Something about Brazil No. 1: Don't make the OK symbol with your hands — it's like an upraised middle finger here.
Something about Brazil No. 2: Beware of directions. Some Brazilians will give you wrong directions rather than owning up to the fact they don't know how to find something in their own country or city.
One of the first things I always do when I visit a country is head to a couple of record stores. Since I'm here in Rio de Janeiro to attend Rock in Rio, a big two-weekend music extravaganza, I wanted to check out what was cool, what was selling at some of the local record shops. I usually go to some of the big chains whenever I make such visits, but I also stop in at some of the rootsier, more underground places. You have to listen to a lot to find out what's really going on. After all, if you went into a record store in Manhattan and asked what was cool, there a good chance they might hand you crappy stuff like 'N Sync, Brian McKnight and Eminem. Or they might give you good stuff like Beck, D'Angelo and OutKast. So I usually buy a lot to maximize the chance I'll end up with the South American Radiohead rather than the South American Mandy Moore. One Mandy Moore per continent is plenty.
There have been a number of musical movements in the last century or so in Brazil. Samba got its start in the early 20th century as many former slaves moved to central Rio, taking with them their traditions of batucadas (percussion jams) and fusing the rhythms with influences from more formal musical genres such as marcha and maxixe. In the '50s there was the bossa nova, a cooler, more streamlined genre partly derived from samba that was championed by Antonio Carlos Jobim and others. And in the mid-'60s, in the wake of the Beatles and psychedelia and political oppression in Brazil, there was Tropicalia, a free-spirited take on music that mixed indigenous rhythms with electric rock instrumentation, wild dress, playfully surreal lyrics and fierce individualism. And also in the '60s, people finally gave up trying to name all the emerging genres and somebody came up with the catchall name MPB, which stands for "musica popular brasileira." Basically any new music from Brazil could fit in this category, making long explanations like this one unnecessary. Milton Nascimento (who's at Rock in Rio), Chico Buarque (one of Brazil's finest songwriters), Ivan Lins (another revered songwriter) and Gal Costa (one of the country's most beloved vocalists) could all safely be filed under MPB.
So I went into a store named Lojas Americanos, which, happily, turned out not to be a store for Americans at all, but a local department store like Kmart or Target. The store had a pretty extensive CD selection on the first floor. Interestingly enough, foreign record stores tend to be dominated by American artists. Other countries, of course, have great artists, but in the U.S., we have an ongoing series of slam-dunking, trash-talking, high-scoring Dream Teams: We just keep pumping out dominating bands that are popular worldwide and demand space in record stores. Clear the lane — here comes Backstreet Boys! Watch out — Christina Aguilera raining threes from the corner! Lojas Americanos wasn't having that. There were very few American or international artists on display — no Britney, no 'N Sync, no Limp Bizkit, no Eminem. Instead there was a huge section of MPB that featured such younger artists as Marisa Monte (a fine young vocalist who is a bit like Dido or Beth Orton with some samba thrown in), the ska-pop-reggae band LS Jack, and such veterans as Chico Buarque, Ivan Lins and Gal Costa.
Something about Brazil No. 3: Brazil isn't just a country, it's really its own world, with its own language (Portuguese), music and culture; it's not as eagerly derivative as some other countries. There are more than 150 million people living here, so they've got plenty of their own cultural inertia.
After my shopping trip, I once again turn my attention to preparations for the megaconcert, which starts on Friday. I'm already getting a bit worried about it. Festivals are almost always confused, weirdly organized affairs in which you spend as much time looking for your car afterward as you do listening to music. Festivals are usually dirty, muddy, nasty events with horrifying portable toilets that cannot be used by human beings, poorly cooked diarrhea-inducing refreshments that force concertgoers to renounce their humanity and use those horrifying portable toilets, frustratingly short sets, frustratingly long set breaks, public drunkenness, lewd behavior, bad weather, sunburn, hailstorms, plagues of frogs, herds of monkeys, unicorn attacks, tornadoes, oil spills, illegal medical waste disposal, meteor showers and, worst of all, bad acoustics. But that being said, festivals can be a lot of of fun. However, Rock in Rio — in part because of its sheer size — promises not only to be a megaconcert but to be megaconfusing as well.
The organizers have built a huge site they've dubbed the "City of Rock," a 2,500,000-square-foot complex that will host the concert, all five stages, and all the concession stands. In a country that's plagued by rampant homelessness it's a bit depressing, to say the least, to see the construction of a whole city for rock 'n' rollers before some of these street children even have roofs over their heads. It should be pointed out, however, that a portion of the proceeds from Rock in Rio is said to be earmarked for disadvantaged youth. Nonetheless, the whole concept of "a city of rock" makes me think of that godawful Jefferson Airplane song that goes "we built this city on rock and roll" — which never struck me as that sound an architectural proposition.
Kids have staked out all the hotels around town where the performers are staying. You can now tell which acts are staying where by whose albums are being clutched by the throngs of fans outside the lobby. R.E.M. and, apparently, Sting, are at my hotel, The Copacabana Palace. Everything is far away from everything else — it's a half-hour ride to the Inter-Continental Hotel to pick up my passes for the concert.
