RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In his ninth album, released last week, Paraíba’s Chico César, 55 years old, features suggestive options to address the darkness. “Pedrada” and “Eu Quero Quebrar” are some of the new songs.
The main uprising proposed by the musician, however, and which gives the album its title, comes from a much more peaceful path that permeates his 25-year career: affection.
“O Amor É um Ato Revolucionário” (Love Is a Revolutionary Act) intends to rebel through art. “The agents of our time want to put an end to dancing, kissing and poetry. So, the more we dance, kiss and make poetry, the more subversive we will be. If we merely stroll through dance, kissing and poetry, it’s a sign that they’ve won”, says the musician.
But who are “they”? “Those who want to say what love should be like. Doria, Crivella, Bolsonaro. But society has progressed a lot in recent times, and that’s not going to happen. The blacks won’t agree to go back to the slave quarters, the women won’t agree to go back to the kitchen and the gays won’t agree to go back into the closet”.
For Chico, there are currently “many external barriers” that hinder creation. But, considering that it is the artist’s role to “look for new frontiers”, he focused on his role shortly after the release of the previous album, “Estado de Poesia”, in 2015, to build the new work.
“I began to realize, long before Bolsonaro’s speech praising Ustra, that Brazilian society was moving towards a very dark place. The social-political life of Brazil was getting nervous, there was already the aggressive presence of the ruralist, the bible and the bullet benches wanting to take power.”
“I had already criticized the way the Workers’ Party dealt with nature, but I had a feeling that what was to come would be much heavier.”
When he presented in his Instagram profile a preview of the “Pedrada” reggae, before the release of the new record, Chico faced threats from opponents. With a chorus that incites “fire on the fascists”, the song had quick repercussions.
“People on the so-called new right-wing posted a video on Facebook saying I had to be arrested. That they could no longer hire me to the city halls, that they had to boycott me at parties and go to my shows to attack and stop people from listening to me. I reported it because I didn’t want my music associated with that page.”
The musician believes that, at first, the reaction of those who listen to the track is incredulity. “They expect us to just dance ciranda at Largo da Batata, while they go to the town hall and take away labor rights. Then these peace and love people come and say something like that.”
However, he says that this is not a literal invitation. “Fire on the fascists obviously has no narrow, closed meaning. It is fire through our poetry, through our vision of the world, through our affection. But, if necessary, it is fire itself, with Molotov cocktail, strikes, stoppages, sabotage of the system, stopping the machines. Civil disobedience is fire on the fascists.”
The author of hits such as “À Primeira Vista” and “Pensar em Você”, Chico continues to praise the feminine in “O Amor É um Ato Revolucionário”. The new album brings tributes to women like “Mulhero”, “De Peito Aberto” and “Minha Morena”, written for his partner, the actress Bárbara Santos.
These are important tributes at a time when, even with all the progress of the feminist struggle, violence against women escalates to worrying levels.
“When a government takes back things we have already conquered, it somehow allows for more savage and primitive male attitudes. When you have rulers who refer to the first lady of a country as ‘ugly’, and this is corroborated by the Minister of Economy who says ‘she really is ugly’, it seems as if a man has total freedom to give an opinion at any time about what women should look like.”
“This empowers the guy you think is normal to exercise his psychopathic side and kill a girlfriend, his ex-wife, his daughter’s boyfriend’s whole family because he doesn’t like him.”
“O Amor É um Ato Revolucionário” includes “inconvenient truths,” among them the so-called guilt in all instances, which, for Chico, is fundamental on the road to restoring the political scenario.
The artist challenges those who “by their vote, have helped to ignite fires” in the Amazon. “Now they go to the march in Vieira Souto and say ‘look, it’s on fire’. Of course, my love, you blew the embers. And, by all accounts, we also mean the press itself, which would have mistakenly tried to “contemporize and be a Republic”.
“Bolsonaro does not think of the Republic, he thinks of the barracks. After that speech defending Ustra, he should have been harshly criticized by everyone. In a minimally civilized country, he would have been jailed.”
“I want to place my son in the US embassy, I’m just going to: this is a monarchy. Even Saddam Hussein didn’t do that, put his son in diplomacy in New York. Brazil started heading towards a place where the only goal seemed to be to get rid of the PT. Yeah, but put what?”
Chico defines himself as “one more citizen, in a time of threatened citizenship”. He understands Lula’s release as a solution, “with all his political rights restored,” the impeachment of Jair Bolsonaro and the call for direct elections. “The military needs to get out of this mess that this adventurer has put them in.”
“I waited a long time for a Republican demonstration in Ciro’s second round, Marina, FHC, I thought everyone was going to march with Haddad. But they decided not to blend in and wait four years. That’s why it’s important for civil society to march together, or else everyone will defend their own little thing. We need to go as a whole, everyone together. Say ‘let’s go for love’, and really go.”