In 2003, after 5 years of trying to reconcile the contradictions that are always at play as an ex-patriot in Rio de Janeiro, I decided to embrace them. I returned to New York, ready to try a new life, a kind of ex-patriot in my own country. Edward Said fantasizes a bit about this in Representations of the Intellectual, lifting the position of the public intellectual to the Romanticized state of the exile. I was always a skeptic of this position, favoring Rousseau’s concept that knowledge is just pain (though it is common knowledge that he did like to get spanked on the ass by strangers, so perhaps his relationship to pain differs from a more traditional notion, or we could say knowledge is a pain in the ass–get it?!). But perhaps Said’s position, of the intellectual as exile, even in his or her own nation-state, has some truth-value if we consider the condition of the practicing thinker in the United States of America right now.

First, short of Chomsky (here debating Foucault), we are left with a scant few so-called public intellectuals from which to choose. Some of my colleagues and friends have decided to look to popular forms of representation, from Hip-Hop’s heroes to some hopeful hopelessness in the form of television, like John Stewart or Stephen Colbert. Foreign intellectuals, such as Habermas, with his explicitly eurocentric viewpoint (a positionality for which he receives endless criticism from everyone from Judith Butler to Peter Sloterdijk), has, nonetheless, occupied a critical force in legal and ethical studies for many years. Still, for a national product, we are talking about US intellectuals here, from its own respective borders, so I guess he’s out. Who do we have now? Oprah? Keith Olberman? Obama? Hmm….Perhaps we have a real problem of leadership in the intellectual community. Or perhaps the stage has changed or been removed. Does anyone care about exiled intellectuals in the US?

Brazil has a a unique tradition of exiling intellectuals, if only to then be able to appreciate them. Caetano Veloso, of course, never fails to remind us of his brief imprisonment and forced exile to England (where he produced one of his greatest records, A little more blue. I have always looked to Brazil as the “country of the future”, as it has been popularly known. Perhaps we should start doing this, or have we already?

The intellectual as exile, from Benjamin to Veloso to Mandela to perhaps even Herman Hesse and so many countless others, seems to be a condition of the State that is as inescapable as the prison walls of Guantanamo. But Brasil seems to have a particular twist to its intellectuals as exiles. As many of my friends have told me, and as I have seen as well, the Brasilian is not appreciated by Brasil until it is first appreciated by Brazil.

We can see this both in music (from Bossa Nova to Gilberto Gil, who also had a stint in London, to Jorge Ben and Chico Science and Nação Zumbi, to Sepultura etc.) as well as the visual arts. The incredibly prolific Helio Oticica got his first real New York show for many years posthumously at the New Museum–yet it was a show about Helio Oticica’s time in New York. Perhaps his best show to date, aside from Whitechapel in 1969, was from Rotterdam’s Witte de Withe Center and the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis. This catalogue continues to be one of the best publications available on the artist. Does Brasil need Brazil?

This question has arisen time and time again, and we are given a glimpse into some of this contradiction in the very thorough documentary on Carmen Miranda “Bannanas is My Business“. Miranda’s story, first loved as national heroine, then hated for “selling out,” as it were, the Brasilian image, seems really difficult for many to grasp from abroad. But her work came at a time when nationalism within Brasil was wedded to the strong state apparatus and a concentrated export economy of national cultural production.

Since 1994, when Fernando Enrique Cardoso “opened his legs” by dollarizing the economy and stimulating foreign ‘investment’, Brasil has moved quickly to establish itself as a very real player within the international game of consumer economies.
Many of its stifiling import taxes on technology and foreign goods have been reduced, and a newfound relationship with the “exterior,” as it is known, began.

But, perhaps predictably, the relics of the past fetishizations of the North continue to haunt as a specter. 389 years of colonization are hard to shake off (Brasil was the last country in the western hemisphere to end slavery, as well a late-comer to national revolution). As an example, for City of Gods to carry its critical social and cinematographic relevance, its success in international festivals and markets was essential. Is it power that is sought, from or for foreign investment and money? Is it the media justification? Or is it that for so long, Brasil has required the seal of approval from abroad, that it continues to validate itself first through the its imaginary eyes of others?

Now this may come off as harsh, but I can only illustrate countless examples. Diplo playing baile funk in Brazil, but does he even know the lyrics of the tracks he plays? Yes, DJ Marlboro was a hit already before he toured internationally, but are any of these artists that Marlboro and Diplo play ever really getting paid? What about Tom Zé, who, despite his disdain for the US and in particular the US government, required David Byrne as a champion before he was able to quit his day job writing jingles?
Yet someone like Bebel Gilberto, who largely made her entire career abroad, is scorned, despite her very high production vaules.

This generalization of national music production has its exceptions, and as the state of the music industry begins to dissipate and micro-economize, the newer generation of music makers has led the way towards a new language of production.
BNegão and Instituto
Sincerely Hot and Kassin+2
Sabotage (R.I.P), Xis, Racionais MC’s, M.V. Bill, R.D.C and even D2

I guess I have two hopes. From my position right now, I can try do something so that one day Brazil will value Brasil. But some people feel that first Brasil has to value Brasil. Of course, I have to wonder, where do the borders lie?

Chapa Coco by Xis–

Trafico na Favela by R.D.C.

