Fulerô O Esquema: “In the last election I went to vote wearing a clown’s nose…”
I love that line…from a very interesting interview with the two women of Fulerô O Esquema. This interview and this duo were an accidental find for me, but a more than worthwhile one. I’m undecided about the video (maybe you have to be Brazillian to fully appreciate this slapstick…and/or female?), but the music is fine (and the remixes that they supplied are even better), and these women say a lot of very smart things about politics, about the sexes, about the world. (There are times, of course, when I want to say, “Aren’t you generalizing a bit? But not all that many…) Actually, I think there is more astute observation and political wisdom from these women in music (and perhaps many others in music) than I’ve heard from too many women or people in general who spout some learned political dogma and call themselves leaders or ”activists.”
I could quote paragraphs and paragraphs from this thing, but I’ll try to keep the quotes here limited (go to the Web site). But maybe a couple of paragraphs from near the end… The interview kind of builds, to a surprisingly fascinating discussion (I think) of the political situation in Brazil, with comments that certainly can apply in ways to many other places in the world…
Paula Pretta: This had never happened to Brazilian music, on this scale. The [carioca] funk is a phenomenon to which I take my hat off. I take my trousers off to them, because to them you have to take your trousers off [laughs]. I love it. I think it’s really important; we need more people spouting crap, because we live in a country where people run away with money in their underpants [reference to a politician caught at the airport with notes stashed in his underpants]. One thing is for you to pose as a politician, as a family man, but then to be found at the airport…with money in your underpants?!
Adriana Pires: Yesterday we watched the [presidential candidate] debate — we are between the shit and the shit and a half. When I saw Bush being re-elected, I said, “Ah, idiots! Fuck you, stupid Americans”, but now this happens in Brazil. We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, when one of the guys is from TFP [Tradição, Família e Propriedade – a right-wing Catholic NGO] and the other everyone knows steals; everyone steals and it’s all got very low, this lack of morality. Yesterday in the debate, people debated and spoke of what they wanted, and no one’s going to check. This is all such a disregard for the real meaning of words, that you can’t be shocked by what you hear in funk carioca.
PP: It’s a reflex.
AP: At least in funk carioca, we see it for what it is.
PP: At least it’s genuine. The political moment is reflected in music. When Collor [Fernando Collor] was president, the most propagated music in Brazil was sertanejo [Brazilian country music]. It was when there was a great boom of Chitãozinho e Chororó, and ‘I don’t know what’ and Luciano, these double acts, that eternal wanking…it was this sort of disguised thing. Now, with Lula [Brazil’s president since 2002], I don’t know if it’s because he’s from humble origins but everything’s burst forth.
AP: And I think that we are living through a moment of subversion. The PCC [Primiero Comando da Capital] attacks… We are living through a complicated political and economic moment. We don’t know who to believe in. In the last election I went to vote wearing a clown’s nose…
