This Sunday, a special Summerstage show kicked off the first annual Brazil Summerfest, a celebration of Brazilian music in New York. Marcelo D2, Pitty, and DJ Nuts started off a week of performances by Brazilian artists, including Forró in the Dark, Brothers of Brazil, Davi Vieira, and Percussivo Mundo Novo, amongst others. The festival also happened to come right after Tom Zé's first New York performance in 12 years. The Central Park show had a huge turnout on one of the hottest weekends of the year.
Despite the scorching temperatures and a brief rainstorm, there was an impressive turnout on Sunday. Though the crowd appeared to be largely Brazilian, there were plenty of gringos there interested in Brazil. Quite appropriately, Marcelo D2 sang "A Maldição do Samba," or the Samba Curse, which includes the refrain:
A maldição do samba O gringo subiu no morro e bebeu cachaça, fumou maconha e obteve a graça. Depois do samba sua vida nunca mais foi a mesma
The samba curse The gringo went up to the favela and drank cachaça, smoked weed and had a good time After the samba, his life was never the same.
It was a great way to start a new summer tradition in New York, showing off the fusion of different Brazilian styles. Pitty, an acclaimed rock star, could have easily been confused for a tourist going to brunch; she was dressed in a cute pink dress with a pink headband and ballet flats, a very different look from her usual black and denim rocker style.
She gave an impressive show, keeping the crowd excited despite the oppressive heat. At the end of her set, she sang a song in English, "You Know I'm No Good," in honor of Amy Winehouse.
Marcelo D2, who was profiled in The New York Times on Thursday, showed off his fusion of musical styles: hip hop, rap, samba, reggae, and African-influenced percussion, and as he sang in "Gueto," "um pouco de europeu, um pouco de africano" (a little European, a little African). He even had the security guards dancing.
Later in the afternoon, he surprised the crowd by singing with Bebel Gilberto, a sneak peak for their show on August 3rd at City Winery. At the end, despite confessing he was about to faint from the heat, he invited around 20 women on stage to samba with him in his closing song.
There's a tremendous opportunity for Brazilian cultural events in the US, with an increased interest in everything Brazil. Plus, there's also plenty of opportunity to attract and engage the Brazilian community in major metropolitan areas for events other than Brazil Day. Though Summerfest only features music events, it has already been able to accomplish both by appealing to Brazilian and American audiences. Aside from film festivals, there's a lot of focus on Brazil Day in New York, but there's obviously room for more comprehensive events with a focus on Brazil. Clearly, the Brazil Summerfest organizers are on to something, and there's even more room to grow.
For more concert photos, click here. For a full line up of this week's events, click here.
At first glance, Campus Party sounds like some sort of college event to the gringo ear. But in reality, it's one of Spain and Latin America's biggest technology events, drawing thousands of geeks and businesspeople and computer experts every year.
The event began in Spain in 1997 as a Lan party, connecting internet users throughout the country. Later, Campus Parties sprung up in Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, and most notably, in Brazil. It was first held in Brazil in 2008, and just took place in Sao Paulo from January 25 - 31. This year, they had over 6,000 participants in the main event, where people brought their own computers and even slept over in tents. Well over 100,000 people came for the free events held at the convention center as a party of the main event.
Since Brazil is now one of the big Internet countries, where technology is ultra-modern, where Google dominates the market, where the base of Internet and computer users grows steadily each year, and where there's lots of money to be made, Campus Party is a huge networking event for entrepreneurs, businesspeople, designers, bloggers, and others who work with technology. Celebrities, academics, and computer whizzes alike come to the conference to give speeches, interact with the "campers," and exchange ideas. There are workshops, contests and prizes and all sorts of fun stuff. It's the cutting edge of the technological world, and the who's who of the Internet business in Brazil are expected to make an appearance. To give you an idea of how big of a deal it is, this year, two presidential candidates (Marina Silva and Dilma Rousseff) both made an appearance at the event.
For outsiders, it can seem a bit odd to see thousands of people sitting around on their laptops, especially when some are seemingly in their own world but are actually chatting with people across the room. But there's a whole lot more to the party than that, and I felt very jealous reading about friends at the event. It's really a one of a kind experience, and for geeks and Internet businesspeople, it's the place to be.
I met Luiza a few weeks ago when she was in New York for the weekend. A long time reader of mine, she quickly made me a fan of hers, since she is extremely smart and mature for her age and is clearly destined for great things. Plus, her English puts my Portuguese to shame, since she has never lived in an English-speaking country but sounds like a born and bred American (she in fact has spent her whole life in Brazil). She's passionate about human rights, and someday she will likely make a name for herself helping make Brazil and even the Americas a more just place.
She offered to write about her experience at Sao Paulo's Pride Parade, and I was happy to post it here.
It can be said that São Paulo is a ghost city during the holidays or long weekends For the stressful, hectic life the city provides its inhabitants, people can't help but skip town at every chance they get, looking for the sunny beaches of the coast, or the peaceful settings of the countryside. Like every rule, however, one fairly loud exception must be added: Pride.
São Paulo's Pride Parade takes place during the Corpus Christi holiday (celebrated every year on a Thursday) and the days that follow it. Since most people don't work on that particular Friday, there is a lot of traveling going around. This time, however, Brazilians are not after peace and quiet, but quite the opposite. The numbers speak for themselves: this year, over 400,000 tourists came to São Paulo on Corpus Christi to go to Pride, and over 3 million people attended the Parade.
