Brazil
Brazilian journalist. Presenting a fuller picture of Brazil to international audiences.
Stories born where culture, social issues, and politics intersect.
Former music critic at The Shfl. Co-editor at Meia Volta.
Based in Rio de Janeiro.
The first English-language newsletter presenting the nuances of Brazilian music that often go under the radar.
I have worked as a Brazilian music critic for Shfl. I have written reviews of albums from diverse genres and generations - including Elza Soares, Geraldo Vandré, Barbatuques, and Olodum.
Culture
Walter Firmo, an 86-year-old photographer, spent most of his career radically shifting the visual narrative about Black communities and culture in Brazil.
Generations of women of the Amazon and Cerrado have split the coconuts of the babaçu tree for the oil. As the forests are cleared and electric fences put up, they must fight to secure rights to their beloved trees Photographs by Kristin Bethge for the Guardian
Travelling on a solar-powered boat, the Kanua festival is showing 29 films from nine countries to communities in Ecuador
The late guitarist, who would have just turned 100, blew the minds of Carlos Santana, John Fahey and more with his hypnotic technique and expansive creative vision
Nei Lopes gets deeply bothered by the fact that bossa nova tracks are often classified as jazz. We spoke to him about the history of samba.
n 1959, Carlos Lyra's musical partner and lyricist Ronaldo Bôscoli said that bossa nova is a state of mind. Lyra thought he was talking nonsense. "Today, I'm actually agreeing with him," he reflects more than six decades later, while vividly narrating a flashback of the genre's early days in 1950s Rio de Janeiro.
Every February 2, the city of Salvador in Brazil celebrates Iemanjá, deity of the sea and motherhood, who is the most-worshiped Yoruba goddess in the country. During this commemoration in 2016, as hundreds of thousands of devotees prayed to this orisha in an hours-long festivity that always takes place on the beachfront of the Rio Vermelho neighborhood, Cintia Maria, a regular goer, felt deeply bothered.
August 18 marks the Day of the Afro-Brazilian Dance in Rio de Janeiro, a day the commemorates the life, work, and advocacy of dancer Mercedes Baptisa, the Matriarch of Brazil's Black Modern Dance.
RIO DE JANEIRO - Singer Gal Costa, one of the iconic voices from the 1960s generation of Música Popular Brasileira, died in São Paulo on Wednesday morning (Nov. 9). She was 77 years old. Costa's death happened while she was taking a break from performing after surgery to remove a nodule in her nasal cavity.
On the top of the main stage at Lollapalooza Brasil on Mar. 26, 2022, Brazilian rapper Emicida urged young attendees to issue their voter ID and defeat President Bolsonaro in the Oct. elections. "Bolsonaro, go fuck yourself," the artist shouted to the crowd, who went wild with the anti-Bolsonaro rhetoric that set the tone for the entire festival.
"There were literally killer whales outside," Sebastian Ingrosso recalls of Swedish House Mafia's stay at Ocean Sound, a recording studio nestled on a tiny island off the northwest coast of Norway. "We had chefs coming with fresh fish every day. The ocean was right there when you opened the door.
RIO DE JANEIRO - Nine months after the Latin Grammy-winning singer Marília Mendonça died in a plane accident, the team behind Brazil's biggest female sertanejo artist has released a posthumous EP that is breaking local streaming records and calling attention to her vast catalog of songs and recordings.
GOIÂNIA, BRAZIL - For his first show in Brazil since early 2020, promoter-manager Marcos "Marquinhos" Araújo went big. Fifty-six thousand people attended the second BBQ Mix festival on July 3 to hear sertanejo - the country music of Brazil, originally driven by 10-string guitars, that remains the nation's most popular genre - and to eat beef.
With fewer than three months to go before the next presidential elections in her country, megastar Anitta has officially declared her support for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a left-wing former Brazilian president who is leading in the polls against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.
RIO DE JANEIRO - Authorities in Brazil are finding that fraudsters are using illegal download apps and websites to lure in music fans eager for a stronger connection to specific artists - and then profiting from reams of personal data they are mining from them.
