
is a historical achievement.
I'd like to ask them to stand up now…
Our brothers and sisters from MMU.
On these front steps,
from here in São Paulo to all of Brazil,
the Unified Black Movement
will continue its fight.
Thank you so much.
Without your dreams,
without your struggle,
none of this would be possible.
I dedicate to them this next song.
My Luanda skin
Aruanda lobby
Like T'challa, Wakanda
Black mamba poison
A bunch of bandoliers
What are the rules here?
Tonight ya gonna see more blood
Than in Hotel Rwanda
This era started wild
Panther on the loose
Shows its claws
I brought the night as camouflage
I'm an avenger, avenging the pain
Of those smashed by the gears
While you are coup, I am Sabotage
Mystic
A thousand orishas in a pantheon
Brave, I kill settlers
Bringing them to an end, like a Tsavo lion
I go deep, indeed
Never hold me back, it's worse
Monster, skull, Vibranium
I chop you up in 12 pieces
A flash like Usain Bolt
10,000 volts
Applause from my ancestors, listen
Ta-Nehisi with no coaches
Memory is long, temper is short
In this approach and so
Rumor has it that
I've come back like an AK
With determination
Sensibility and chill, bro
If things get rough
We better get back
-Like a Black panther
-I am back
Like a Black panther
With determination
Sensibility and chill, bro
If things get rough
We better get back
-Like a Black panther
-I am back
Like a Black panther
Now on my roof, she's Dora Milaje
Sprouts on the base
Very Nicki Minaj-y, it's a mirage
Mirage Jet, flying high
Mr. Spock is the bomb
Green Lantern, I am very Static
For a new Red Sea
A new crossing
For people to see kings in the mirror
My pen creates
Wu-Tang Street
Superman, more technology
Symbolic like a guide
In the chilly nights
I'll crush boys that mock Black culture
A Kasparov toasting mate
And writing checks
I stand against the slave masters
An indie on my own track
I'm sharp, respect my timing
Don't be such a brat
If you come like Stan Lee, like Spike Lee
Kinda Bruce Lee
I am taking Brazil
In a Mauricio Kubrusly kinda way
Like Solange in A Seat at the Table
Black or dark-skinned?
When in doubt, call her princess
Self-knowledge, self-help
Flow of time
Like samples, like Buddha
Love that could fill a thousand books
Like Gabo or Neruda
Whoever married the storm
Doesn't care about umbrellas, got it?
With determination
Sensibility and chill, bro
If things get rough
We better get back
This night will be forever in our hearts.
For real, man.
To remind us that freedom isn't permanent.
We have to always fight for it.
And we'll keep on fighting for it.
Like a tractor. Out of our way!
With determination
Sensibility and chill, bro
If things get rough
We better get back
-Like a Black panther
-I am back
Like a Black panther
The power of a symbol.
What did them guys and girls do?
They didn't know what could happen.
It was a dictatorship
in a country that kills Black people
without batting an eye.
The next day, they could all be
in jail, or worse, dead.
But they cut through their fear
and stood on those front steps
to create a powerful symbol of struggle
and unity against racism.
NOVEMBER 20TH
NATIONAL BLACK AWARENESS DAY
To the military, anti-racism
was directly connected to communism.
Simonal himself ended up in DOPS
for his tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.
With your permission,
I'd like to sing this song.
I dedicated it to my son…
hoping that, in the future,
he's never faced
with the problems I faced…
and sometimes still do,
despite being who I am.
Yes, I have dark skin
My brother of the same color
What I ask of you
Is that you fight
Yes, that you fight a little longer
The battle is almost over
For every Black person who is gone
Another Black person will come
To fight
And shed blood, or maybe not
A song can go a long way, my brother
Listen to my voice, oh, yeah
Fight for us
The Blackest struggle…
But a lot of things came out of that.
It annoys me
because it's nothing new, you know?
From the moment
that Africans started being abducted
and dumped in a land they didn't know,
they needed to rethink
their model of collective organization.
For example, the religious
brotherhoods of the 17th century.
Black people get organized,
raise a little money,
buy each other's freedoms,
and that's how they did it.
Bit by bit, they built
a community for mutual welfare.
Aristocrata was a club
built by Black people.
But it didn't discriminate
like white people clubs did,
which didn't allow
Black people in the pool.
Anyone in the premises
could have a good time.
So you take the religious brotherhoods,
take what
the Aristocrata people were doing,
and where does that lead us?
To our parents' generation.
-Ever been here before?
-First time.
Damn, shit's getting real.
-First time.
-You've never been in here?
Never, not even to take pictures.
SINGER
-Damn. Not even as a tourist?
-No.
Yeah…
From now on, it's ours.
I'm a dark-skinned Brazilian kid,
you feel me?
And we really need
to keep harping on about it.
So that each generation hits harder.
When a Black person is called a monkey,
people look at them to see their reaction,
but we should ask the white person,
"It's been 500 years
and you're still doing that?"
I'm not a target for racists.
I'm their nightmare.
I've cheated death
Now I know where I'm heading
This wasn't luck
I am where I've always wanted to be
I trust no one
-Let alone some Po-po
-Fuck the police
Money in my pocket
My pulse frozen
Right before the show
Well before the blow
I was with my bros
Before all the hype and envy
I've cheated death
Now I know where I'm heading
-This wasn't luck
-Okay.
Endless grudges
I made faith reverberate
Like a cathedral
Sacred like the Torah
Deadly like a cobra
A voracious shark for Oriental knowledge
My chant made the Atlantic
Into a quantum particle
-Find me in every storm
-Ancestral voices
Courage cannot be measured
In times of peace
-Jesus 2.0 style
-Damn, Jesus 2.0
I walk on the water of forgetful grief
Away from the rules imposed upon me
I was nothing
Today I'm infinite
Feeling like the invention of zero
Not conceited, just convincing
See what rhyme's done to streets
From freebase to beats in folders
The world can't stand us
My caste flies at the speed of light
Ping-pong
Cut the crap, enough
My rasta mind celebrates
Yin and yang rebalanced
Like a filmmaker, I look for the gap
I outshine the party
Aim for the head
Throw a Kim Jong master
I decide whether you're dealing
With the King
Or the Kong
Like Aztec gold, I came from a Barren Life
Everything was like Sahara, Sahara
Abundance is the goal
Like Mecca
I am Thomas Sankara
I confront and rebuild
Like a newborn, wrapped in pussy
A mix of Vivara, Guevara, Lebara
My pen fucks with "white history"
And the world shouts
Don't stop, don't stop
Enough of this caravel fetish
Real talk, just stop
Put it in perspective
I go on, smash it
And they call it a concept
Somehow I bring the hand of Shiva
This is God speaking through my bros
It's me aiming and killing the Klu
Only those who cheated death up North
Know it wasn't luck, but the hand of Eshu
I put on a suit
Just to mess with them
Subordinate or subversion?
Everything was Hell
I turned it around
The goal is eternity, infinity
ACT III
HARVESTING
You know when our moms
or old ladies from the hood,
when old Black ladies would tell us,
"You're Black, so you gotta do
ten times better to be seen as an equal"?
I think this is still true,
and we have to study ten times harder,
because the playing field is a minefield
where your life is worthless.
The grief over your dead body
is shorter, you know?
If you ever slip up,
which can happen to anyone,
people will be less forgiving
if you're a Black body.
BRAZIL
When influential artists,
inspired by French Futurism,
inaugurated Modernism
in our neck of the woods,
Black intellectuals in France
made a massive contribution
to the history of humankind
with a five-letter word
which is sometimes used as an insult
and sometimes to show affection.
But its main purpose is to express pride.
That word is "Negro."
And all the ideology
that it captures in its variations.
Négritude, or "Blackness."
And you can write it in bold.
Over here, the need
to turn tragedies into power
was equally urgent.
One of the best examples of this dream
was Abdias do Nascimento.
Especially when he founded
the Black People's Experimental Theater,
which opened up new opportunities
to strengthen Afro-Brazilian
culture and values.
Once, when he was abroad,
Abdias attended a play
where the main character
was played by a white man in blackface.
Right then and there, he decided to create
a theater company for Black people,
to fight racism.
I remember
the number of people
who came to advise…
ACTOR AND ACTIVIST
…that I not do this.
That I not use "Black" in the name,
because that would cause the initiative
to fail before it came to fruition,
before it even began.
In that regard,
I was…
absolutely adamant…
that it had to be Black Theater.
Black People's Theater.
Actor, fine artist,
poet, writer, playwright,
professor and politician.
He even produced plays
inside the Carandiru prison
with a cast of inmates.
Abdias do Nascimento was all those things
without ever giving up on his activism
for the human rights of Black people.
In his art, he paid tribute
to people such as Luís Gama,
an abolitionist poet and attorney.
A true Futurist,
who could be considered
a forerunner of Négritude,
many decades before
that word made it to our shores.
Just like Candeia
and Lélia Gonzalez did with Quilombo,
Abdias used art to exalt our culture,
to push it beyond simple entertainment
and turn it
into a very powerful political tool.
The Black People's Experimental Theater
also introduced to the world…
the high-caliber star
that was Ruth de Souza.
When I think about Ruth de Souza…
PROFESSOR AND ACTIVIST
…I realize that if her talents
had been put to full use
as the great actress she is,
she would easily have become
the greatest actress
in Brazilian TV, for example,
as now she's mostly on TV,
but she's also done movies.