At the Inter-Continental, one of the first people I run into is Guy Garcia. Longtime readers of TIME may remember that Garcia was reviewing music for TIME magazine before I started on as music critic here about eight years ago. Now he's VP of content and programming at AOL Latin America, which is the chief sponsor of Rock in Rio. Readers of TIME should rest assured that I don't plan to parlay my position into any high-paying corporate positions, though if anyone from Intel, Microsoft or Cisco is reading this, my résumé is available upon request. This would also be a good time to mention that the Federal Communications Commission, just this Thursday, approved the proposed merger of America Online and Time Warner, which owns the magazine I work for. Yup, it's all rather incestuous. I just hope when all this merging and synergizing is over I don't end up married to my cousin or something.
Garcia basically tells me that Rock in Rio is helping to brand AOL in the minds of Brazilians. An image enters my mind of a sizzling cattle brand being applied to the frontal lobe of a struggling South American being held down by three gringos in pinstriped suits. There are billboards for the festival all over town, in yellows and blues and greens, each featuring young, cool, good-looking, Brazilians who look on the verge of orgasm thanks to some combination of having tickets to Rock in Rio and/or being connected to the Internet thanks to America Online.
One thing that makes this concert special is that it's not especially designed for outsiders. It's a party for Brazilians and if the rest of the world wants to join, the more the merrier. "Our primary goal was to create an event for Brazil and open that up for the rest of the world," says Garcia. "To them, this is their Woodstock." Garcia's "people" (note to self: get a job where I have "people." As a lowly music critic I am people-less) give me my press passes and three T-shirts. They tell me that I'm required to wear one of the T-shirts each day of the concert. The T-shirt is a female-sized medium. I'm a six-foot, five-inch, 220-pound guy. You would think that a megapromoted megaconcert could at least spring for an XL T-shirt.
Later on, I go into the main press room, where lots of young, cool, good-looking Brazilians (and Americans as well) run around getting everything ready. Many of the acts don't speak English and, what's more, don't have managers or agents that can speak English, and so for non-Portuguese speakers like myself, the translators at the press office are something of a necessity.
I'm eager to talk to Max de Castro, a Beck-like performer who blends samba, hip-hop and bossa nova into something fresh and interesting. I bought his CD, the terrific and inventive "Samba Raro" on Amazon.com, but since it was taking too long to arrive, I just downloaded the whole thing from Napster. It's well worth getting, but I recommend you give the guy a break and pay for it (my hard copy is on its way via overnight mail) since it's not like he's making Metallica money. Those guys, you can feel free to rip off.
Max de Castro, as it turns out, hasn't arrived from Sao Paulo yet (he's producing an album for another artist), so he calls in and another Rock in Rio staffer, a smiling dark-haired woman named Daniela who turns out to be from New York, helps with the translation.
Castro says his album "Samba Raro" is a tribute to the artists of the past he feels deserve recognition, including Edison Machado, Eumir Deodato, Moacir Santos, Jorge Ben and Baden Powell. Each song focuses on a different act or group of acts; the title track, for example is dedicated to Brazilian acts from the '60s. While he draws from the past, he's also looking to the future and considers the album his "way of baptizing the style" he's developed.
Or at least this is what I think Max de Castro said. Sometimes he would talk for five minutes and the translator's answer would be "yes" or "no." You know that phrase "something was lost in the translation?" I was living it, baby. Castro, who is 28 and was born in Rio, says he thinks Rock in Rio will have a major impact on Brazilian artists. In past megaconcerts, Brazilian artists have taken a backseat to international ones. "There's a certain segregation when it comes to megashows to give foreign performers more credit," says de Castro. Rock in Rio, he believes, will place Brazilian acts alongside big foreign stars where they belong. That day, I decided to take a train ride up to the summit of Corcovado, the famous peak that Antonio Carlos Jobim celebrated in song.
At the top of Corcovado is Cristo Redentor, the huge statue of Christ with his arms stretched out that's become a symbol of Rio. It was completed in 1931, stands 100 feet tall and weighs 1,145 tons. In the base of the statue is a small chapel with a few wooden seats, a red carpet, and a marble altar with purple flowers set in vases on top. Visitors throw bills and coins on the carpet and say prayers.
I also notice on the wall of the base of the statue a small plaque announcing that GE provides the lighting to light up Christ. I assume the plaque is referring to the statue and not the real guy. It would be a bit of a theological disappointment if the Star of Bethlehem turned out to be some sort of product placement thing.
Later, as I ride in a taxi back to my R.E.M.-fan-encircled hotel, and after I pass the many multicolored billboards announcing Rock in Rio with all those pictures of enraptured Internet-connected youth, I see one sign that really stands out. It's a billboard of Cristo Redentor standing behind a huge, sweating can of Pepsi, almost like he's about to throw his arms around it. But I'm not thinking about Jesus' Pepsi just this moment. I'm thinking about how I'm gonna fit into that stupid T-shirt.
Something about Brazil No. 4: Beware of any generalizations about Brazil, especially by foreign journalists like me who A) don't speak Portuguese, B) have only been in the country 48 hours and C) have trouble pronouncing names like "Milton Nascimento."
NEXT: Rock in Rio begins with an opening day that features Gilberto Gil, Sting, Daniela Mercury, James Taylor and, in all probability, lots of overpriced concession-stand food.