“Bye Bye Brazil” by Chico Buarque.
So I apparently I grew up in Brazil. My memory is starting to fail me as I recently turned 48.
This song was one of the most vivid pieces of poetry I was exposed to when I was a kid. It’s about a lonely travelling salesman (his profession isn’t specified) who is calling “home” (or something like it) from a payphone and giving us the audience a first person account of his voyages, plans, aspirations. The song starts with a chilled bossa nova vibe and a jazzy bassline. However as our narrator runs out of broken promises, erratic ideas and coins, the song gets tenser and that tension ends up unsolved. It’s good metaphor in my opinion: all those Caribbean, South American, etc, places south of the border aren’t holiday paradises. Good luck to you people who think Latin Americans are relaxed nice people; theirs is one of the most violent regions of the planet in actuality. Also, the title of the track isn’t “Bye Bye Brazil” [sic] by coincidence; the narrator (and the singer) were sick and tired of all the crap their society submitted them to, were ready to pack their bags and leave for good. <— hey that sounds familiar
Anyhow, this song was so vivid and appeling to me for two reasons: first, even though I sort of understood the lyrics and words - there are some words I still don’t understand - he was talking about his endeavours in a big city in the tropics or trying his luck in some mine town in the hinterlands; those were far-flung exotic lands which were apparently existed within the country I was living in. Mind you, I still haven’t been to those places and if I went there they’d be as exotic to me as they are to you. I come from a relatively civilised and big metropolitan area. The weather wasn’t tropical or near any beaches - and I didn’t have money to travel to the beach anyway.
I have a laugh when random (stupid) strangers expect me to have a happy-happy-party-surf’s-up-chillaxed nature. Sorry bro, I was raised just as white as you. And I actually hate overly relaxed people and I can be uptight, uncaring and rude. Hence the Vincent Gallo of the Southern Hemisphere moniker.
Secondly, it was an imaginary account of what my real dad might have been doing in reality at the time. I hardly had any contact with him while growing up so this song stirred up my imagination about what he might be up to. The broken promises and pennylessness of the character also rang home. Like my dad, I realise I also became the same rootless unreliable asshole.
Now, I’m not even a big fan of Chico Buarque - I think he’s boring. However this song is now relevant to me for a special reason: this (together with some other songs by Caetano Veloso - an artist I do respect) are influencing an idea for a story I’ve been mulling over recently. It’s based on my own child’s vision of said imaginary exotic country. Mix in Children of Men, Werner Herzog’s Cobra Verde, Cannon Films, low-bugdet Southeast Asian films as influences too.
Coming to a cinema near you in 2021.