Ruth de Souza was
the Black first lady of Brazilian theater,
the first Black actress to play
a lead role in Brazilian television,
the Black first lady of cinema.
She got a scholarship
and studied in Howard and Harvard.
She was the first Brazilian actress
to be nominated for a Golden Lion
at the Venice International Film Festival.
And if that's not avant-garde,
I don't know what is.
We didn't have any money to produce
The Emperor Jones, my first play.
RUTH DE SOUZA
ACTRESS
We didn't have the money
and we didn't have a venue.
And I said, without a second thought,
"Let's request the Opera House."
I thought it was so beautiful.
We went to see the mayor
and he gave us May 25…
May 8, actually. The end of the war.
The day the war ended.
It was very moving to me.
There were fireworks outside,
and I'd say
they were celebrating my first role.
With the faith of the ones
Watching the scene
From the players' bench
The goal we needed the most…
SINGER
Ball on the post
"Ismália" was originally intended
to team up two giants of our theater,
Ruth de Souza
and Fernanda Montenegro, in a duet.
But sadly, Mrs. Ruth de Souza passed away
while we were on tour in Europe,
a few weeks before
we were going to start recording.
Not even our dreams
Are free of obstacles…
Actress Ruth de Souza
was buried today in Rio de Janeiro.
She was the first Black actress
to perform on the stage
of the Rio de Janeiro Opera House.
White people's happiness is complete
Black people's happiness
Is a near miss…
Nobody walked in the studio
and said, "This is what we'll do."
You feel me?
It was an experimental process.
I mean, Nave and I, we've been
working together for some 12 years.
You touched up that beat.
MUSIC PRODUCER
It was already great.
Half my work was already done.
You're being humble.
Shit's got a lot more body now.
The way you split it
to put in the other beat.
After 12 years, we finally have
the technical and financial means
to up and say, "Marlon's
gonna play this trombone part."
And it's got such a crazy vibe
that suddenly Marcos Valle joins in.
You know? You realize,
"Holy shit, Fernanda Montenegro is here."
She played Our Lady in A Dog's Will,
and she's in the project.
Hello. So good to see you.
-How are you?
-Two kisses.
Mrs. Fernanda's
solid performance in "Ismália"
offers us solace in the face of an abyss
that we're sometimes
led to believe to be our fate.
I love this poem.
It think it's so deep, so grand.
I chose to record it now
because I think
it speaks a lot to our times.
That's true, though.
This is where we find ourselves.
If you've gone mad up in the tower,
you're not dreaming.
-It's such a honor…
-For me as well, know that.
Let's hope it's as beautiful
in real life as it is written.
Just like the text.
Shithole of a country
Exactly what the media likes
Gave us failure
And demands medals
From runners with compound fractures
Stabbed in the back
Quartered by dues and norms
But we numb ourselves and say that
Someday everything will be all right
That a diploma means manumission
And my color's not a uniform
#BlackLivesMatter, bravo
But after 80 bullets
You finally see the difference
Between fair skin and target skin
-And the shooter wore a uniform
-Once more
-The accusers weren't even there
-Mean-spirited
For a Black dead body
Is like a Billboard hit single
Everyone can see it
But that shit won't get through
I looked into the mirror
Icarus faced me back
Be careful
Don't fly too close to the sun
They can't stand your freedom
Imagine seeing you as king
Vultures wanna see you a junkie
Just to go, "Told ya!"
In the end, we're all…
Ismália, Ismália
Ismália, Ismália
Ismália, Ismália
Reaching for the sky
Ended up on the ground
Every Black person is
Ismália, Ismália
-Ismália
-Ismália, Ismália
-Ismália
-Ismália, Ismália
Reaching for the sky
Ended up on the ground
First, kidnap them
Rob them
Lie about them
Deny their God, offend
Separate them
If one of those dreams dare to run
Stop it
And let them argue
With the bullets that cuts through them
Man, unfortunately
In places where the sun feels hotter
"To slay it" still means
Just to fill another kid's coffin
Wanted to be a star
Became a medal for some jerk
Who happens to carry the same color
That killed their ancestors
A first paycheck
Two police uniforms
Three Black kids in the backseat
Same color as the four Racionais
Five disrupted lives
Gold and bronze boys
Gunshots, gunshots, gunshots
That little boy was shot 111 times
-And the shooter wore a uniform
-Ismália
Those who pointed fingers
Weren't even there
Black people dissolution
Along with the sharp vision of those
Who have everything but color
In a world where color matters the most
"When Ismália went mad
She got up the tower to dream
She saw the moon in the sky
Another moon in the sea
In the dream where she got lost
She bathed herself in moonlight
She wanted to climb to heaven
She wanted to go down to the sea
In her own raving
In the tower, she began to sing
She was close to heaven
She was far from the sea
And as an angel, she hung
With wings to fly
She wanted the moon from the sky
She wanted the moon from the sea
The wings God gave her
They fluttered wide
Her soul climbed to heaven
Her body went down to the sea"
The artists from the hills
were persecuted by all means possible.
The Brazilian state
quickly added to its legislation
an effective means to silence
the cultural wealth of our people
through a legal instrument
known as the Vagrancy Law,
used over the years
to jail samba and capoeira artists
and to crack down
on Candomblé and Umbanda.
Back in the day,
I was arrested for holding a tamborim.
I wasn't even playing it.
And I was arrested.
Do you remember the decade?
That was in '41.
Back then, the police chief didn't allow
instruments with tension rods.
SINGER AND DRUMMER DIRECTOR
He said negroes
could use tension rods as weapons.
REPRESSING THE VAGRANCY - Police chief
recommendation to all deputies
And the same Vagrancy Law
was used to lock up sex workers
and persecute trans persons.
And the craziest part
is that this law is still in effect.
Magistrate protested against
the police chief
I'll be a vagrant
I'll be a vagrant
IT IS ABUSIVE TO LOCK UP
UNEMPLOYED CITIZENS
VAGRANCY LAW: THE FALSE NOTION
OF POLICE EFFICIENCY
"AMARELO" MUSIC VIDEO SHOOT
Rio de Janeiro, 2019
-Favela-dwellers don't walk around.
-You're in our home.
Can you imagine if you set up an operation
when we're out shooting a music video,
and Emicida is caught in the crossfire?
It'd all go to shit.
You're so tall!
I think that
we're bringing together our causes.
SINGER - SINGER
What I think we're doing, man,
is lifting the fog
that makes us
see our struggles as separate.
You can't half-ass the fight for freedom.
From the moment you
dive into a reflection about gender,
about class, and about race,
there are two ways you can go about it.
One's hypocritical,
you only think about yourself.
The other one is, "If we want this
for us, we want it for everybody."
-Am I in this part?
-Yes.
You and me.
When we come together,
we notice we have very similar stories
and that it's ridiculous
for us to be in separate movements.
I wanted to double one of Emicida's lines.
I think that's fierce.
This one, look.
He's challenging me like I'm new at this.
I'm a rapper, okay?
I attended an event
called Creators' House.
He did some shit with this song that…
gave me goosebumps.
He got this trans girl…
SINGER
…to walk in and sing,
and she fucking smashed it.
She went down the catwalk alone,
singing these lyrics.
She'd stop
and look at everyone, repeating this…
Last year I died!
Not this year, though!
That hit me real hard.
I started to listen to Belchior on repeat,
and said, "How did I never realize it?"
Just like a prism
decomposes white light into many colors,
in AmarElo, I'd like to decompose
prejudice into many other possibilities.
This is our way of telling
our brothers and sisters on the streets
that they can't give up.
It's using the power of love,
which is something
all human beings can do,
to forge this link.
It's as if a portal opened,
and all the OGs that came before me said,
"Brother, get out there."
"Life only has meaning when we connect,
when we get together."
And the feeling of singing
with Majur and Pabllo
is that of the whole world
gathering around us.
Fela Kuti said that music is a weapon.
And busting these chains
of hate and resentment
is just what we do
when we join Belchior to sing this song.
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
I'm a rare breed
Shining in the dark
One of a kind
Straight from the hood
Hooded, from the top of the hill
Me and my brothers
My piece in my pocket
And ill-spirited
Only God and I know
How it feels to have nothing, to be exiled
Cut the world with rhymes
But thought of cutting my wrists
Our lives are measured by our wealth
We are worthless
It wasn't a hit
But a call for help this morning
Man, resentment works like a tumor
It poisons the roots
Where the audience
Only wants to be happy
Everyone's heads are in the clouds
Where the new trend is depression
Disguised as vacation trips
My grandmother used to say
It's real easy to hate the devil
Hard is living in hell
What we realize is
That the same old rotten empire
That never took you seriously
Also wants you to bite the dust
Fight back
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Allow me to speak louder than my scars
They're just accessories
Shouldn't even be here
Allow me to speak louder than my scars
So much pain robbing us of our voices
You know what's left of us?
Walking targets on the streets
Allow me to speak louder than my scars
I wanna live, not just survive
If living is just surviving
I'm being robbed of my few good moments
At last, allow me to speak
Louder than my scars
The worst crime
Is to let my traumas define me
Doing so, we give our enemies a trophy
And silence ourselves
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Put your hands up, City Opera! Come on!
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Last year I died
Not this year, though
BELIEVE IN YOUR AXÉ
City Opera…
Pabllo Vittar and Majur!
Laboratório Fantasma
is a collective dream.
One that began way before we
materialized in this plane of existence.
Wilson das Neves once said to us,
"You can snap a cigarette in half,
but not a whole pack."