RIO DE JANEIRO - A month after an offhand comment about Anitta 's butt tattoo triggered nationwide investigations into publicly funded music shows in Brazil, the number of cities under scrutiny has more than doubled and now involves a who's who of Brazilian country music stars.
RIO DE JANEIRO - A recent comment about Anitta 's butt tattoo has surprisingly led to investigations into local country music artists and misuse of municipal funds in Brazil's agribusiness heartland.
On a typical warm and humid March evening in Rio de Janeiro, Jamilly Marques walked through a crowded and vibrant sambadrome, a venue where the big samba schools parade during carnival, for dress rehearsal with Império Serrano, the samba school where she fell in love with the music, dance, and show as a kid and where she is now a passista.
RIO DE JANEIRO -In 2016, Richard Encinas, a São Paulo state prosecutor, led investigations into organized crime that culminated in a raid of a clandestine warehouse and the seizure of millions of pirated DVDs and CDs that took more than seven trucks to transport.
As Brazil's world-acclaimed biodiversity turns to ashes, President Jair Bolsonaro has praised the country as an environmental role model. "It is not only in environmental preservation that the country stands out," the far-right leader affirmed in a UN speech on 22 September. "In the humanitarian and human rights fields, Brazil has also been an international reference."
Johnny Alf has always been revered by Antônio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto, but his legacy remains obscure, even among Brazilians. João Gilberto's landmark "Chega de Saudade" is widely considered bossa nova's first album. But about seven years before its 1959 release, a Brazilian musician known as Johnny Alf composed "Rapaz de Bem."
his week, Rio de Janeiro should have been celebrating, its streets alive with local people and tourists honouring the city's Carnival, a tradition dating back to the 17th century. But for the first time outside the two world wars, the city's flagship event is cancelled.
In mid-February this year, if it weren't for the pandemic, hordes of Brazilians and travellers would have packed out Carnival street parties and sambadrome parades for five uninterrupted days of music and dancing. Those in Rio or São Paulo would certainly have come across the black bean-based feijoada, Brazil's flagship stew and an omnipresent meal in south-eastern Carnival celebrations.
Until recently, the wonders of the digital economy barely featured in Gabriela Ferreira's daily life. She was born in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Parada de Lucas and got her first smartphone in 2018 at the age of 17. "My grandpa bought me a very simple one with his social security retirement money for me to study," she recalls.
These artists prove that the contemporary Afro-Brazilian music scene has never been so plural.
I'm Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work.
These women built a legacy within Brazil's predominantly male (and often machista) samba scene.
Brazilian funk is resonating louder. But while the world associates the hypnotic beats from Rio's outskirts with a rather contemporary scene, represented by artists like Rennan da Penha, Heavy Baile , and the internationally famous Anitta , the term "Brazilian funk" was certainly not born these days.
Chega de Saudade, clássico de João Gilberto, muitas vezes é considerado o primeiro álbum da bossa nova. Mas, sete anos antes de seu lançamento em 1959, um músico brasileiro conhecido como Johnny Alf compôs Rapaz de Bem .
Brazil holds the world's highest LGBTQI murder rate. Here, a LGBTQI person is brutally murdered or commits suicide every 19 hours. Every. 19. hours. Among such crushing hostility, it would appear there should be little room for LGBTQI artists to exist at all. The reality, however, is quite the op
While the entire world knows samba, "choro" music remains a question mark - even among Brazilians. Underestimated by the contemporary recording industry, choro is not only the "father" of samba, but also the very first Brazilian urban music genre.
By Beatriz Miranda, AFROPUNK Contributor How The Badass Women from Brazil's Urban Black Music Are Breaking Taboos and Standing at the Center of the Feminist Debate Women understand other women's struggle until the economic, cultural, racial, sexual and ethnical boundaries abruptly tear us apart. At the end of the day, we are the only ones ...
Already a staple of U.S. hip-hop culture, cyphers have just started to break in Brazil. In underground music scenes like rap and Brazilian funk, cyphers have been promoting artists (both veterans and beginners) in a completely new way.
We Explore Brazil's Vivacious Dance Movement And How It Came To Be If picturing hip-hop, big bands and samba playing at the same party sounds too odd, you'll definitely be surprised by samba-rock, an authentic musical expression from São Paulo's black communities.
