Pietá’s exploratory journey into Brazilian music to understand “what it means to be Brazilian”

Why do we want words if we can dance. Juliana Linhares, lead singer of the Brazilian group Pietá, took the stage at the Hacienda De San Gabriel, in Guanajuato, on Friday with an apology that was also a promise. The singer apologized for her Spanish—which is actually not that bad—and because concertgoers would not be able to understand most of her songs, which are accompanied by jazz, punk, bossa nova and samba. Pietá is one of the new musical proposals from a Brazil that has always been prolific with music and the young singer promised that even if her audience did not understand the lyrics of her songs they would know how to carry them in their hearts. Or on the hips. “What are words, if we have dance,” Linhares said to an audience that did not take long to give in completely, dance and give a standing ovation to these young Brazilians who are presenting their new album at the Cervantino International Festival, I was born in Brazil, a journey that explores the legacy of his country’s music, navigates its melodies and poetics and tries to explain from those rhythms what it is to be Brazilian.

Being Brazilian. A country full of contrasts, now divided by the politics of hate dispersed like poison by the movement of former president Jair Bolsonaro, but which is united by a legendary musical tradition that has crossed the borders of that nation-continent and that has made people dance. half the world It is difficult for a person in any bar not to be able to identify the delicate and melancholic tune of the Garota of Ipanema and imagine that young woman with golden skin with her sweet sway on her way to the sea. Well, Juliana Linhares has used her slender body to impose a show that is undoubtedly Brazilian, sensual, intense, beautiful. Linares moved like a butterfly fluttering its wings on that stage set up next to the lush green garden of the old hacienda. Her arms rose and fell and like a ballet dancer she jumped and threw herself on the floor, she contorted in an ecstasy of drums, guitar and bass.

Pietá represented the musical legacy of Brazil in a concert of more than an hour, with a repertoire of 14 songs that from time to time started a “bravo!” of the public. An audience, the Mexican, that always seems willing to be seduced by novelty and have a good time, despite some inconvenience, like the one the bassist had, who couldn’t tune his instrument. “It’s Moctezuma’s disease,” Linhares joked, referring to that stomach illness that affects foreigners who visit Mexico and are not used to excess spiciness or highly seasoned sauces or meats that are overflowing with fat. While the technicians fixed the small damage, the young singer said she hoped “that some things,” lyrics from her songs, “stay in your hearts because we are going to make a good effort.” And the effort did it. The singer growled, shouted in an excess that demanded to free the bodies, hers and that of the audience, for which there was always a wink of her flirtatious eye. “Sinning is joy, it is liberation,” he sang with his sweet but powerful voice. A beautiful body converted into a tribute to music that praises saudade also converted into a form of joy.

Love and passion. Desire and delivery. Longing, longing for pleasure. “May the full moon rise inside my heart,” asked the one from Brazil while she writhed on stage in her red blouse from which thin blue fabrics hung, reminiscent of the ballet tutu, a pristine blue like that of the sky. of Guanajuato that brightly illuminated the colonial city on Friday. Pietá was born in Rio de Janeiro in 2011, when its members Demarca, Rafael Lorga and Juliana Linhares met during their studies at the theater faculty. Since then they have experimented with Brazil’s musical legacy and have performed on major stages in their country and toured Spain and Portugal. They released their first album, Light or whatever you want, in 2015 and four years later they published Saint Sossego. This year they have begun to open up more space internationally after I was born in Brazil, acclaimed by critics in his country. The trio has managed to become a cult group after placing their music for the first time in a soap opera on the O Globo network, the huge Brazilian media group: Araçá perfume, a song that sings a secret of love.

Linhares revealed that secret to the public with passion and dedication: “There is a secret that I cannot tell, but I will sing to tell you. I have loved you for so long. It’s time to go out with you.” The Brazilian broke the language barrier with the chords of her voice, as she had promised. Perhaps most of the people who filled the old hacienda did not understand the lyrics, but through that voice I felt the need to say ‘I love you’ to someone I had long desired. “I carry the guitar close to my heart. I wish I were your body. The melody says that loving is good, my chest says the same.” And remember that when that desired person speaks to us “we get goosebumps” and even disappears into the cold. The aroma of the loved one, that Araçá perfume, It can intoxicate like the best of liquors.

Juliana Linhares knows the scene well. He blends in with him. It becomes an exotic bird that sings to the Amazon, threatened by human greed, or a gazelle that walks with a cadence to brush its body with its guitar companion. Or she returns as a committed young woman, who shouts that she is happy because in the Government of President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva “we have a new Ministry of Culture. “Whooooo!” Linhares recalled that his Brazil is a “politically destroyed country,” but that culture “has returned.” Culture that is the guest of honor at the Cervantino this year, with a billboard that brings together music, theater, dance and cinema. A Brazil that wants to show itself free, varied and talented. Tolerant. The Brazil of a Linhares who, from the stage, wanted to demonstrate that her country-continent is more than a controversial headline in a newspaper. The country that sings and dances, because what are words, if we have dance?