That was his way of saying,
"Stick together and you'll stay strong."
Shit like that strengthens
everything we stand for.
SIBLING, ENTREPRENEUR
AND ASSOCIATE AT LABORATÓRIO FANTASMA
And, standing stronger,
we can fight all them giant monsters.
But there's a minor detail.
A really minor one.
To be exact,
a microscopic detail was about to
do damage of Dantean proportions.
First confirmed deaths
due to the novel coronavirus…
Reached the mark of 10,000 deaths…
In Brazil, over 60,000 deaths…
This brings to light
the vulnerability of workers
who aren't being sent home
in this moment of social distancing.
Hey, man, good morning. How are you?
I don't have good news.
Things are getting
worse here in Brazil, you hear?
So I think we're gonna need
a complete change of plans.
I don't know yet how it's gonna be,
but we've already started
canceling concerts,
we've gotten cancelation requests.
CORONAVIRUS
WASH YOUR HANDS FREQUENTLY
And we're not going to
do Drik's European tour either.
And right now it's arriving here, bro.
Because the number of cases
is rising fast over there.
Let's see
how the next couple of days pan out,
but I wanted to let you know,
'cause things are tough.
And that's all. See you, bro.
Here's something very representative.
The first victim of coronavirus in Brazil
was a housekeeper.
She caught the virus from her employer.
That's quite symbolic.
Poor people get infected more easily,
and the social chasms
make it impossible for the poorest,
who are also more likely
to be people of color,
to recover from this disease.
That's what feels hopeless.
To the ancient Yoruba, nothing is new.
Everything that's
happening now has happened before.
So you have a pandemic caused by a virus
that's infected a massive
amount of people all over the planet,
spreading fear and insecurity,
and locking everybody up in their homes,
feeling uncertain
about one another and about the future.
When you think carefully
about the nature of things,
you are able to foresee stuff,
because one way or another,
nature always completes its cycles.
It spins around
like a record on a turntable.
We've traveled so much in time,
that I forgot
something important that I had to say.
Exactly one century ago,
the world was beginning to beat
the Spanish flu pandemic,
and a movie theater decided to hire
eight musicians to play in the lobby,
to get past people's fears
and get them to come inside.
These eight musicians
were our own Oito Batutas,
who would later take the world by storm.
Isn't it magical to think
that in a moment like that,
samba was the assuager of despair,
the ambassador of gatherings,
smiles, and hugs?
And that's why I love the saying,
"With the stone he threw today,
Eshu killed a bird yesterday."
Every single chance we have
to fix the disconnects of the past
resides in the present.
And that, my friend,
is why it's all for yesterday.
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
It marks what the 21st century is about,
which is the present moment
when we're giving Black women more
visibility, strength and encouragement.
We're testifying the blossoming today
of what Mrs. Ruth de Souza
planted decades ago.
will rejoice in my conclusions.
For those who dismiss me, it's no use
explaining what's already been rejected."
By Mário de Andrade
in "Paulicéia Desvairada," 1992.
There's an old Yoruba saying that goes,
"With the stone he threw today,
Eshu killed a bird yesterday."
This proverb is the best way
to sum up what I've been trying to do.
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY
Turn back home
And put up my picture on your wall
I wish I'd battle his ass one day
When he's got the mic
The rhyme goes only one way
He's the shit
I'm gonna tattoo his name on my hand
This brother is his own brand
When the mic's on
He's never gone
It doesn't feel like
my first time here. I feel like I'm back.
And that, somehow, my dreams and struggles
started long before I was here.
But we've got some contextualizing to do
before it all makes sense.
A picture of contemporary
Black thinking in Brazil.
That is what you'll be watching as of now.
One. Brazil was the last country
in the Americas to end slavery.
MAY 13TH ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
I DECLARE EXTINCT SLAVERY IN BRAZIL
Two. The city of São Paulo got its wealth
mainly from
the mid-19th century coffee boom,
and its production was slave-fueled.
Three. The end of slavery
left millions of Black persons
to fend for themselves.
It was followed by "whitening" policies
that encouraged immigration from Europe,
demonized African and Native cultures,
and sought to completely purge
not only the memory of slavery,
but each and every contribution
made by non-white people
to this country's development.
From the beginning, imperial authorities
tried to "whiten" Black blood,
in an effort to neutralize their culture
and keep them from ascending
to important positions.
Four. The rise of São Paulo
to the metropolis we know today
as the "land of opportunity"…
This is São Paulo,
the capital of hard work,
the giant made of reinforced concrete
that grows bigger by the day.
…is marked by
a violent process of gentrification.
Many areas ended up mischaracterized,
mainly the central ones,
which are traditionally Black.
Gala at the City Opera House!
Most of the Black population
got pushed to the outskirts.
Five. Poor people
from other Brazilian regions
came to the "land of opportunity"
to try their luck,
having the outskirts as their home, too.
Cosmopolitan and multicultural,
that is how the outskirts
of São Paulo were born.
Six. In the 1970s,
the hip-hop culture
is named in the United States,
but impacts the entire planet.
Through rap music,
break dance and graffiti,
young people from the city's outskirts
found a means for expression.
Their meeting point
is an area easily reached
by all of them, the historic city center,
more specifically
the São Bento subway station.
Seven. Their music spreads
across other outskirts in Brazil,
turning into a solid movement
that creates awareness
on racism and social inequality.
As dismissive
as the recording industry was,
it sold millions of copies
and became the first far-reaching means
of connecting the working class
to Black Brazilian intellectuals.
It's been linked to every working-class
accomplishment since then.
White people cannot understand
the flamboyant outfits,
with the caps and bright colors.
Eight. Although rap music
might be widely understood
as a platform for complaint,
it's been much more than that.
Everybody wants to groove to that sound.
In search of its essence,
rap music enters the amazing universe
of the Brazilian popular music,
especially samba.
The encounter is so powerful
that both worlds are forever changed.
The message couldn't be any clearer.
We can go even further.
Nine. Despite structural racism in Brazil,
the new culture emancipates
youngsters across the country.
Economically, too.
The digital environment
allows independent artists
to accomplish not only rare feats,
but unprecedented ones, too.
-The street…
-Is us!
The street is us!
Ten. Getting ahead in life
is much more than making money.
Fame is not the only thing
these kids aspire to.
They want to rewrite
our country's history.
One more thing.
You see, my mom calls me Leandro.
But everyone else knows me as Emicida.
I'm one of those kids.
CITY OPERA HOUSE
NOVEMBER, 2019
We're about to go on stage.
Fifty years from now,
we're gonna look back and think
that this night changed the lives of many.
This is our way of saying
to people like us that they belong here.
FOR RACIAL EQUALITY
We absolutely have to be present
in this space, this environment,
and all other spaces we've been kept from
throughout the history
of our country. You know?
The next generation of judges, doctors,
lawyers, and also the next presidents,
are sitting in there right now.
Let's restore their right to dream.
Okay?
Thank you so much.
This is what AmarElo is all about, y'all.
We're in this together. Peace!
Today I can consider myself a lucky guy
Besides being very young
I feel safe and strong
And I've been thinking
God is Brazilian
And walks next to me
I can't keep suffering
For what has happened
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Last year I died
Not this year, though
My dreams fly higher than drones
What fuels me? Hunger
To wreck everything like a cyclone
Tomorrow cannot be the same old yesterday
With a new name
The vulture preys on us eager for a fall
When sorrow is gone
I'm so much more than this shit
Body, mind, soul, Ayurveda-style
Like water, I can flow through rocks
I'm the playwright in this plot
Every drama is hidden
Urging you to step out of mud
While flaming the world
No melodrama, I'm after money
God's plan in sight
Capulanas, katanas, nirvana is the goal
Though it's a rigged game for us
Losing is not an option, right?
From where the wind takes a turn
Real talk sprouts
Ain't gonna leave it alone
Nor let it slide
For we're about to baffle
Those who laughed when we were down
My grandma's
never set foot there. She's 80.
Wednesday is gonna be her first time.
Will you play a song for me?
-Is the camera really on?
-Yep!
That's what's dope about this.
My mom, my aunts,
my daughters, both of them,
are gonna be there
and see it in a different light, you know?
Many of the boys and girls
who will be there on Wednesday,
they've never been
to the City Opera House.
That's why the venue matters,
having a majestic venue matters.
This is big and it's here, you know?
It's not something new.
We need to mark this occasion.
I want them to leave thinking,
"I won't let this get lost
in the digital world."
He's made the sun rise!
He's back!
The lunch lady gets off
The bus leaves
Miss Maria is far gone
Only then the sun rises
Spiders weaving their webs
During the night, in darkness
Breathless lovers in the grasp of Morpheus
And the sun, it only comes out later
The sun only comes out later
It's the king star, I know
Still, it only comes out later
The sun only comes out later…
I'll give you a literal example
of the natural order of things.
The sun rising on Sezefredo Avenue
and setting on Fontalis.
You feel me?
Because Sezefredo Avenue stands higher.
Watching from the hill,
you can no longer see
the shape of the houses at night.
There are only the stars in the sky
and the lights coming
from every house in the hood.
The lunch lady gets off
The bus leaves
SINGER
Miss Maria is far gone
Only then the sun rises
Spiders weaving their webs
During the night, in darkness
Breathless lovers in the grasp of Morpheus
And the sun, it only comes out later
The sun only comes out later
It's the king star, I know
Still, it only comes out later
The sun only comes out later…
MUSICIAN
Is it going to be a single?
