I had gotten from Godard movies and from Godard’s and Truffaut’s texts about American movies—I found the roots of these perspectives in these paintings. I didn’t know the pop artists before then. I learned about this special consciousness. Concerning myself with the diverse ideas that drove the pop artists as well as the poets surely shaped my own understanding of what pop music should be all about. AL: I have some ideas about why Brazilian popular songs are so filled with poetry or are so close to poetry. Brazil was an oral culture until the middle of the twentieth century. So, language was very alive, language was spoken, it changed constantly, was played with and examined in a different way than if it had been mainly a written language. Another thing is the particular heritage of the Provençal language, an ancestor of Portuguese. In a country where most people don’t read, the people who do read are in the position to spread their point of view. All these things contribute in some way to why the language in Brazilian music is so charged and powerful. I guess these ideas are a result of constantly thinking about the difference between Americans and Brazilians. In Brazilian songs— from bossa nova to the songs that were influenced by concrete poetry—there is a kind of closeness between the words and what they are referring to. You know, the sea, the sunset, the beach are not only common topics in the songs, they somehow seem to constitute the song. And concrete poetry takes this one step further by concentrating on the shape and sound of the words. In American music it is almost as if you want to escape from language. In soul music made by black Americans singing in English, the intervals sometimes don’t fit the words and there is so much singing beyond the words. A growl, a scream, a yell often follows an otherwise simple line such as “I love you baby—aaarrgh!” You always want to go beyond the literal word. Talking about the “thingness” of words—how important is it to live near the ocean? CV: I think it’s good to feel the motion of the ocean. When I
Left: Sprawling across numerous hills, Complexo de Alemão is one of the largest favelas in Rio. A cable car service connects the different valleys of the large semi-legal shantytown.
Above: Wolfram Lange has been living in Rio de Janeiro for ten years. Aside from working for various research and counseling projects, he is also currently writing his PhD on social inequality within Rio’s urban environment. In his spare time he runs the music blog soundgoods.net and drums in various samba schools and carnival bands (see p. 92).
Above: Gundo Rial y Costas is an anthropologist who wrote his dissertation on favelas in Rio de Janeiro. He is currently working on a human geography research project on the same topic (see p. 92). EB 1/2014 89