Inside the Scene: São Paulo

The last decade has been an especially fruitful one for jazz and improvised music in São Paulo. The scene has been invigorated by projects that occupy public spaces and institutions that are willing to host the creation and performance of free music, as well as groups with the most diverse styles creating their own sounds, causing fissures in the hard concrete of social inequality by stimulating the ears of the metropolis. The traditional venues focused on the genre are still there, but it is in the movement that goes from the centre of the city to the periphery – and vice versa – that we see bold ideas of curatorship emerging.

Like all of Brazil, São Paulo is a city of contrasts. Musically speaking, however, it is possible to distinguish it from other Brazilian regions in terms of its relationship with local and foreign culture. With a population of over 12 million people, São Paulo gathers together several countries, and, we could also say, many Brazils. The most striking features of its music come from outside – whether from immigration or other parts of the country – unlike cities like Rio de Janeiro, Salvador or Recife, where there are strong local traditions. Perhaps this is the main reason why the city is such a favourable territory for experimentation, as its musical identity is constantly being (re)created by culturally diverse artists.

The way these global influences connect and blend with regional styles and traditions is different each time, producing such disparate musical results as the driving, stylistically eclectic arrangements of Méta Méta and the free jazz-fuelled collages of Radio Diaspora, a duo formed by the drummer Wagner Ramos and the trumpeter Rômulo Alexis. When listening to the more than 10 albums released by the latter, we hear sound phrases that start as fast as accurate shots travelling along colourful lines and waves. Its themes are guided by references to the sounds of the African diaspora, as its name suggests, including deconstructing (or highlighting) elements that form the main rhythms of Brazilian music, such as samba and Black popular music. Radio Diaspora also features references well-known to the Black community by including samples of speeches or striking voices, such as those of Martin Luther King jr. and Muhammad Ali.

In the intersection between genres and languages, São Paulo’s urban scene has also served as a breeding ground for unruly musical movements such as the so-called Vanguarda Paulista, fraying the limits of the song format, so familiar to Brazilian culture, since the 1980s. Artists such as Arrigo Barnabé, Itamar Assumpção, and the sisters Tetê and Alzira Espíndola have explored the creative possibilities of the genre, incorporating influences as diverse as serialism and comic books among traditions of African origin such as “batuque de umbigada”.

Years before, in different ways, other artists had similar experiences, such as Walter Franco, who incorporated concrete poetry, and Tom Zé, an artist from Bahia who lives in São Paulo and who was one of the precursors of the Tropcália movement. They opened paths for names from newer generations, with whom some of them actually maintain artistic partnerships, as is the case with Arrigo Barnabê and the musicians of Quartabê, most of which once were members of his large ensemble.

Another contemporary representative of this (anti-)tradition is Negro Leo. With a vast musical oeuvre, his compositions move fluidly through different genres, bringing to the surface the intense combination of lyrics and melody that characterises the craft of Brazilian popular song, while becoming tangled in threads of rhythmic deconstruction, travelling through sound textures and playing with improvisations. His sounds and lyrics are at times provocative, at times amusing. With a keen sense of understanding and criticism of the reality around him, expressed in a crude and sometimes mocking way, he is able to broadly address society’s structural deficits while also targeting specific issues, in a kind of sociological zoom out and anthropological zoom in.

The laboratory-like character of São Paulo’s creative music scene also becomes manifest in the growing interest in improvisation, especially free improvisation, that has been gaining ground over the last decade with new artists, organisers, producers, labels, websites and multidisciplinary alternative spaces – and with large festivals such as Sesc Jazz and Nublu Jazz Festival alongside independent initiatives happening around the city.

Again, what makes the local scene unique is how the free improvisation movement is rooted in a broad range of styles and musical contexts and, rather than turning a blind eye to tradition in an elitist gesture of emancipation, how it embraces the musical heritage of both the city and the rural regions that surround it. Musicians such as Juçara Marçal and Thiago França from Metá Metá and Mauricio Takara from São Paulo Underground appear in a variety of musical projects within the scene, representing both traditional aspects of urban musical culture and regional styles as well as highly experimental settings and free improvisation.

This special relationship between experimentation and tradition has been documented in a yet-to-be released film project by Luan Cardoso, focusing on the ongoing collaboration between experimental violinist Thomas Rohrer and folklorist Nelson da Rabeca, a local legend in building and playing traditional fiddles, along with other musicians in the project Tradição Improvisada. The director has agreed to provide an exclusive preview of the film for Jazzfest Berlin.