I don't really believe in singles.
You do what you gotta do. You're right.
The better the song,
the less it plays on the radio.
Word.
I'm gonna do what I feel like doing,
then it's up to them.
I like to…
Zeca! Zeca!
Hurry! Come on!
FILM - BLACK ORPHEUS
-Here, play for the sun to rise!
-I can't!
-Of course you can!
-I shouldn't!
None of that! Just play!
He's made the sun rise!
Wow! Just like in the movie.
And now you are the movie.
The album is structured around a dream.
You know what I mean?
This guy goes to sleep,
and in his dream,
everybody is helping each other.
It's a beautiful dream
where people understand
and support each other.
That's his dream.
"Principia" is that dream…
Literally.
That's why the beginning
feels ethereal, wavering, even.
OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY OF THE BLACK PEOPLE
It starts out smooth.
You can hear those old ladies
from old-school neighborhoods, singing…
It takes you back
to your childhood, you know.
Like a bedtime song by your mom.
He's dreaming of this time
when he felt cared for and understood.
He starts connecting
with plants like rue, and with religion,
things that will help him have faith
when the world is telling him not to.
All we got is each other,
and we gotta fight for it.
All we have is
All, all, all
All we've got is each other
All, all, all
All we have is…
You feel me? That's what I'm saying.
We only have each other.
If we let go of each other, we're screwed.
All, all, all
All we've got is each other
All, all, all
All we have is…
Can't remember the other chorus!
MARISSOL MWABA, INDY NAÍSE
AND NINA OLIVEIRA - SINGERS
All, all, all
All we've got is each other
All, all, all
All we have is…
The Catholic church bell would
wake us up very early…
SINGER
…which is a paradigm shift,
since the Catholic church
condemned Candomblé.
It was a beautiful message
about how we're here to live in unison,
not disconnected from one another.
Nature has its own rules,
but morality is a human thing.
And humans use morality
to drive each other away.
I meant
for the whole album to have this vibe
of making us feel like one again.
To bring us together
based on what we have in common.
So that's the first track.
Towards the end, a pastor friend
says these beautiful things.
Really? That's awesome.
What does it mean when Jesus says
we should renounce ourselves?
He's actually
talking about our inflated egos,
the egos produced by our society.
Empowered by false pretenses
and deeply lonely.
Hello, my friend.
-You good?
-Yeah.
It's as old as eternity
Love is spirituality
Latent, potent, black, poetry
A shoulder in the quiet night
A cozy lap to start the day
Son, hug your mother…
I started working
on this song four years ago.
I'm tearing up a bit, bro.
Damn.
Yeah, it could be
If it weren't for love…
The first time I was in Africa…
my friend Chapa took me
to the
National Museum of Slavery in Angola.
There, I found a basin…
and the text on the wall read,
"This was the basin
used to christen Black people."
"And because
of a twisted Christian notion,
they were led to believe
they had no soul."
I looked over at my pal
and realized what my mission was.
Every time I grab my pen or mic,
I wanna be able to return
to each of my brothers and sisters
the soul they thought they didn't have.
With the sweet scent of rue
I think about Buddha, calm
I'm very tense, so I seek help
Sometimes I think about a psalm
Clear my vision of all illusions
Like an ophthalmologist
And I, the one who sees beyond
For myself, for you, ubuntu, a balm
If I need to put my faith in something
Gonna rely on what I can see
Summarizing this world, small, little
Mundane, dirty, hell, and poison
Cold, winter, night drizzle
Repression and regression
Being calm is a luxury
Life stresses us out
I try to read souls beyond pressure
Nations falling into those Barabbas hands
Where the miracle lies
This only proves the urgency of books
In the face of the wreck caused by a saber
In deep greedy debts
Ignoring the meaning of blessings
In a time
Where the only thing running free
Is our tears
I came back to kill, like a heart attack
After a resurrection, like a childbirth
I rebuild myself, fed up, I put away
Just an ordinary man, rooted in reality
If I receive a blessing, I share
I break into cells, living rooms, bedrooms
I traveled the world, and now I'm sure
That everyone is one
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
ACT 1
PLANTING
Nothing can teach you
about time like soil can, bro.
And this is no hippie talk.
When you plant a seed,
you gotta water it
and wait around 15 days for it to sprout.
Once it's there,
you gotta take care of it, you know?
You gotta watch out for pests
and venomous animals.
It's crazy how you find yourself
having to deal with spiders and snakes,
and how you come to understand
that they won't
bite you out of spite, you know?
The last thing they wanna do is bite you.
Spiders won't bite you
because they feel like doing it.
They do it because they get scared.
And fear will push you to do things
you don't wanna do, you know?
While I worked on my album,
having a garden taught me so much.
I was being interviewed before the concert
and the dude asked me,
"Why the City Opera House?"
"Because there's not a single beam,
there's no bridge,
there's no street,
there's no important building
that hasn't been touched
by the hands of Black workers."
When I said that, I was thinking
of manpower, bricks, cement and so on.
But this is only half of the story.
To get the full story, we gotta
rewind the tape and time travel, really.
And the best time machine for this journey
is an old samba-enredo
by Geraldo Filme about Tebas.
While doing some research on him,
you quickly realize why he got his name
from Thebes, a hood in Egypt
from back in the days of the Pharaohs.
Not only did Tebas
lay bricks with his Black hands,
but he was also a crucial part
in the stylistic re-do
that São Paulo went through
in the 18th century.
He built the steeples for the Carmo Church
and the old São Paulo See Cathedral.
TEBAS, FIRST BLACK MAN
TURNED ARCHITECT IN SAO PAULO
He built the Fountain of Mercy.
All those panels at the See Square
are credited to the artists.
SINGER AND COMPOSER
Neither the See Cathedral
nor the Fountain of Mercy
are credited to Tebas.
But we know he made them.
He's also the artist behind
the foundation stone
in St. Benedict's Monastery.
The area around the monastery
served as a foundation stone
for our hip-hop, and that's crazy.
Whether building or designing,
the people who have always fought
so that art and beauty could
bring life to our city's cold concrete
were ourselves.
We, we, we
We, we, we…
We're free here
Sweet-ass sneakers
Some sweet-ass bling
The whole thing flashes
It bothers their asses
Black people gathered around
Are the GPS of what's dope
If the ghetto's awake
The rest can go to hell
Sweet-ass sneakers
Some sweet-ass bling
The whole thing flashes
It bothers their asses
Black people gathered around
Are the GPS of what's dope
If we're here at the City Opera
The rest can go to hell!
Love
Free, free, free
Love, free
We're free here
I like to rewind the history tape
100 years back
and think about how the year of 1922
turned shit upside down.
As we celebrated
the centennial of our independence,
people from different origins
born in Brazil
reclaimed their right to dream
and to transform this place,
ignoring the ghost of colonialism
that still haunted it.
For example,
a cultural movement of African roots,
a modern and original one,
is the precursor
of what we now call brasilidade.
It went straight from the favelas
to the heart of the artistic avant-garde.
I'm talking about samba,
which was widely
persecuted here in Brazil.
Despite the strong disapproval
showed by the local bourgeoisie,
Pixinguinha and Donga introduced it
to the modern city of Paris.
And that's how Oito Batutas made history.
We're the Batutas, Batutas, Batutas
CONDUCTOR
We come from Brazil
All is well here
We're the Batutas, Batutas, Batutas
We get everyone to dance samba
You know what's crazy?
The same year samba conquered the world,
a seismic shift occurred in our art
and its epicenter was precisely the stage
where I'm about to perform.
The Modern Art Week of 1922.
The notion of art around here
was forever shaken.
Sambistas, who are undeniably
modern, and modernists,
who, without realizing it,
wanted more samba in our art,
both broke with traditional ideas
in a way that
still echoes today and beyond.
Although they were mainly an elite
group of white men, but not limited to it,
modernists reclaimed Brazilian art
with Brazilian colors,
and the Modern Art Week
was only the beginning.
Green and yellow were not forgotten,
immortalized in the painting
The Yellow Man,
by Anita Malfatti.
As for the sambistas,
mostly poor men and women,
almost all of them Black or biracial,
they stood for what Machado de Assis
would have called "the real Brazil."
Both movements
took a leap of faith with their art.
They were saying, "We're all we got."
I leave my tambourine to my friends
They asked me
if I'd ever met Mário de Andrade.
I had the honor…
SINGER
…to have been his friend…
and to have him quote me.
You'd pay no attention to mine
To me, you no longer have value
Deixa Falar was the name
given by Ismael Silva,
Bide, Brancura and others
to what would become
the basis for samba schools.
Why the name "samba school"?
In this neighborhood,
we had a normal school…
where you could become a teacher.
So the neighborhood Estácio de Sá
spread the word
that the neighborhood itself
was a samba school.
Estácio de Sá was a samba school.
Bide created the surdo drum,
and making it the heart of the percussion,
as well as the tamborim.
SINGER
We're not sure who invented the tamborim,
Bide or Ismael Silva.
But old-school folks say it was Bide.
He built a surdo drum
using a butter can…
and paper from a cement bag.
He took the cement bag,
then wet the paper,
put it over that 20-kilo butter can,
fastened it with wire,
finished wetting the paper,
warmed it up a bit with fire,
just to improve the sound.
Then he went down to Estácio Square.
Bide went down there with Deixa Falar,
and he's credited
with inventing the surdo.
They called on me
Here I am, what's going on?
