I have an article about Tecnobrega and Belém in British avant music mag “The Wire”this month, pick it up and you get a free CD on the cover. Quite proud of this as, to me, The Wire has (and had) some of the best music writers around contributing articles, these include: Simon Reynolds, Ian Penman, Peter Shapiro, Kodwo Eshun and David Toop to name but a few. Pictures were supplied by the rather excellent Vincent Rosenblatt at Agencia Olhares, (well worth a click to see his photos). Also The Wire put some mp3s online at their site, click here to listen to Maderito e Joe, DJ Cremosa and Man’s own Kid Conga.

My enthusiasm for the film Brega s/a is by now well documented in this blog, and I had the chance to correspond with Vladimir Cunha, one of the directors, and ask him some questions.

Man : What’s your Background?

Vladimir : I graduated in Journalism, and worked 6 years as a professional journalist, and in 2002 I was invited to work on scripts and as assistant director for national television and then started working in the audiovisual field more frequently, from documentaries to TV programmes for Globo (major Brazilian TV channel) and MTV, which basically was my education in direction, scripting and editing.

M : How did you get involved in the Tecnobrega scene?

V : I grew up in the Jurunas neighborhood, which has a tradition for brega, tecnobrega and aparelhagem (sound systems). My first contact with this type of party was as a child, my parents travelled into the interior a lot and that’s where I saw my first aparelhagem parties.

Professionally, my first contact was in 1999, when I did an article on brega for Bizz magazine (influential Brazilian music mag) then some further articles on the aparelhagem parties in 2001 and 2002, I also directed my first reports for “Brasil Total” about the tecnobrega scene in Belem, 3 years later I met Gustavo (Godinho – co-director) and Priscilla (Brasil – producer) who had the idea to make a documentary about the scene and they called me to work with them, and from there came the first ideas that became Brega s/a.

M : It’s interesting that you use the music of experimental bands like Hurtmold in the documentary rather than Tecnobrega itself. Why is this?

V : We didn’t want to use Brega as we believed it would come over as a bit simple, it would seem like a normal TV programme. This bothered us, we wanted something that would be more film-like, something that would be more cinematographic than descriptive, and would reflect the urban chaos the film shows. We decided to only use brega when it was being listened to by the artists or public featured, or from the videos produced by bregueiros themselves.

M : you mention elsewhere that like brega, the film has the “Do it yourself” philosophy of punk. How is this?

V : We paid entirely for the film ourselves, which cost about two thousand dollars, we wanted to do it like that so we could prove that it was possible to make a film using the same methods of production and distribution that tecnobrega uses. At the end of the day we had to do virtually everything ourselves anyway, as you can see from the film’s credits, because due to the nature of the film’s themes ( brega, piracy, social problems etc.) no one wanted to sponsor us.

M : Do you think that a more underground (and less pop) version of brega will appear in the future?

V : I’m betting that “Maderito”will do this, these tracks are faster and more aggressive and are related more to garage or ragga jungle. Maybe if someone worked a bit more on the musical possibilities of Maderito I think we will have a Brazilian electronic genre ripe for exportation. If you listen to the rhythms of of eletromelody, the most recent version of Tecnobrega, you can make immediate comparisons with various styles of music coming from slums and ghettos worldwide.

M : Where has the film been shown?

V : It was premiered on MTV about a month ago, and we have put it up for download, torrent and streaming on the net. We’ve received some invites for festivals, cinema clubs and cultural events and even events based on the discussion of where the culture industry is heading nowadays.

M : Will you subtitle the film?

V : I am subtitling the film at the moment and I reckon in January in the forthcoming year, we should have a version in English.

M : Any plans to show the film in Europe?

V : Yes, we will start working on this next year.

many thanks Vladimir, and good luck!

Ok, so the first of a series of interesting (non-baile) Brazilian releases that you can download for your xmas/new year’s entertainment. Here we have “Charque Side of the Moon”, which is Floyd’s proto-ambient classic covered by musicians from the city of Belem in the state of Pará in Amazonia.

The “charque” refered to in the title is a type of beef jerky that is eaten but is also an affectionate name for the female genitalia, hence the charming cover.

The project was put together by Luiz Félix, guitarist and vocalist of the band La Pupuña, who basically had the idea to redo the album but with a strong “paraense” influence and the album has contributions from fifteen members of the paraense music scene. Perhaps most interestingly it has the vocal talents of Gaby Amarantos – a technobrega singer from the band Tecnoshow, on “The great gig in the sky”

“Time” also has some nice heavy percusssion from the carimbó group, Os Baioaras, and “Any colour you like” has merengue percussion, for you music anthropologists out there.

The idea of redoing “Dark Side Of The Moon” is not an original one. The has of course been “Dub side of the moon” by the Easy All Stars, but here it has a distinct Paraense flava, a sound which starting to come into its own now and is worth investigating further.

CHARQUE “MONEY”

Download the whole album here or here is a torrent (courtesy of Som Barato)