Vanuatu. In this remote island nation in the South Pacific, women have been using water as a percussion instrument for many generations. The inhabitants’ more than one thousand years of history are reflected in the women’s “magical water music.”
Story on São Paulo Dance Company's 2019 work, directed by Canadian choreographer Édouard Lock.
"Índios, negros e pobres." With these words - emblazoned on a pink, white, and green version of the Brazilian flag - the Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Estação Primeira de Mangueira paid tribute to the communities that have been historically underrepresented within the country. As Jair Bolsonaro, a far right president, makes his mark on the[.....]
Story on Grupo Corpo Dance Company, the first contemporary dance company in Brazil, whose 2018 work paid homage to the Afro-Brazilian religions.
By Beatriz Miranda, AFROPUNK Contributor Brazil, 1891. You are black, a daughter or son of former slaves. Probably a shoeshiner or a fruit seller, if you are a man. Most likely a housemaid, if you are a woman. You never went to school - and neither will your kids.
Marajó, Brazil, is the world's largest fluvial-maritime island. Located at the mouth of the Amazon River, it was built over millennia by the waterway itself, which carried sediment that collected until it formed an island nearly as big as Switzerland.
By Beatriz Miranda, Contributing Reporter RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - On July 9th, the Valongo Wharf, in Rio's Port Zone, was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO. Being the largest entry point for African slaves in the Americas, "Cais do Valongo" (its name in Portuguese) is a monument to Rio as an epicenter of the Afro Brazilian culture.
When a community's home turns into a travel destination, the influx of tourism can cause controversy. Tourism crosses boundaries even when conscientious travelers try their best. Brazil's Kalunga community has a solution. The Kalunga are Brazil's largest remnant of a quilombo, a settlement founded by runaway slaves.
Last November, samba celebrated its 100th anniversary. Along its history, Brazil’s most popular music genre has come across with many influences and has been through many transformations. However, it would not survive so powerfully without sticking to its roots. If, today, centenary samba is respected for being traditional, this is due to the “Velha Guarda”, the samba's old folks.
Politics & Social Issues
In Brazil, a nationwide campaign called Preta Ministra is addressing an existing issue in the racially unequal country: the lack of Black women on the Supreme Federal Court.
t her inauguration as Brazil's new minister of racial equality, Anielle Franco described the country she wanted to work for. "One where a Black woman can access decision-making spaces without having her life taken by five shots in the head," she says, interrupted by the audience shouting the name of her dead sister "Marielle".
Brazil's 2022 election season has already been historic for women and LGBTQ+ communities. At the start of the month, the South American country elected two trans candidates and three progressive Indigenous women to congress. Now, as October 30 nears, Brazilians will choose the next president amid an election that has split the country - and the stakes are high for socially marginalized voters.
It was 35 years ago that Ailton Krenak, while painting his entire face with the black dye of the jenipapo fruit, protested against violence against Indigenous peoples in one of Brazil's highest seats of power: the speaker's podium in the lower House of Congress. "There is Indigenous blood in every hectare of Brazil's 8 million [...]
Mining giant Vale, hoping to increase the quantity of iron ore they can ship out of the Amazon, needs permission from one Indigenous community to build an extra railway through their land. But some Gavião chiefs - furious with how the project has already turned their world upside down - are still refusing to consent.
n 2017, most Brazilians were still unfamiliar with the name Jair Bolsonaro. But for Júlio Lancellotti, there was already cause for concern in the reactionary rhetoric of the man who would be elected president two years later under the slogan: "Brazil above everything, God above everyone."
Members of ICC attend the weekly worship service at the church's headquarter in northern Rio de Janeiro. The majority of the worshippers are gay couples -- both men and women -- who who feel accepted here and have felt shunned elsewhere. May 23, 2021.
The pandemic has worsened Brazil's hunger crisis The Covid-19 pandemic has deepened Brazil's ongoing hunger crisis, according to a recent study. Meagre welfare assistance has meant that around 60 per cent of the country's population - 125 million people - are now unable to get three square meals per day.
Wildfire season has begun in the Amazon rainforest and the combination of seasonal respiratory diseases caused by smoke, the spread of Covid-19, and a nearly collapsed health system in Northern Brazil are likely to cause a vertiginous rise of fatalities.