They called on me
Here I am, what's going on?
I came from there
When I was little
I came from there
When I was little…
SINGER
-I'm all about samba, bro!
-You can say that again!
-You can say that again.
-Let's try it one more time.
We only trust samba folks.
-Only samba people can be trusted.
-And is the only one trustable.
Samba is Brazil at its finest.
And there's no way our country can win
if it moves away from samba.
I am samba…
Our band, Os Sete Modernos do Samba,
performed in Mexico.
It was also known in Spanish
as Los Siete Diablos de la Batucada.
I am samba…
I'm a Rio de Janeiro native…
I'm the one who spreads joy
To millions of hearts…
From Jovelina Pérola Negra
to Jackson do Pandeiro,
including Wilson Batista,
and last but not least Jair Rodrigues,
besides many other samba greats,
Hip-hop was already there
long before we existed.
This bittersweet fruit we call rap
grew from a big tree.
If you examine its roots closely,
you'll find samba there.
I am samba…
Samba really is out of this world.
It can reach places
no other living being's been to.
For example, in 1997,
the samba song
"Ô Coisinha Tão Bonitinha do Pai"
was chosen to wake up the Sojourner Rover
in its space mission.
Before any other cosmonaut,
our samba touched Martian ground.
Aren't you Daddy's little cutie pie?
Aren't you Daddy's little cutie pie?
Sambistas have always been
avant-garde, true trailblazers.
With all their weight,
they could still bring on a light touch.
An example
is Johnny Alf's piano and voice.
You know very well
I'm a good fellow…
Dubbed "GeniAlf" by Tom Jobim
and regarded as the true father
of bossa nova by many,
he ended up an influence on musicians
such as Elis Regina and Wilson Simonal.
Pinky.
Now I'm thinking of it as a movie, Nave.
The way the album is put together,
-it tells a story.
-Right.
It just hit me that
"Principia" is about the brother's dream.
-You know?
-Damn…
Damien's song is, when he wakes up,
"A Ordem Natural das Coisas,"
which is like a "good morning."
He sets out early morning for work.
Suddenly,
as this brother's leaving for work,
his wife runs to the gate to say goodbye.
"Pequenas Alegrias da Vida Adulta."
For real, bro?
We have to be careful
While on the trapeze
Even if modern times' desperation
Weighs on us
If a "like" is a call-out to hate, man
In this case
The message of common sense is simple
COMPOSER
If we stick together, we'll be fine.
We'll outnumber them.
We just have to stick together.
"Pequenas Alegrias da Vida Adulta"
has a little secret to it,
and my man Oga Mendonça
was the first person to uncover it.
He grinned and said,
"This song could use a sauce
that rap doesn't
enjoy enough, samba-rock."
The birthplace of this type of samba
is a tiny piece of Africa
in the wacky-ass city of São Paulo,
better known as North Side.
Am I being provincial? Hell no.
This was where the first recording
bringing samba and rap together
was officially born,
with The Brothers Rap.
Da Cor do Pagode made the introductions
Pumping up this rap of the next generation
'Cause I wrote this rap
That's kind of weird
With a beating tambourine
And a cavaquinho's chords
Throughout the years,
other artists tried the sauce,
like Athaliba e a Firma, Rappin Hood,
Marcelo D2, Quinto Andar,
and Racionais MC's, among others.
They gradually thinned out
the Americanness in it,
proving that it's impossible
to appreciate the Brazilian melting pot
without being influenced
by the local spirit.
Ambitious as I am,
I say we climb up a step.
As this whole movement matures,
we're asked to move past
the blend of styles
to make way for a new genre,
a new artistic language,
something I've been calling
"neo-samba" in AmarElo.
"Alvorada no Morro" by Cartola,
"Sonho Meu" by Dona Ivone Lara,
"Bandeira da Fé"
by Luiz Carlos da Vila,
or even the famous "Trem das Onze"
by our beloved Adoniran Barbosa,
paint spot-on pictures,
working as reliable historical documents,
as hard-hitting as those songs
by rappers to come,
but in a different context.
That's why
there will always be partideiros.
And the verses, even offhand ones,
shall reflect the truth
in each individual's soul.
You know what I find
so beautiful about sambistas?
They never forget
the little joys of adulthood.
I will…
Face everything for her
Face all battles
For the little joys of adulthood
I will…
I will…
Be on the front like a warrior
Even if I have to take on
The entire planet
Or run a marathon and win
Shout out, "This is for you, babe!"
I will…
Face everything for her
Face all battles
For the little joys of adulthood
I will…
I will…
Be on the front like a warrior
Even if I have to take on
The entire planet
Or run a marathon and win
Shout out, "This is for you, babe!"
-I like that.
-Me, too.
-Well…
-Beautiful!
-Beautiful!
-That was a no-brainer.
-Good one.
-It's got a lot of swing to it.
-Cool, right?
-Damn good.
-Really good.
-Bro, press Ctrl+S
and save this shit, for God's sake.
Can you imagine all of it gone?
-Shall we?
-One, two, three…
Go!
Play the rattle like you mean it.
Got it?
PESSIMISM PROHIBITED
Sometimes I feel like a photographer,
but not an ordinary one.
I feel like the brother
from Manoel de Barros's poem,
who describes himself
as a "photographer of the invisible."
To me, writing is like
being blessed with time-traveling.
I can be right here, right now,
but I can also visit
the past and the future
and share its feelings.
I learned that from watching
my mom work the soil.
After I read about what it meant
for Mandela to have a garden in prison,
I was moved by the realization
that so many wonderful thoughts
could be enclosed in a seed.
It was my mom Jacira and Nelson Mandela
who taught me to respect time
and connect to the cycle of life.
This intensive exercise I did for years
made me feel whole as a human being.
Nothing in the world
Could be more beautiful
From the bottom of my heart
From the deepest corner of my core
To this wrecked world
My writing is like a love letter
Kids, laughs, windows
Flirts, braids, yellow cotton
The red shades of roof tiles
The crackle of the spark
Makes you feel inside a painting
Hope paints itself in watercolor
The white noise of the radio
TVs and soap operas
A trail of bees
The murmur of sheep
In your ears
And life goes along
On the paving stone
Intrepid worker
Impetuous driver
Where it all starts
The wind calms the speed down
For every eclectic new sound
Record players spin the classics
Beautiful absurd
Suffocating metropolis
They are necropolises
That never touch one another
So they collide with someone's dream
Sunday killers
Pausing every beautiful thing
Everyone who feels the same
Is also my friend
This one comes
From the bottom of my heart
From the deepest corner of my core
To this wrecked world
My writing is like a love letter
From the bottom of my heart
This one comes
From the bottom of my heart
From the deepest corner of my core
To this wrecked world…
I've always hung out
at second-hand record stores.
I'd look for records for hours on end
with the little money I had.
There was no room for mistakes.
I'd read the spec sheets
on the back of the records
until I came up with a simple
but effective methodology.
If a certain name was on it,
I could buy the record without a worry.
His name became a seal of approval.
He was my guardian angel of good music.
So I started collecting records
by this great musician.
One day, I went to see my bros
play at the Brasilintime festival,
where rap DJs
and big-time drummers played together.
Only the bad boys.
Ladies and gentlemen…
it is my pleasure, my honor…
and a dream of mine to introduce to you
one of the best drummers
in Brazilian history.
Wilson das Neves!
DRUMMER AND COMPOSER
I was watching from up top
and couldn't look at anyone else.
All I could see
was that baldy bringing it home,
looking sharp as he played his drums.
Years later, I was invited to a project
where I could choose
any artist to record with.
I had my mind made up.
I immediately remembered
the name on the record covers.
But what could I possibly offer someone
who had already recorded
with the titans of Brazilian music?
I had to cheat.
I wrote a song made entirely of phrases
from songs he had
recorded in the past. A tribute, truly.
That's how I came face to face
with the monster in the flesh.
And we never parted ways.
Lucky me!
So thank you, Mr. Wilson
For your sacred music
Leninha wanted me to listen to the song.
I told her I only listen
to the songs when I record them!
SINGER
I'll forget by the next day.
-Can't remember what I ate yesterday.
-Remember Wilson das Neves?
My buddy Wilson, sure.
We'd been traveling around
and working together--
-He wrote the melody?
-Yeah.
-Holy fuck!
-We used a sample of his.
-I think I should listen to it, then.
-Don't worry.
I should've listened to it.
For a long time we fought
to prevail as a relevant art form.
We've built that over the past years,
like the last ten years, feel me?
Now for the last decade,
even a little before that,
we've had nothing to prove to anyone.
But surely, our art
is in constant evolution.
We've been able to develop
a form of expression,
defining the contours
of Brazilian rap music.
When you have a friend
You have everything
When you have a friend
You have everything
I pity the fool who messes with us.
I've been tripping over this idea
for the last five years.
Even before it got this bad,
I realized we needed
something to hold on to.
There are certain values
that needed settling,
like the importance of believing.
This one's gonna fuck me up!
It's like rappelling
If you're out of rope, you die
AVUÁ FASHION SHOW
Chilling
Even with darkness around the corner
Damn, I almost forgot!
I design clothes every now and then,
and we put on fashion shows.
It was late night and I was finishing
some pieces for our next show at SPFW.
The last edition had been amazing.
We paid a great tribute to samba.
On the most important runway in Brazil,
we featured my mom, Mrs. Jacira,
Fabiana Cozza and Wilson das Neves.
Ladies and gentlemen, Wilson das Neves.