I have been asked by a number of friends over the past couple of days to discuss the conditions of the military occupation of 9 favelas in Rio de Janeiro. In my life, I have lived 5 years in Rio, and dedicated a tremendous number of energies into trying to untangle its weave to look at its fabric. I have not succeeded, and frequently, when addressed with questions as to “why?”, I can only respond with a feeble attempt at “how”.

How can Rio allow such radical stratifaction, both class and race, be so evident and yet do little to resolve or address it? How can Rio celebrate a 2.5 million reais (US$750,000) Rolling Stones Concert on the beach and allow and encourage the federal military to occupy its favelas again (yes, the military has had a presence in Rio’s streets a number of times in the past years)? How can a supposed left Lula, seen here with Tony Blair, support such action? How can anyone live in such an amazing state of contradiction and celebrate it with carnival?

The answers I usually attempt are fairly simple, and hardly complete:
Rio is Raw. It is not a total core and periphery model of a city, as in Europe or many US cities (and São Paulo). The socio-geography puts its slums right next to, and quite literally on top of, some of the most expensive real estate in the world. It is not Tokyo. It is not New York. It is Rio. And it is exposed.
But if you began to expose each of these cities to itself, you would find, on a different scale, many of the exact contradictions that are lived every day in Rio. It isn’t to excuse Rio, but it is to situate it as unique in its raw exposure of the contradictions of global capital flows and corruption that dominate our current time.

Rio is an exceptionally corrupt city. Rio is an exceptionally beautiful city. Rio is a divided city (Zona Norte, the workingclass and poor region, and Zona Sul, the wealthy). It is the heart of Brazil, the country of the “future”. It is the heart of messianism and the heart of utopianism (more so than Brasilia, which tried and always already failed). Rio believes in the future, and in itself. It is the greatest city I know, and the worst. But it is fundamentally not neutral. There is almost no middle ground in Rio. You have, or you don’t. You can, or you can’t. You are, or you are not. But, some day, if you believe, or try hard enough, you always could, you always might be. It is a city of faith in itself.

When the military, or the police, occupy the favelas, it is because Rio, like many cities in Brazil, is a city of civil societies. The federal government is fairly weak compared to the local rulling forces, both militarily and socially. Everyday life in Rio is regulated by neighbohoods and implicit cultural rules coming from a mutual (mis)understanding of social norms. Common sense, in the Gramscian sense, rules, and common sense is much more flexible than federal law.

When the government steps in, it is to impress, to leave an impression, and should come as no surprise that when Lula, wishing to appease Tony Blair and the international community, stands by his decision to exhibit control and force over his people, he is doing so to imply conditions of rule that do not, and cannot, control the people of Rio. Just as Tony Blair cannot control his own people with a terrorist Police force that killed Brazilian Jean Charles Menezes in the subway, Lula will not control Rio, nor its favelas. But he may have succeeded in leaving an impression, which was, most likely, his original desire (do you think that he actually cared that a few weapons were stolen from a barracks?).

Aside from my vague comments, I can suggest one film and two directors to that I find understand the conditions that reproduce the violence and corruption that form the fundaments of Rio (and many cities– like Washington D.C.–around the world).

Historias de Uma Guerra Particular, by Katia Lund and Joao Moreira Salles, 1999. This film comes bundled with Cidade de Deus (City of Gods), a film based upon a much more amazing book of the same title by Paulo Lins. Joao Salles is an incredible director and the foundational force behind VideoFilmes in Rio, a committed, though sometimes pedantic, production house dedicated largely to PBS and HBO style documentaries. Both he and Katia came very close to serious jail time for this film for their involvement with Marcinho VP, a druglord and self-proclaimed revolutionary.

The other documentary source I can recommend are films by Eduardo Coutinho. Titles such as Edificio Master, Santo Forte and Babilonia 2000 are key for any discussion of the social conditions of Brazil, as well as the 2/3 world in general.

I can recommend any music by seu jorge, bezerra da silva, Racionais MC’s, Xis, and many others, but I will talk music later…

I have some remorse and sadness when I see Lula’s military ‘invasion’ of the favelas. I feel just as much hope, though, as that finally the international press has begun to pay attention.

The inherent contradictions that encapsulate much of our everyday activities are apparent in Brazil, on the surface, raw in Rio. It seems to me that the more we address those contradictions so visible in Brazil, the more we will be forced to begin to address those that surround us everyday, wherever we are.

“What is noise to the old order is harmony to the new.”-Jacques Attali, Noise

Yes, we have all heard it all before. Sometimes.

Here are some resources I use for hearing and listening:

last.fm–just a great way to listen to music in a community
freesound project–post and listen to everything from fx to beats. hi-res and well documented.
odeo–Record! Listen! Share! why not?
broadcast electronics–make your life a broadcasting radio station
audacity–yes, you probably already have this, but be sure to download its export as mp3 library as well as its vst plugin library. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it’s free!
the hype machine–music blog aggregator. just music, but a lot of it.
free sound effects library–ok, 9/10 you get what you pay for, but for the desperate, this can cover your ass for a temp. edit.
opsound–just a great fking resource for tagged music. Just got back from the Palais du Tokio, and they love these guys. I thought it was lame at first, but then i poked around, and there are some gems.

ok, more soon…and feel free to comment (ahem) if u think this is garbage or interesting.