By SABRINA SEDLMAYER*
From this September 7, 2024, I will continue to melancholically realize that Caetano Veloso lives a threshold, a passage: the childhood of old age.
“But my joy, my irony, is much greater than this crap”, as Caetano Veloso once said.
On September 7, Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethânia's show in Belo Horizonte achieved the feat of gathering more than 55 thousand spectators. An extraordinary number, immeasurably larger than any gathering promoted by the country's far right on the same date.
Art, as a Sunday in life, once again demonstrated its power, competing with so-called “patriotic” activities: surrealist banners hung in squares or held aloft by human arms, noisy motorcycles traveling along avenues and, mainly, inflated speeches calling for the defense of “democracy” and amnesty for those involved in the “January 8th act”.
However, the following day, a peculiar group, whom I will call, for lack of better predicates, “friends of the sensitive”, began to express discomfort with the fact that Caetano Veloso had sung, in that show and on that date, a song by an evangelical pastor. The episode generated a series of discussions and triggered a type of atavism, I will say in advance, aporetic, which dominated most of the arguments presented.
For some, Caetano Veloso should respect the tastes of his loyal audience and not mix religion with art, MPB with hymns of praise. Furthermore, he would have been wrong to mention the growth of evangelical churches in Brazil during the presentation. For others who were disappointed, the gesture was seen as purely marketing, an opportunity to accumulate more capital for retirement, since the percentage of evangelicals is very significant.
The consensus among critics was that Pastor Kleber Lucas' music was poor and simple, out of tune with the songs that the audience knew by heart (and by heart). They also found Caetano Veloso's speech before singing “Deus cuida de mim” (God takes care of me) strange. It mixed worlds that, in the opinion of many, should remain separate. After all, the democratic republic is secular, and religion should, according to these discontented people, remain separate from everyday politics and history. Faith is a personal and non-transferable matter, and the musician, occupying a prominent place, would have the responsibility of keeping his art free from religious influences.
Interestingly, this episode did not generate memes or jokes, as happened between Baby do Brasil and Ivete Sangalo at Carnival 2024. So far, no one has “cheated the apocalypse” and treated the event in a satirical way. Perhaps because Caetano Veloso had already performed on the show Fantastic, in October of last year, alongside pastor Kleber Lucas and his choir of “heavenly musicality” (sic).
At the time, when asked about the partnership with such different worlds, Caetano Veloso stated that he believed that it was “God” who promoted this encounter. He recalled that, despite not being religious, he had been raised in a Catholic family and that he enjoyed acting as a bridge between the world of high culture and the immeasurable phenomenon of evangelical believers in Brazil. It is worth remembering how Caetano Veloso sang the favorite hymns of the Catholic Church for Dona Canô, whenever she asked.
Paraphrasing the anthem of discord, Caetano Veloso stated on TV that he continued to learn “a little here and a little there”, writing songs and singing about any subject, be it pagode or a film, about the loneliness of a hotel room or the beauty he wanted to keep and retain: be it from a beautiful boy from Rio or from an equally beautiful girl, more than beautiful.
The iconic cry “It is forbidden to forbid”, in times of cancellation (I still suffer from the latest events at the Ministry of Human Rights) and the rigidity of a certain political correctness, emerges again, reviving issues that seemed to have been overcome, such as the control of the imaginary and the repression of imaginative art. It is as if ambiguity, ambivalence, and irony were categories from the 20th century. As if the interpreter had to be affiliated with a single standard. Metamorphoses, never again.
I listened to the song a few times and it didn't leave a mark on me, but it didn't irritate me either. It's lukewarm, like cold coffee, without caffeine. It doesn't bother me as much as "Força Estranha", which seems to be written by Roberto Carlos ("Jesus Christ, I'm here!) and I avoid listening to it whenever I can. And wouldn't it be the same case? That of skipping "Deus cuida de mim" and choosing other songs among wonderful, perversely pagan, naughty, seductive, licentious, ironic and happy options?
The debate that arises, after a few hours of reflection, is that for many, art should always be responsible and in good taste. Now, if that were the case, Tim Maia's spiritual journeys should be burned along with the book. Universe in Disenchantment. It is known that not all approaches between music and religion are as successful as My Sweet Lord, the Hare Krishna mantra disseminated in the West by George Harrison and the Beatles. In fact, biblical lyrics mixed with Camões were sung by Legião Urbana in the 1990s.
What is disturbing about the current media and market context is that polyphony and dialogism are increasingly castrated. However, art, music, as well as literature, have the power to create lines of escape, thoughts, and sensations that do not belong to history or philosophy, reinventing life and creating unusual partnerships. Derrida suggests that “saying everything” is the trait of modern literature.
All right!
The mix between what a musician can and should do and the displeasure with a hymn in the middle of a repertoire full of formidable songs also seems to me to be disconnected from the idea of artistic freedom. Life is not always a friend of art, and art is not always there, present, whether in a song or in a novel. Caetano Veloso, in this show, continued to be Caetano: fluid, paradoxical, hybrid, mistaken, disconcerting, singing and translating what he sees and feels. After all, translating is transposing.
If Kleber Lucas's anthem does not have the same strength as other songs, such as Xande de Pilares's voice translating Caetano Veloso, that is a separate issue. In this gibberish of the discontented that did not capture me (but made me write this text in a hurry), I trace a lineage that goes back to Jesus Blew My Mind, which I grew up listening to, from Bach, through Baudelaire, Verlaine and many other damned and satanic works, ending in the tropics with Jorge de Lima and Murilo Mendes (who at the height of Brazilian modernism were jokingly nicknamed “time and eternity” by the avant-garde, precisely because they were Catholic). They are all alive. They continue to burn on the shelves and make crackling sounds when you open their book. Oh, and what would we, readers, be without the verses of the New Testament translated with genius by Raduan Nassar?
From this September 7, 2024, I will continue to melancholically realize that Caetano Veloso is living a threshold, a passage: the childhood of old age. And that, as an artist that he is and was, he must choose how and when to release his voice. Whether it be remembering the many friends who have passed away, singing to the orishas, declaring himself an atheist or singing a hymn for a few believers who should have been there, on that hot desert night that reminded us that a world is ending.
It's good that it was in a football stadium, the Mineirão, because he and Maria Betânia continue to play. And we know that the ball sometimes reaches its intended recipient.
*Sabrina Sedlmayer She is a professor at the Faculty of Arts at UFMG and president of the International Association of Lusitanists.
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