Samba in the flesh!
What a wonderful feeling it is
to present people you admire with flowers
while they can still smell them.
A call came in that night,
while I was working.
My wife brought me the phone
wearing a serious look on her face.
I answered the call, and my friend,
Margarete, gave me the sad news.
Our beloved master, Wilson das Neves,
was no longer among us.
I cried for days.
But my grief was always cut short
by some funny memory.
I'd remember him saying,
"Only scoundrels die, son!"
And Wilson
couldn't be more right, as usual.
A few months later, I was able
to pull out a cassette he'd sent me
and listen to all of it without crying.
I listened to all his tunes non-stop.
Thiago Jamelão and I headed to the studio
and we tried to harmonize them.
Once in the studio,
we had a dreamlike moment
testing chords for a long time,
and when I woke up,
we had a perfectly round cycle.
His music filled the studio
and I could feel his presence
with us, as strong as ever.
I smiled as I thought,
"When you have a friend,
you have everything."
When you have a friend
You have everything
If the well devours you
He rescues you from the bottom
The feeling is so amazing
That all the stress seems easy to overcome
It's a safe place
For when things get too insane
When you have a friend
You have everything
When bullets are flying, brother
They turn into a shield
Ready for anything, for real, anytime
A shoulder to cry on after the Armageddon
Being brothers like Gil and Caetano
Is a rare thing in this crazy world
I've found so many hardships
But I made it back
And I'm gonna keep on going
It's like the Baroque Rococo style
Of which Aleijadinho was king
The gift of gods
So many laughs
Like in catechism
I've asked Oxalá and Our Lady
Hey, what floor do you live on now?
Gonna pay you a visit someday
These are my favorite verses.
So, Mr. Wilson passed away.
So I ask,
"What floor do you live on now?"
My favorite parts until now…
Going through all that
gets me thinking of Oswald de Andrade,
another modernist.
In his Anthropophagic Manifesto,
he said exactly that.
"Other people are all that interests me."
After all, there's no meaning
in our existence without others.
Samba knew that from the start.
ACT 2
WATERING
Jaime de Almeida
was a fullback for Flamengo.
Five-time champion with his team.
During one of his practices,
Jaime's family got a proposition
from one of the club's managers.
He wanted one of Jaime's little sisters
to work as a maid in his house.
Years later, during an interview,
this is how the little girl
would tell the story.
"We had just lost our father."
"I babysat for rich women for a while."
"Black children start working
early on, you know."
"This manager from Flamengo
offered me a job at his house
working as his little maid,
the type who becomes the house pet."
"I put up such a fight
that they had to bring me back."
The little girl grew up.
She majored in Philosophy and History,
becoming a major thinker
and a reference
for extraordinary individuals of our time
through her beautiful and powerful ideas.
Her name is Lélia Gonzalez.
The Egyptians were a Black people.
Thus, the Egyptian civilization,
the first civilization ever
to exist on planet Earth,
passed on all the knowledge
to the so-called Western civilization.
PHILOSOPHER AND ACTIVIST
To Lélia Gonzalez,
the key contributions made by Black people
created Brazilian culture itself.
As a result, we don't
speak Portuguese around here.
We speak Pretoguese.
Many people believe that Lélia
is a pioneer in intersectionality studies,
which is how social identities overlap
and relate
to structural oppression, sort of.
RACE, SEX AND CLASS OPPRESSION
A theory that has only recently
become popular in our society.
Let us fight, comrades!
So that exploitation and oppression
in our country may come to an end.
NATIONAL BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS DAY
Brazil is not a racial democracy.
Before it could ever become
an actual racial democracy,
our country needs
to effectively become a democracy.
Lélia explained that oppression
against Black women is even harder…
AGAINST BLACK WOMAN'S EXPLOITATION
…as it's underlined by gender,
class and race discrimination.
They're discriminated against
three times more.
In its almost 450-year history,
the city of São Paulo
had only seen two Black women
elected to the State Assembly.
The first woman to ever be elected
was Theodosina Ribeiro,
and the second is a sambista…
SINGER AND COMPOSER
…who also performed
in the City Opera House in 1975,
the godmother of rap, Leci Brandão.
A new leader is rising
On Pau da Bandeira Hill
A new leader is rising
On Pau da Bandeira Hill
On Pau da Bandeira Hill
On Pau da Bandeira Hill
Let me hear you clap!
As I see it, this achievement
by Leci was as daring…
LECI BRANDÃO:
WOMAN, BLACK AND HOMOSSEXUAL
…as when she became the first woman
to be a composer for Mangueira.
The initial reaction
was pretty predictable.
A girl wanted to join
the very traditional Mangueira composers.
No woman had ever knocked on their door.
When I did, I got my message across
and managed to convince
those distinguished gentlemen.
Candeia founded the Recreational Club
Black People's Art Quilombo Samba School.
It wasn't just a samba school.
As the name implies,
Quilombo stood up for freedom
during the years of lead,
both in verse, such as the samba-enredo
"Ao Povo em Forma de Arte,"
and in prose, by giving rise
to organic intellectuals
such as the masters Elton Medeiros,
Paulinho da Viola,
Wilson Moreira and Nei Lopes.
It worked
as a true school of popular culture.
Professor Lélia Gonzalez
was also a master at this school.
Lélia offered Candeia a seat in her jalopy
to join her on
an important trip to São Paulo.
Candeia was already in poor health,
so he wasn't able to come along.
Her jalopy let her down, too,
and broke down on the way there.
But that didn't stop
Lélia Gonzalez from coming here
to represent Candeia and Quilombo.
Her destination
was the front steps of this building.
She attended
the first public demonstration
of an organization
that would transform our history.
It was the founding
of the Unified Black Movement.
FOR RACIAL EQUALITY
But there's more to be said here.
Forty years before the gathering
in front of
the City Opera House, in 1938,
a celebration of the 50th anniversary
of the end of slavery
organized by remaining members
of the Brazilian Black Front
was also scheduled to happen
in the vicinities of the Opera House.
Unfortunately, the event never took place,
in spite of every effort made
by the head of the Municipal Department
of Culture at the time, Mário de Andrade,
our favorite modernist.
The fact that we're here in this place
that was denied to our ancestors,
is thanks to the sweat and blood
of people along the way.
At the height of military dictatorship,
there were people
who were brave enough to rise up
against the Brazilian state
and its murderous racism
and say that this country
needed to acknowledge
the leading role of people of color
in Brazilian society.
Some of the people here today
were also at the front steps
of the Opera House in 1978,
fighting racism.
This is a magical time for me
because you are here.
Because our presence here
is a historical achievement.
I'd like to ask them to stand up now…
Our brothers and sisters from MMU.
On these front steps,
from here in São Paulo to all of Brazil,
the Unified Black Movement
will continue its fight.
Thank you so much.
Without your dreams,
without your struggle,
none of this would be possible.
I dedicate to them this next song.
My Luanda skin
Aruanda lobby
Like T'challa, Wakanda
Black mamba poison
A bunch of bandoliers
What are the rules here?
Tonight ya gonna see more blood
Than in Hotel Rwanda
This era started wild
Panther on the loose
Shows its claws
I brought the night as camouflage
I'm an avenger, avenging the pain
Of those smashed by the gears
While you are coup, I am Sabotage
Mystic
A thousand orishas in a pantheon
Brave, I kill settlers
Bringing them to an end, like a Tsavo lion
I go deep, indeed
Never hold me back, it's worse
Monster, skull, Vibranium
I chop you up in 12 pieces
A flash like Usain Bolt
10,000 volts
Applause from my ancestors, listen
Ta-Nehisi with no coaches
Memory is long, temper is short
In this approach and so
Rumor has it that
I've come back like an AK
With determination
Sensibility and chill, bro
If things get rough
We better get back
-Like a Black panther
-I am back
Like a Black panther
With determination
Sensibility and chill, bro
If things get rough
We better get back
-Like a Black panther
-I am back
Like a Black panther
Now on my roof, she's Dora Milaje
Sprouts on the base
Very Nicki Minaj-y, it's a mirage
Mirage Jet, flying high
Mr. Spock is the bomb
Green Lantern, I am very Static
For a new Red Sea
A new crossing
For people to see kings in the mirror
My pen creates
Wu-Tang Street
Superman, more technology
Symbolic like a guide
In the chilly nights
I'll crush boys that mock Black culture
A Kasparov toasting mate
And writing checks
I stand against the slave masters
An indie on my own track
I'm sharp, respect my timing
Don't be such a brat
If you come like Stan Lee, like Spike Lee
Kinda Bruce Lee
I am taking Brazil
In a Mauricio Kubrusly kinda way
Like Solange in A Seat at the Table
Black or dark-skinned?
When in doubt, call her princess
Self-knowledge, self-help
Flow of time
Like samples, like Buddha
Love that could fill a thousand books
Like Gabo or Neruda
Whoever married the storm
Doesn't care about umbrellas, got it?
With determination
Sensibility and chill, bro
If things get rough
We better get back
This night will be forever in our hearts.
For real, man.
To remind us that freedom isn't permanent.
We have to always fight for it.
And we'll keep on fighting for it.
Like a tractor. Out of our way!
With determination
Sensibility and chill, bro
If things get rough
We better get back
-Like a Black panther
-I am back
Like a Black panther
The power of a symbol.
What did them guys and girls do?
They didn't know what could happen.
It was a dictatorship
in a country that kills Black people
without batting an eye.
