Adele and George Michael sounded in the pizzeria of a nondescript town in the south of Mato Grosso, a Bolsonaro land in the interior of Brazil surrounded by soybean fields and zebu oxen. But when a customer entered with a Lula sticker, someone yelled: “Run! Put on Gusttavo Lima!”
He was referring to the star artist of the so-called sertanejo music, a popular Brazilian genre already modernized, perhaps comparable to American country because of its links with conservative ideas of the rural interior. Lima, like other interpreters of the sertanejo, supports Jair Bolsonaro in the presidential elections next Sunday.
Days before, the so-called ‘ambassador’ of the sertanjeo – born on a ranch in Minas Gerais 33 years ago and now earning 500,000 reais (100,000 euros) per concert – had performed in Mato Grosso do Sul. He announced his support for the president. However, at a concert in Miami, wrapping himself in a Brazilian flag before an audience of expatriate Brazilians who shouted “Mito!”, Bolsonaro’s nickname, although Lima surely took the hint.
With the capacity to fill stadiums and monopolize radio stations, Lima is a valuable asset for the Bolsonaro campaign. But he’s not the only one. 18 sertanejo artists appeared with the president in Brasilia last week to support his re-election.
The support for Bolsonaro is for “the idealism of the family and the future of our children,” Lima said. “It’s about the agribusiness, and the people from the interior, the ones who put food on the table of every Brazilian.” Other singers repeated the hoaxes of the president’s campaign. Bolsonaro’s rival, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, “is going to close all the churches,” veteran Leonardo warned. “I am afraid that Brazil will go the way of Venezuela,” Chitaozinho added, quoting his own song from ten years ago: “I am afraid of failure.”
Sertanejo is the music of the interior of Brazil, heroically rural for artists like Lima and Chitaozinho but, in reality, already a huge agro-industrial factory on deforested and polluted land. Like country in the US, it is music for a public mainly white, with sentimental lyrics about love and betrayal. “I haven’t showered for three days since you left me,” read a backcountry ballad that played on the radio on the highway to Cuiaba, the capital of Mato Grosso.
The sertanejo genre has been transformed from the old caipiras for accordion and viola (Brazilian guitar) that emerged a century ago in the rural interior. It is already known as a university sertanejo -adapted to youthful tastes- although the majority of young university students in Brazil cannot even see Bolsonaro.
The key is to record the sertanejo live to take advantage of those moments of heightened emotion when the massive audience sings in unison and raises thousands of mobile phones like candles. It is what allows singers like Lima to present themselves as the voice of the people, another valuable contribution to the Bolsonaro campaign.
On the other side of the cultural war trench in Brazil is Carioca funk, born in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1980s, a Brazilian offshoot of Miami Sound hip hop with its black singers and explicitly sexual lyrics.
It is the music that evangelical Bolsonarism believes is from the devil. In 2017, when Bolsonaro was preparing his assault on presidential power, 22,000 Brazilians signed a proposal in favor of banning carioca funk because “it only serves to recruit criminals, rapists, and pedophiles.”
Hence the irony that the most famous funkeira is already a world star who sings in three languages ??and speaks perfect American English. This is Larissa de Macedo Machado, alias Anitta, born in Honorio Gurgel, a favela on the outskirts of northern Rio, who has just become the first Latin artist to top the Spotify world ranking with more than six million views for his video ‘Wrapping’.
After remaining distant in previous elections, Anitta has declared herself in favor of Lula this time, joining a long list of anti-Bolsonaro artists that includes another funkeira Ludmilla as well as historical figures such as Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarques or Nando Reis. “I’m not a PT supporter – a supporter of the PT – but this year I’m with Lula,” Anitta tweeted in July. She posted a thread on Twitter comparing Bolsonaro to Voldemort, the evil character from the Harry Potter novels, and Lula, who turns 77 this week, to Dumbledore, the wise old wizard. It is a refreshing alternative to the narrative of biblical good and evil monopolized by the evangelical pastors of the Bolsonarist right against Lula.
Although her music has become more eclectic, Anitta still considers herself a funkeira. Her song “Vai malandra”, with strong sexual irony, is pure carioca funk and the video clip was recorded in the Vidigal favela in 2017. “I am going to do everything possible so that carioca funk is respected in Brazil; “, She said last year.
There have already been scuffles between sertanejo artists and Anitta. At a concert in Mato Grosso this year, Ze Neto, a young Bolsonarista singer, criticized Anitta and other artists for benefiting from the so-called Rouanet Law that helps finance the arts through tax incentives and has been draconianly cut by Bolsonaro “! The people finance us!” Ze announced as he ridiculed the desired tattoo on Anitta’s buttocks.
The funkeira responded in a devastating way by helping to uncover a public money financing scandal of sertanejo concerts from municipalities governed by the Bolsonarist right, whose main beneficiary was precisely Lima. For example, she charged 800,000 reais -160,000 euros- for a concert in the municipality of Sao Luiz in the Amazonian state of Roraima, one of the poorest in Brazil. The singer’s fees “exceeded the annual budget for transportation and food for the town’s schoolchildren,” as reported in the American magazine Billboard.
