Rock, Refrain and Remove: Hearing Place and Seeing Music in Brasília

Abstract

This article investigates relationships between rock music and the concept of place in the modernist, functionalist, planned city of Brasília, Brazil, known at times as ‘Capital of Rock’ and ‘Capital of Hope’. With rock history in Brasília, the city's built environment and its social character as my foci, I theorise the homology of remove as a way to conceptualise substantive relationships between these three, seemingly disparate ‘spheres’. Fieldwork, notably three repeated motifs—the ‘refrains’—subjects use to explain their observations, historical research, and space syntax theory's ‘integration’ provide the material.

Keywords:

• Place
• Rock Music
• Underground
• Brasília
• Homology
• Space
• Urban Studies
• Architecture

Notes

¹Costa's sketches and treatment can be viewed in English at http://www.infobrasilia.com.br/pilot_plan.htm (‘Lucio Costa's Pilot Plan for Brasilia’ n.d.) and in Portuguese at http://portal.iphan.gov.br/portal/baixaFcdAnexo.do?id=280 (‘Brasília’, 10–22).

² Cf. Perrone and Dunn (2001: 24); Veloso (2002: 20); and rock's total lack of mention in Tinhorão (1997). Fê Lemos, the drummer for Capital Inicial, which originated in Brasília in 1982 and remains one of the country's most successful rock bands of all, said (interview, Brasília, 2005): ‘When we started college, a ton of people looked down their noses at us, because it was rock [that we played], it wasn't Brazilian music. We were called “colonized”, “Americanized”, and just about everything else.’ In histories of Brazilian rock (e.g., Alexandre 2002; Dapieve 1995), Brasília gets a brief mention for three bands who made it big in the 1980s. Focused work, scholarly or otherwise, on Brasília's rock music is rare (Madeira 1991; Marchetti 2001; Rosa 2006; Vieira 2005; Wheeler 2006, 2007; Wheeler and Melo 2006; Cavalcante's 2003 photographic essay; a handful of theses and dissertations; print and virtual fanzines; and a few fan-sites, including http://rockbrasiliadesde64.blogspot.com/, http://www.rockbrasilia.com.br/, and http://www.cult22.com/blog/, and fanzines, like http://www.zineoficial.com.br/, http://dfhardcore.blogspot.com/, http://www.osubversivozine.com/).

³ Cf. Perrone (1990): ‘… [S]ome observers imagine that national rock emanates solely from major cosmopolitan centres (Rio, Sao Paulo, Brasília) and that it is primarily a middle-class activity. … [Y]et evidence suggests that new rock is the music with which wide sectors of youth in all urban areas identify. Rock emanates from cities around the country, including working-class districts.’ http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9612300794&site=ehost-live.

⁴The musicians speaking in this article were when interviewed in their late 20s to mid 40s and worked as teachers, producers, business owners, public servants, social service volunteers, or were unemployed. They lived in the satellite cities of Taguatinga, Gama, Guará and Candangolândia, and the Pilot Plan. They were chosen as representative examples from many others who repeated the refrains examined here.

⁵The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) projects that in 30 years Brazil's population will stop growing, while Brasília will be one of the few cities to experience continued expansion (see video at http://www.agenciabrasil.gov.br/media/videos/2008/09/02/ibge.flv/view).

⁶Tamanini (2003: 345–62) contains the text of the speech in both French and Portuguese.

⁷According to http://www.portalbrasil.net/salariominimo.htm.

⁸Demographic statistics through the end of the section come from: Pesquisa Distrital por Amostra de Domicílios, Pesquisa domicilar (2004: 41–2, 83, 94, 105, 159); Pesquisa de Informações Sócio-Econômicas das Famílias do Distrito Federal—PISEF/DF/97, Posse de Bens da População (1997); job statistics from Holanda (2003: 52), except for Taguatinga's population, from http://www.sucar.df.gov.br/ras/03_taguatinga/09.htm.

⁹At one time the ‘mixed-race’ category parda/mulata contained myriad sub-categories such as ‘coffee with milk’ and ‘gourd-colored’ (Schwarcz 2003).

¹⁰The historical information presented comes from extensive personal fieldwork.

¹¹In São Paulo the movement was from (poor) periphery to (wealthy) centre. There, underground bands like Restos de Nada and Inocentes spurred the formation of highly successful, mainstream rock acts like Ira! and Os Titãs.

¹²I use ‘moieties’ for the formalised restrictions in relations. In Brasília, the moieties are spatially distributed, the literal periphery and centre, and socially enacted. One example, noted also by Holston (1989), is the dual elevator system in Pilot Plan apartment buildings, where residents use the ‘social’ elevator and maids and labourers (and residents moving lots of stuff) use the ‘service’ one. Sometimes the two are separated by partitions, other times by locked, although perhaps transparent, doors—as if to see one's place in the hierarchy was to strengthen it. Another case is the mass transit system seemingly designed to preserve avoidance between classes while enabling the functioning of the (hierarchical) social and political systems—an impossibility without the ‘importation’ of labour into the Pilot Plan from the satellite and Entorno cities. I thank Tony Seeger for helping me see the adequacy of the term for an urban context.

¹³Galinsky observed in Recife the same correspondence between heavier or harder styles of rock, skin colour, economic conditions, and where in the city the musicians and fans tend to live (2002: 96).

¹⁴Ex-vocalist of Blitx 64, another of the city's first rock bands.

¹⁵Ex-drummer for Blitx 64 and Plebe Rude; ex-husband to Helena.

¹⁶The law (No. 1.065 of 06 May 1996) can be viewed in its entirety at http://www.brasilia.df.gov.br/005/00502001.asp?ttCD_CHAVE=5950.

¹⁷He calls them ‘neo-tribes’. Hetherington (1992) describes Schmalenbach's similar concept, that of the Bund.

¹⁸Neither ‘tribe’ nor panelinha is unique to Brasília. Regarding the latter, it is believed that Machado de Assis, writer and president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, coined the term in 1901 as a nickname for the group of artists who would convene over dinners served from a silver pot, A Panelinha de Prata (The Little Silver Pot).

¹⁹According to Silva (2003, 2003a) common complaint of migrants to Brasília is social exclusion. In her research, Panelas were organised around homogeneity of age, economic class, time of residence in Brasília, and region of origin.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jesse Samba Wheeler

Jesse Samba Wheeler is the Special Assistant to the Directorate for the Fulbright Commission in Brazil. An alumnus of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation programme, he earned his PhD in 2007 in ethnomusicology from UCLA under Tony Seeger. He plays concertina and sings with Tanaman Dùl and is working on the soundtrack for a documentary on health and healing in Malawi