AA.VV.
The Sexual Life Of The Savages

Once, I happened to read a "Rumore" guide on Italian punk.

The thing that amused me the most were the tricks that our punks used to turn their image from a small-town musician loser to a "kid from the dirty, soulless metropolis"... we all know that our country is predominantly rural, made up of thousands of small provincial towns... so it was a bit difficult to find huge abandoned industrial areas full of desperation like the suburbs of Detroit or Glasgow.
So they made do by taking pictures near small Venetian factories, being careful to hide any trace of agriculture! This always made me think about how interesting and beautiful it is that punk, wherever it arrived, took on unusual forms and unexpected contaminations with local cultures/music/aesthetics, assuming decidedly original forms (like our very own CCCP, Metal Urbain in France, numerous Eastern European punk bands, and so on).

The compilation "The sexual life of the savages" is another gem from Soul Jazz Records that brings to light the most disturbing and original sounds of the new wave/post-punk/no wave of São Paulo, Brazil. A handful of bands, often made up of the same people, formed an extraordinary musical clique fueled on one hand by the best New York no wave (DNA, Contortions, Mars), British (Pop Group, A Certain Ratio, Gang of Four) and on the other, although very critical of tradition, by the more visceral Brazilian sounds.
The contamination with national music stands out in tracks like "Samba de morro" by Chance, which is a beautiful electro-bossa played with a Casio and metallic, dissonant instruments, or in the overwhelming rhythms of "Teu Bem" by Patlife. It would be a mistake to think of it as a mere union of two styles, because it's more of a real act of anthropophagy, as claimed by Julio Barroso, journalist, DJ, militant poet, and leader of Gang 90 & As Absurdettes:

"In our idea, cultural cannibalism is a positive force of transformation in art, in other words it´s our way of `devouring´ from other cultures to produce a new work".

Julio Barroso was truly the mentor of the entire scene, strong from his New York experience, where he met the guitarist of DNA, Arto Lindsay, an American of Brazilian origins, and from his political/intellectual militancy. As you might guess, much of the São Paulo new wave was strongly critical of Western dominance, and the difficult living conditions in the cities, the poverty, the rampant corruption (but perhaps this should be in the present tense)... if Lydia Lunch or Richard Hell were the heralds of the fetid New York slums, Akira S e as Garotas que Erratam or As Mercenárias responded that they too had fetid slums with child prostitutes and glue sniffers, and much more than them!
"Hell has a thousand entrances, and some are tourist spots" as the Akira S sing in "Sobre as Pernas", which suggests images of a suffocating, hopeless metropolis, a sort of tropical Blade Runner city. Also standing out in the compilation is a track, "Rock Europeu" by Fellini (in Brazil, it was a small hit in the early '80s) that unleashes caustic comments about the absolute necessity of consuming "Western" music, but it also reflects a situation where, due to scarce imports, doing so was ALSO difficult... and perhaps that's what made São Paulo's music so unique.

Try to get this record, it is truly amazing. Not only are all the songs very beautiful, but the booklet is really interesting, full of photos and stories. And then, you have no idea how wonderfully Portuguese and new wave go together. No, no, much better than you imagine.