The next day, they could all be
in jail, or worse, dead.
But they cut through their fear
and stood on those front steps
to create a powerful symbol of struggle
and unity against racism.
NOVEMBER 20TH
NATIONAL BLACK AWARENESS DAY
To the military, anti-racism
was directly connected to communism.
Simonal himself ended up in DOPS
for his tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.
With your permission,
I'd like to sing this song.
I dedicated it to my son…
hoping that, in the future,
he's never faced
with the problems I faced…
and sometimes still do,
despite being who I am.
Yes, I have dark skin
My brother of the same color
What I ask of you
Is that you fight
Yes, that you fight a little longer
The battle is almost over
For every Black person who is gone
Another Black person will come
To fight
And shed blood, or maybe not
A song can go a long way, my brother
Listen to my voice, oh, yeah
Fight for us
The Blackest struggle…
But a lot of things came out of that.
It annoys me
because it's nothing new, you know?
From the moment
that Africans started being abducted
and dumped in a land they didn't know,
they needed to rethink
their model of collective organization.
For example, the religious
brotherhoods of the 17th century.
Black people get organized,
raise a little money,
buy each other's freedoms,
and that's how they did it.
Bit by bit, they built
a community for mutual welfare.
Aristocrata was a club
built by Black people.
But it didn't discriminate
like white people clubs did,
which didn't allow
Black people in the pool.
Anyone in the premises
could have a good time.
So you take the religious brotherhoods,
take what
the Aristocrata people were doing,
and where does that lead us?
To our parents' generation.
-Ever been here before?
-First time.
Damn, shit's getting real.
-First time.
-You've never been in here?
Never, not even to take pictures.
SINGER
-Damn. Not even as a tourist?
-No.
Yeah…
From now on, it's ours.
I'm a dark-skinned Brazilian kid,
you feel me?
And we really need
to keep harping on about it.
So that each generation hits harder.
When a Black person is called a monkey,
people look at them to see their reaction,
but we should ask the white person,
"It's been 500 years
and you're still doing that?"
I'm not a target for racists.
I'm their nightmare.
I've cheated death
Now I know where I'm heading
This wasn't luck
I am where I've always wanted to be
I trust no one
-Let alone some Po-po
-Fuck the police
Money in my pocket
My pulse frozen
Right before the show
Well before the blow
I was with my bros
Before all the hype and envy
I've cheated death
Now I know where I'm heading
-This wasn't luck
-Okay.
Endless grudges
I made faith reverberate
Like a cathedral
Sacred like the Torah
Deadly like a cobra
A voracious shark for Oriental knowledge
My chant made the Atlantic
Into a quantum particle
-Find me in every storm
-Ancestral voices
Courage cannot be measured
In times of peace
-Jesus 2.0 style
-Damn, Jesus 2.0
I walk on the water of forgetful grief
Away from the rules imposed upon me
I was nothing
Today I'm infinite
Feeling like the invention of zero
Not conceited, just convincing
See what rhyme's done to streets
From freebase to beats in folders
The world can't stand us
My caste flies at the speed of light
Ping-pong
Cut the crap, enough
My rasta mind celebrates
Yin and yang rebalanced
Like a filmmaker, I look for the gap
I outshine the party
Aim for the head
Throw a Kim Jong master
I decide whether you're dealing
With the King
Or the Kong
Like Aztec gold, I came from a Barren Life
Everything was like Sahara, Sahara
Abundance is the goal
Like Mecca
I am Thomas Sankara
I confront and rebuild
Like a newborn, wrapped in pussy
A mix of Vivara, Guevara, Lebara
My pen fucks with "white history"
And the world shouts
Don't stop, don't stop
Enough of this caravel fetish
Real talk, just stop
Put it in perspective
I go on, smash it
And they call it a concept
Somehow I bring the hand of Shiva
This is God speaking through my bros
It's me aiming and killing the Klu
Only those who cheated death up North
Know it wasn't luck, but the hand of Eshu
I put on a suit
Just to mess with them
Subordinate or subversion?
Everything was Hell
I turned it around
The goal is eternity, infinity
ACT III
HARVESTING
You know when our moms
or old ladies from the hood,
when old Black ladies would tell us,
"You're Black, so you gotta do
ten times better to be seen as an equal"?
I think this is still true,
and we have to study ten times harder,
because the playing field is a minefield
where your life is worthless.
The grief over your dead body
is shorter, you know?
If you ever slip up,
which can happen to anyone,
people will be less forgiving
if you're a Black body.
BRAZIL
When influential artists,
inspired by French Futurism,
inaugurated Modernism
in our neck of the woods,
Black intellectuals in France
made a massive contribution
to the history of humankind
with a five-letter word
which is sometimes used as an insult
and sometimes to show affection.
But its main purpose is to express pride.
That word is "Negro."
And all the ideology
that it captures in its variations.
Négritude, or "Blackness."
And you can write it in bold.
Over here, the need
to turn tragedies into power
was equally urgent.
One of the best examples of this dream
was Abdias do Nascimento.
Especially when he founded
the Black People's Experimental Theater,
which opened up new opportunities
to strengthen Afro-Brazilian
culture and values.
Once, when he was abroad,
Abdias attended a play
where the main character
was played by a white man in blackface.
Right then and there, he decided to create
a theater company for Black people,
to fight racism.
I remember
the number of people
who came to advise…
ACTOR AND ACTIVIST
…that I not do this.
That I not use "Black" in the name,
because that would cause the initiative
to fail before it came to fruition,
before it even began.
In that regard,
I was…
absolutely adamant…
that it had to be Black Theater.
Black People's Theater.
Actor, fine artist,
poet, writer, playwright,
professor and politician.
He even produced plays
inside the Carandiru prison
with a cast of inmates.
Abdias do Nascimento was all those things
without ever giving up on his activism
for the human rights of Black people.
In his art, he paid tribute
to people such as Luís Gama,
an abolitionist poet and attorney.
A true Futurist,
who could be considered
a forerunner of Négritude,
many decades before
that word made it to our shores.
Just like Candeia
and Lélia Gonzalez did with Quilombo,
Abdias used art to exalt our culture,
to push it beyond simple entertainment
and turn it
into a very powerful political tool.
The Black People's Experimental Theater
also introduced to the world…
the high-caliber star
that was Ruth de Souza.
When I think about Ruth de Souza…
PROFESSOR AND ACTIVIST
…I realize that if her talents
had been put to full use
as the great actress she is,
she would easily have become
the greatest actress
in Brazilian TV, for example,
as now she's mostly on TV,
but she's also done movies.
Ruth de Souza was
the Black first lady of Brazilian theater,
the first Black actress to play
a lead role in Brazilian television,
the Black first lady of cinema.
She got a scholarship
and studied in Howard and Harvard.
She was the first Brazilian actress
to be nominated for a Golden Lion
at the Venice International Film Festival.
And if that's not avant-garde,
I don't know what is.
We didn't have any money to produce
The Emperor Jones, my first play.
RUTH DE SOUZA
ACTRESS
We didn't have the money
and we didn't have a venue.
And I said, without a second thought,
"Let's request the Opera House."
I thought it was so beautiful.
We went to see the mayor
and he gave us May 25…
May 8, actually. The end of the war.
The day the war ended.
It was very moving to me.
There were fireworks outside,
and I'd say
they were celebrating my first role.
With the faith of the ones
Watching the scene
From the players' bench
The goal we needed the most…
SINGER
Ball on the post
"Ismália" was originally intended
to team up two giants of our theater,
Ruth de Souza
and Fernanda Montenegro, in a duet.
But sadly, Mrs. Ruth de Souza passed away
while we were on tour in Europe,
a few weeks before
we were going to start recording.
Not even our dreams
Are free of obstacles…
Actress Ruth de Souza
was buried today in Rio de Janeiro.
She was the first Black actress
to perform on the stage
of the Rio de Janeiro Opera House.
White people's happiness is complete
Black people's happiness
Is a near miss…
Nobody walked in the studio
and said, "This is what we'll do."
You feel me?
It was an experimental process.
I mean, Nave and I, we've been
working together for some 12 years.
You touched up that beat.
MUSIC PRODUCER
It was already great.
Half my work was already done.
You're being humble.
Shit's got a lot more body now.
The way you split it
to put in the other beat.
After 12 years, we finally have
the technical and financial means
to up and say, "Marlon's
gonna play this trombone part."
And it's got such a crazy vibe
that suddenly Marcos Valle joins in.
You know? You realize,
"Holy shit, Fernanda Montenegro is here."
She played Our Lady in A Dog's Will,
and she's in the project.
Hello. So good to see you.
-How are you?
-Two kisses.
Mrs. Fernanda's
solid performance in "Ismália"
offers us solace in the face of an abyss
that we're sometimes
led to believe to be our fate.
I love this poem.
It think it's so deep, so grand.
I chose to record it now
because I think
it speaks a lot to our times.
That's true, though.
This is where we find ourselves.
If you've gone mad up in the tower,
you're not dreaming.
-It's such a honor…
-For me as well, know that.
Let's hope it's as beautiful
in real life as it is written.
Just like the text.
