Wax Poetry

Right on time to coincide with the release of the new Banda Black Rio LP, I just discovered this absolutely killer in-depth article about the Black Rio movement by Allen Thayer, from the basically flawless Wax Poetics magazine. Right-click (or cmd-click) the picture to download the .pdf – and don’t miss the brilliant sound system family tree towards the end. [h/t]

Strange Fruit

The New Yorker’s John Colapinto goes long on the rise and demise of Amazonian “superfruit” Açai. It’s a hell of a long article but worth the time. You should be able to click on the pictures to get them full size, after the jump.

No Love in São Paulo

A couple of months back Russ from Sounds & Colours pressed the debut album by São Paulo’s Criolo into my hands, swearing it was the finest hip-hop record he’d heard since Outkast’s last one.

I don’t think Nó Na Orelha is that, in all honesty, but it’s certainly one of the freshest things to come out of Brazil’s music scene for a while, and there’s one song in particular that’s really caught my ear.

Some Paulista friends have told me it sums up the feeling of living in São Paulo better than anything else, and judging by the crowd reaction at the album’s launch party, I’d say it’s definitely struck a chord there somewhere.

I’d imagine most artists can only dream of having crowds singing along to every word of their song before it’s even come out, right? I suppose the fact that the album’s available as a free download doesn’t hurt though.

Disposable Fashion

Brazilian designer Jum Nakao makes haute-couture dresses out of paper. At the end of the show, the models are asked to rip her creations apart:

This dress collection made its debut in 2004 at Sao Paulo’s Fashion Week, in a paper themed runway performance titled Sewing the Invisible. Unbelievably at the end of the show, the models were told to tear up their dresses (yep, this brought a tear to my eye also) “as a reminder that fashion is a medium and not an end in itself”.

At The Movies

Discuss…

Mulatu Astatke live in São Paulo

Big thanks to the good people at Strut Records for sending this over. LOVE Mulatu Astatke’s sound.

The Waltz of the Machines

Video by Grafikonstruct. Music by Lucas Lima. Factory by Paramount Textiles.

Via Kottke. Watch the ‘making of’ aqui.

Graffiti interviews: NOVE

Last year I wrote a piece on the Graffiti/Fine Art biennale in São Paulo for JungleDrums. Along the way I interviewed a handful of Brazilian (and one Portuguese) graffiti writers but because of space limits the majority of the actual interviews ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor. I always felt like they were pretty interesting and deserved to see the light of day, but have only just got around to translating them in full.

Read the first one, with São Paulo’s NOVE, after the jump.

Word

Unfollowed some extremelly disappointing presidents—
marina gasolina (@_MARINAGASOLINA) March 30, 2011

Too terrifying for words

Except this: don’t watch this video of police in Manaus repeatedly shooting a 14 year-old boy at point blank range, if you’re of a sensitive disposition.