Now, I've never been to Pride in the United States, so I can't really compare, say, New York's and São Paulo's Gay Parades. However, I have noticed that in the US the Pride Parades tend to be exactly what they're called: parades (with floats, people on the sidewalks watching and cheering, choreography, motorcycles, and the like). In Brazil, however, the Parade would be more accurately named if we called it a march (only with lots of music, people in drag, and half-naked men).
What we have here is about twenty "trios elétricos" (which are trucks equipped with huge sound systems, and with a space on top for people to stand and dance, sort of like on a float) blasting electro, house, techno and pop music as they are driven through the circuit of the Parade. The people, instead of mostly standing on the sidewalks to watch, gather around these "floats" as they half-walk, half-dance their way throughout the event, making the Parade look something like this.
In order to avoid ending the post on an unhappy note, I should probably mention the downsides of São Paulo's Parade before giving it all the compliments it deserves. First off, it's important to say that São Paulo is a very gay-friendly city (much, much friendlier than Rio), but, unfortunately, it's also a city that has few but very radical homophobes. I have friends who had to run on occasion from neo-Nazis and gay-haters. This year, to the horror and sadness of the gay community, a home-made bomb was thrown on a place some people were standing, celebrating the end of the Parade (more about it here), and a boy died in the hospital after being beat up by gay-bashers.
The main security problem regarding Pride remains the same: while the government deploys thousands of policemen to aid and protect people during Pride (and they actually do a pretty decent job), they seem to be sent home after the Parade is over, when there are drunken people all around, it's dark, and violent events tend to take place. Smart, huh?
Events like these sometimes make me think we haven't gotten anywhere since the Stonewall riots happened almost forty years ago. And then Pride comes along and shows me just how wrong I am.
The best thing about the Parade is the realisation that everyone around you —maybe for the first time— is free to be who they are. This is especially true when it comes to the more persecuted fraction of our little community: the transgender folk (and all the other people that don't consider themselves in the gender binary). They add such joy, colour and awesomeness to the Parade I'm pretty sure it couldn't be done without them. It kills me to look up to the floats, see those beautiful human beings and think they are also the ones that are more often killed by homophobes. However, I can't help but feel hopeful that the day will come when the Parade won't be the only day they'll be able to feel safe, free, and accepted by our society.
During the last six years, I have also noted that the Gay Parade is often the first event many closeted young LGBT people attend; the first opportunity they have to be out of the closet and to feel what it's like to be among others who face similar difficulties, and who take them for who they are. In other words, to feel authentically free for the very first time.
It is a lie universally repeated that there is no prejudice in Brazil. That here we don't care what you look like, because we have such an amazing mixture of different ethnic groups in our society.
Brazil is the country of the closeted racists and homophobes. Often I have heard from people that didn't consider themselves prejudiced that they didn't think there should be a Pride Parade. That they didn't understand why we were proud to be gay, if they weren't proud to be straight. After all, "there really isn't a Straight Pride Parade, is there?"
When faced with questions like these, I try to be polite and patiently explain that they don't have the need to say to the world they're proud to be straight because, well, the world doesn't persecute them because of it. LGBT people use the Parade as a political movement that shows the world just how many gay people there are out there, and how many people support us. To tell everyone it's not OK to beat us up or kill us just because we're different from them. To ask for the same basic rights everyone else takes for granted, like the rights to an identity and to family.
We have come a long way since the days the police used to beat us up on Christopher Street, New York. However, there is still a long road ahead. And taking this trip magnificently clad on top of a float with three million people all around us at Avenida Paulista, São Paulo, seems like a much better option than doing it alone.
For great pictures and a video of 2009's Parade, click here and here.
As a blogger and a Rede Parede employee, I've decided to share with you all the party we're throwing this week! I'm planning my whole week around it, which will be fun considering we're moving on Friday, but it's all good.
So as a way of introducing ourselves (ourselves being RedeParede.com.br) to the techie/blogger community in Rio and Brazil, we're having an event in Ipanema called "Bloggers by the Beach," a party for Carioca bloggers. We're having it at a super chic club called Boox which made me feel like Rio royalty just walking around inside. Eli designed an amazing banner and tee-shirts that we'll be giving out at the end of the night. The party was my idea so I'm willing to take the blame or the credit, depending on how it goes.
It's a closed party (read: invitees only), but if you happen to be an important blogger in Rio that I didn't invite and you would like to come, please let me know by leaving a comment. Otherwise, please don't think about stalking us down because the bouncer is about 6'6, 350 lbs and looks like he can crush cans with his bare hands.
My favorite thing so far about the party, besides the swanky locale? The party logo Eli designed:
Last night, the weather gods decided to be merciful, and it started to pour and there was a glorious rainstorm, and the temperature dropped to a humanly bearable number and now I don't even have a fan on.
However, the nightlife gods had it in for us last night.
First, I looked on a nightlife/culture website called Oba Oba, multiple times, which said there was a reggae and dancehall night at a Botafogo club. So me and Eli planned with my friends to go. We got there and it still wasn't open, so we went next door to a bar for a bit, and then waited for my friends to get there. But when the club opened, it was pretty clear they were playing horrible horrible rock music, not reggae. My friends didn't show and I had forgotten my cell at home, so we went to the sister club a block away to see if it was there. Nope. So then we waited in the rain for about 20 minutes to get over to Lapa, where we magically ran into my friends and some hostel people. Turns out my friend in particular got incredibly sick and stayed in and they tried calling but I didn't have my phone, of course. They were going to the other sister club in Lapa, which supposedly had samba, but no reggae. It was still raining and Lapa was really dead, so we decided to just turn around and go home. And Eli stopped for his infamous hot dog, of course.
In the grand scheme of things, it was disappointing, but at least I had the whole day with Eli, and that was a treat.