Last year, the Brazilian National Cancer Institute expected to see about 600,000 new cases of cancer, now Brazil's second biggest killer. That's a 75 percent increase on such diagnoses since 2000. Some of those cancers are likely linked to Brazil's use of pesticides.
For a socialist, pro-drug-legalization, Hare Krishna police chief in the polarized and hardly ever reasonable Brazil of Jair Bolsonaro, Orlando Zaccone seems strangely at ease. As our lunch turns into an errand-running mission through downtown Rio de Janeiro to help stage the Second National Congress of Anti-Fascism Police Officers, he is open and patient in spilling his life story.
Civil society groups report that Rio’s police have never killed so many people in such a short period of time: this rate of killing is unparalleled in Brazil and the world. The terrifying numbers point to a phenomenon that researchers have badged the ‘state-ization of death’.
Over 57 million people voted to elect Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil's next president at the end of October, shocking feminists around the world who had rallied in solidarity against his campaign. Now, LGBTQ activists fear that a war against their rights-and lives-has just begun.
The Indigenous population in Brazil has always been shut out from positions of power, but Joênia Wapichana is ready to change that. On October 7th, she became the first Indigenous woman elected to Brazil's Chamber of Deputies - the very first Indigenous woman to hold a seat in Congress in 194 years.
Participation in Podcasts and Newsletters
En Brasil, cada 36 horas en promedio muere de forma violenta una persona LGBTIQ+. Y el discurso intolerante de Jair Bolsonaro ha agravado la situación. Pero hay grupos que se organizan de maneras inesperadas para desafiar el odio.
Today we’re looking at the challenges and opportunities for multilingual writers. We speak with freelancers from Brazil, Poland, and South Africa, who have all used their locations and language skills to build relationships with editors overseas.
This week we discuss the Covid-19 pandemic, and the use of Hydroxychloroquine, in relation to Brazil and the actions of President Jair Bolsonaro - a man who continues to act like a puppy dog to a certain orange-faced dictator north of the equator, Mr. Donald (does-this-bible-make-my-hands-look-big) Trump. We will explore the ramifications of such leadership as it impacts struggling communities within the city of Rio de Janeiro, as well as the ongoing protests in support of the Black Lives...
I'm Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work.
KPFA Women's Magazine talks to journalist Beatriz Miranda about the threat posed to LGBTQI people by Brazil's newly elected president, Jair Bolsonaro. We also discuss the history of LGBTQI rights in Brazil - Miranda calls Brazil the LGBTQI murder capital of the world - and how and why Brazilians turned from the leftist Workers' Party (PT) of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, to the extreme right-wing Bolsonaro.
Economy & Entrepreneurship
Fato pouco conhecido fora das fronteiras africanas, um dos negócios mais lucrativos de todo o continente é a compra e venda de cabelo. Só em 2014, a indústria movimentou em torno de 6 bilhões de dólares, de acordo com dados da agência Reuters. E esse número não para de crescer.
Many people don't know that human hair plays a central role in Subsaharan Africa's economy. Last year, Poppina Djemellas started selling natural Brazilian hair to pay her rent in Port Elizabeth (South Africa). Now, the 21 year-old Congolese student has her own brand (The Doll Factory), international clients and a lot of enthusiasm with the hair business, worth over US$ 6 bi a year in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Macaé, the city is one of Brazil’s most relevant areas for petroleum exploitation. However, the once called “Oil Eldorado” faces, since two years, its toughest crisis, in a way not a single economic sector in the region remained unscathed.
By 2055, there will be more elderly in Brazil than its entire population under 29. With this scenario in perspective, debates on the aging phenomenon have been gaining more importance in the last years. Brazil has begun to realize that a healthier and older society is no longer a distant possibility; more than a concrete reality, it is an irreversible one. Aging started to be seen as an object of political concern, occupying more spaces in Brazil’s public policies, researches and debates.
Cannabis in Latin America
Access to CBD in Uruguay remains difficult, despite the South American country's overall progressive leadership on cannabis law reform. December 2018 marked five years since cannabis became legal in Uruguay.