Shithole of a country
Exactly what the media likes
Gave us failure
And demands medals
From runners with compound fractures
Stabbed in the back
Quartered by dues and norms
But we numb ourselves and say that
Someday everything will be all right
That a diploma means manumission
And my color's not a uniform
#BlackLivesMatter, bravo
But after 80 bullets
You finally see the difference
Between fair skin and target skin
-And the shooter wore a uniform
-Once more
-The accusers weren't even there
-Mean-spirited
For a Black dead body
Is like a Billboard hit single
Everyone can see it
But that shit won't get through
I looked into the mirror
Icarus faced me back
Be careful
Don't fly too close to the sun
They can't stand your freedom
Imagine seeing you as king
Vultures wanna see you a junkie
Just to go, "Told ya!"
In the end, we're all…
Ismália, Ismália
Ismália, Ismália
Ismália, Ismália
Reaching for the sky
Ended up on the ground
Every Black person is
Ismália, Ismália
-Ismália
-Ismália, Ismália
-Ismália
-Ismália, Ismália
Reaching for the sky
Ended up on the ground
First, kidnap them
Rob them
Lie about them
Deny their God, offend
Separate them
If one of those dreams dare to run
Stop it
And let them argue
With the bullets that cuts through them
Man, unfortunately
In places where the sun feels hotter
"To slay it" still means
Just to fill another kid's coffin
Wanted to be a star
Became a medal for some jerk
Who happens to carry the same color
That killed their ancestors
A first paycheck
Two police uniforms
Three Black kids in the backseat
Same color as the four Racionais
Five disrupted lives
Gold and bronze boys
Gunshots, gunshots, gunshots
That little boy was shot 111 times
-And the shooter wore a uniform
-Ismália
Those who pointed fingers
Weren't even there
Black people dissolution
Along with the sharp vision of those
Who have everything but color
In a world where color matters the most
"When Ismália went mad
She got up the tower to dream
She saw the moon in the sky
Another moon in the sea
In the dream where she got lost
She bathed herself in moonlight
She wanted to climb to heaven
She wanted to go down to the sea
In her own raving
In the tower, she began to sing
She was close to heaven
She was far from the sea
And as an angel, she hung
With wings to fly
She wanted the moon from the sky
She wanted the moon from the sea
The wings God gave her
They fluttered wide
Her soul climbed to heaven
Her body went down to the sea"
The artists from the hills
were persecuted by all means possible.
The Brazilian state
quickly added to its legislation
an effective means to silence
the cultural wealth of our people
through a legal instrument
known as the Vagrancy Law,
used over the years
to jail samba and capoeira artists
and to crack down
on Candomblé and Umbanda.
Back in the day,
I was arrested for holding a tamborim.
I wasn't even playing it.
And I was arrested.
Do you remember the decade?
That was in '41.
Back then, the police chief didn't allow
instruments with tension rods.
SINGER AND DRUMMER DIRECTOR
He said negroes
could use tension rods as weapons.
REPRESSING THE VAGRANCY - Police chief
recommendation to all deputies
And the same Vagrancy Law
was used to lock up sex workers
and persecute trans persons.
And the craziest part
is that this law is still in effect.
Magistrate protested against
the police chief
I'll be a vagrant
I'll be a vagrant
IT IS ABUSIVE TO LOCK UP
UNEMPLOYED CITIZENS
VAGRANCY LAW: THE FALSE NOTION
OF POLICE EFFICIENCY
"AMARELO" MUSIC VIDEO SHOOT
Rio de Janeiro, 2019
-Favela-dwellers don't walk around.
-You're in our home.
Can you imagine if you set up an operation
when we're out shooting a music video,
and Emicida is caught in the crossfire?
It'd all go to shit.
You're so tall!
I think that
we're bringing together our causes.
SINGER - SINGER
What I think we're doing, man,
is lifting the fog
that makes us
see our struggles as separate.
You can't half-ass the fight for freedom.
From the moment you
dive into a reflection about gender,
about class, and about race,
there are two ways you can go about it.
One's hypocritical,
you only think about yourself.
The other one is, "If we want this
for us, we want it for everybody."
-Am I in this part?
-Yes.
You and me.
When we come together,
we notice we have very similar stories
and that it's ridiculous
for us to be in separate movements.
I wanted to double one of Emicida's lines.
I think that's fierce.
This one, look.
He's challenging me like I'm new at this.
I'm a rapper, okay?
I attended an event
called Creators' House.
He did some shit with this song that…
gave me goosebumps.
He got this trans girl…
SINGER
…to walk in and sing,
and she fucking smashed it.
She went down the catwalk alone,
singing these lyrics.
She'd stop
and look at everyone, repeating this…
Last year I died!
Not this year, though!
That hit me real hard.
I started to listen to Belchior on repeat,
and said, "How did I never realize it?"
Just like a prism
decomposes white light into many colors,
in AmarElo, I'd like to decompose
prejudice into many other possibilities.
This is our way of telling
our brothers and sisters on the streets
that they can't give up.
It's using the power of love,
which is something
all human beings can do,
to forge this link.
It's as if a portal opened,
and all the OGs that came before me said,
"Brother, get out there."
"Life only has meaning when we connect,
when we get together."
And the feeling of singing
with Majur and Pabllo
is that of the whole world
gathering around us.
Fela Kuti said that music is a weapon.
And busting these chains
of hate and resentment
is just what we do
when we join Belchior to sing this song.
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
I'm a rare breed
Shining in the dark
One of a kind
Straight from the hood
Hooded, from the top of the hill
Me and my brothers
My piece in my pocket
And ill-spirited
Only God and I know
How it feels to have nothing, to be exiled
Cut the world with rhymes
But thought of cutting my wrists
Our lives are measured by our wealth
We are worthless
It wasn't a hit
But a call for help this morning
Man, resentment works like a tumor
It poisons the roots
Where the audience
Only wants to be happy
Everyone's heads are in the clouds
Where the new trend is depression
Disguised as vacation trips
My grandmother used to say
It's real easy to hate the devil
Hard is living in hell
What we realize is
That the same old rotten empire
That never took you seriously
Also wants you to bite the dust
Fight back
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Allow me to speak louder than my scars
They're just accessories
Shouldn't even be here
Allow me to speak louder than my scars
So much pain robbing us of our voices
You know what's left of us?
Walking targets on the streets
Allow me to speak louder than my scars
I wanna live, not just survive
If living is just surviving
I'm being robbed of my few good moments
At last, allow me to speak
Louder than my scars
The worst crime
Is to let my traumas define me
Doing so, we give our enemies a trophy
And silence ourselves
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Put your hands up, City Opera! Come on!
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Enough bleeding, enough crying
Last year I died
Not this year, though
Last year I died
Not this year, though
BELIEVE IN YOUR AXÉ
City Opera…
Pabllo Vittar and Majur!
Laboratório Fantasma
is a collective dream.
One that began way before we
materialized in this plane of existence.
Wilson das Neves once said to us,
"You can snap a cigarette in half,
but not a whole pack."
That was his way of saying,
"Stick together and you'll stay strong."
Shit like that strengthens
everything we stand for.
SIBLING, ENTREPRENEUR
AND ASSOCIATE AT LABORATÓRIO FANTASMA
And, standing stronger,
we can fight all them giant monsters.
But there's a minor detail.
A really minor one.
To be exact,
a microscopic detail was about to
do damage of Dantean proportions.
First confirmed deaths
due to the novel coronavirus…
Reached the mark of 10,000 deaths…
In Brazil, over 60,000 deaths…
This brings to light
the vulnerability of workers
who aren't being sent home
in this moment of social distancing.
Hey, man, good morning. How are you?
I don't have good news.
Things are getting
worse here in Brazil, you hear?
So I think we're gonna need
a complete change of plans.
I don't know yet how it's gonna be,
but we've already started
canceling concerts,
we've gotten cancelation requests.
CORONAVIRUS
WASH YOUR HANDS FREQUENTLY
And we're not going to
do Drik's European tour either.
And right now it's arriving here, bro.
Because the number of cases
is rising fast over there.
Let's see
how the next couple of days pan out,
but I wanted to let you know,
'cause things are tough.
And that's all. See you, bro.
Here's something very representative.
The first victim of coronavirus in Brazil
was a housekeeper.
She caught the virus from her employer.
That's quite symbolic.
Poor people get infected more easily,
and the social chasms
make it impossible for the poorest,
who are also more likely
to be people of color,
to recover from this disease.
That's what feels hopeless.
To the ancient Yoruba, nothing is new.
Everything that's
happening now has happened before.
So you have a pandemic caused by a virus
that's infected a massive
amount of people all over the planet,
spreading fear and insecurity,
and locking everybody up in their homes,
feeling uncertain
about one another and about the future.
When you think carefully
about the nature of things,
you are able to foresee stuff,
because one way or another,
nature always completes its cycles.
It spins around
like a record on a turntable.
We've traveled so much in time,
that I forgot
something important that I had to say.
Exactly one century ago,
the world was beginning to beat
the Spanish flu pandemic,
and a movie theater decided to hire
eight musicians to play in the lobby,
to get past people's fears
and get them to come inside.
These eight musicians
were our own Oito Batutas,
who would later take the world by storm.
Isn't it magical to think
that in a moment like that,
samba was the assuager of despair,
the ambassador of gatherings,
smiles, and hugs?
And that's why I love the saying,
"With the stone he threw today,
Eshu killed a bird yesterday."
Every single chance we have
to fix the disconnects of the past
resides in the present.
And that, my friend,
is why it's all for yesterday.
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
All, all, all
All we have is each other
All, all, all
All we have is
It marks what the 21st century is about,
which is the present moment
when we're giving Black women more
visibility, strength and encouragement.
We're testifying the blossoming today
of what Mrs. Ruth de Souza
planted decades ago.