Filmstill: Harmonia do Sampler (Music), Jackson Villela (Video): «Pau, Perereca e Cu – PPC» (Brazil 2017)

«Dick, Pussy, and Ass for Everyone»

Interview

Dancing women at a pool party, men with guns and barbecued sausages, and pink blow-up flamingos: Today, pop culture spreads around the globe massively and without delay. Every day one is confronted with a vast amount of signs from different cultural backgrounds. But how do we read them? How do we understand a music video in a language we don't know? For example, I tried to understand a recent music video from Brazil that was published on the blog of Daniel Haaksman without any comment. There was no chance – I had to ask for help. Here is what reached me from Brazil via email.

It was the video «Pau, Perereca e cu – PPC» by the Brazil musicians Harmonia do Sampler that caught my attention. I was asking myself what this video could be about: is it another sexist piece from Brazil's vivid funk culture or is there more to it? I could feel a certain kind of irony, but at what are they poking fun actually? To get answers I had to exchange some emails with Rafael Ops aka DJ Ops, one of the members of Harmonia do Sampler. Rafael also sent me a couple of short comments on the video by a few other people. Listen, read, and comment yourself.

The Video

The Interview

[Hannes Liechti]: What is the video about?

[Rafael Ops]: It's about good-vibe parties. It starts with a bad-vibe trap when one of the characters changes the track and everybody has a great time.

[HL]: What are the lyrics about?

[RO]: It's funny that I almost feel ashamed to say what it means. The chorus is a repetition of the words «pau, perereca e cu» which literally means «dick, pussy, and ass». Cae Maia, the singer, also says random words like «let's go, brother!» and «it's for everybody!» At the beginning he says «Stop the intolerance! I'll now present you the first polissex success of Brazil». It's almost a joke, inspired by Bahia music.

[HL]: Why do you feel ashamed to tell me what it means?

[RO]: Well, it felt kind of weird mentioning dick, pussy and ass to someone I had never spoken to before. My innate moralism is still here somewhere.

[HL]: What do you mean by «the first polissex success»?

[RO]: It's meant that «dick, pussy, and ass» is for everyone: men, women, gays, trans, anyone. Usually, this popular carnival, bahia-influenced music is male chauvinist and usually draws the women as an object and puts them in an uncomfortable place. We are all sensible to the feminist cause.

[HL]: What are the key elements in Bahian music?

[RO]: There are many «Bahia musics». It's probably the richest cultural region we have in Brazil. In the 90s the term «axé» was popularized worldwide. It's influenced by Afro-Brazilian rhythms such as «ijexá», Jamaican reggae, Calypso... There's also the «Guitarra Baiana» which gave birth to the «trio elétrico» – Bahia sound system culture. Now, contemporary groups such as Baiana System are bringing it back. There's also another phenomenon called «pagodão», which came from what we called «swingueira da bahia». It's a really danceable slow BPM rhythm that is getting global in the bass culture. Characteristic percussion elements are the «timbal» and the «surdo» bass drum. Congas and Bongos are also common.

[HL]: What have been the reactions on the video in Brazil?

[RO]: In general, this project has been a huge success in Brazil. Some people understood we made a «polissex» carnival joke, about fun, about liberty and we had really great reviews. Others found it too vulgar, too explicit and meaningless. We think that all the reactions were positive as they inspired reflections.

[HL]: What does the band name «Harmonia do Sampler» mean? [RO]: It is also a parody of another Brazilian band called «Harmonia do Samba» – we replaced the word «samba» with «sampler».

The Comments

«Dude, what a great video! I was expecting another common sense of crap music, but what I saw was a wonderful parody of this kind of music. The colors, the actors and the cameras clearly reflect the Brazilian diversity, the joy of making fun of our own misfortune, typical of Brazilian people. As a Brazilian, I think that if we are going to consume crap music it's better consuming our own crap music.»

Ana Luiza Bellacosta, Actress and ordinary audience

«What to expect when some of Brasilia's most creative and original people get together? Exactly something like the Harmonia do Sampler and the #PPC video clip. In addition to guaranteed fun, the song comes at a very important moment of debate about tolerance and gender equality. That's awesome!»

Igor Silveira, journalist, subeditor de cultura do jornal Correio Braziliense

«Add a very good sense of humor with some fun choreography and a free and non-moralist spirit and you have the most funny video of the latest Brazilian carnival. The song is based in the genre ‹Pagodão›, from Bahia, but the final result of the video is a melting pot with influences from all over Brazil.»

Lucio K, DJ and producer

«It's been a great experience dealing with such a huge repercussion with #PPC. Lots of lovers, lots of haters are, every day, sending their impressions. We are also looking foward to release the next productions and we know that there are many people waiting curiously. This song was a great kickstart for us to keep on rewriting the Brazilian mass culture sounds in a funny danceable way.»

DJ Ops, Harmonia do Sampler

Biography

Hannes Liechti lives in Bern, Switzerland, as a popular music scholar/lecturer, curator, cultural producer, and content editor. For Norient, he works as a producing manager (Norient Festival NF, 1+1, Sonic Fiction) and as a curator for the Norient Space «The Now in Sound» (podcast series «Timezones», virtual exhibitions «Norient City Sounds»). He co-published «Seismographic Sounds: Visions of a New World» (2015) and co-curated the corresponding exhibition on global pop. He edited the digital publication «Sampling Politics Today» (2020) and published his PhD on the culture of sampling in experimental electronica with Norient Books (2022). Follow him on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

Published on August 16, 2017

Last updated on September 14, 2021

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Filmstill: Silvana Imam & Elin Kastlander (Music), Olivia Kastebring & Mika Gustafson (Video): «I·M·A·M (jj Remix)» (Sweden 2014)

The Queer Star of Swedish Hip Hop

Portrait

by Kalle Berggren

Silvana Imam is changing Sweden’s contemporary hip hop landscape. In this jj remix of her song «I.M.A.M.», classical hip hop video references – hoodies, bling, car riding and graffiti – are characteristically interchanged with images of political protests, LGBT Pride marches and Pussy Riot members. Crowded scenes pass by in between desolate urban landscapes, while the lyrics contain feminist messages as well as Arabic expressions. Silvana Imam is in many ways a unique artist, but also part of a larger history of hip hop feminism. From the Norient book Seismographic Sounds (see and order here).

Hip hop in Sweden, as in many other places, has been a heavily male-dominated genre since its public breakthrough in the 1990s. Yet, female artists have always been important. Neneh Cherry and Leila K were pioneers and internationally successful. In the 2000s, artists like Ayesha, Feven, Heli, and Melinda Wrede appeared. But in recent years things have changed dramatically: the Femtastic collective has brought together female actors in the urban music scenes, Linda Pira had a huge hit featuring several up-and-coming female rappers, and artists like Cleo and Lilla Namo are frequently played on the radio.

Breaking New Ground in Swedish Hip Hop

One of the most interesting voices of this new generation is no doubt Silvana Imam. While sexism and gender inequality within and beyond the hip hop scene have long been important themes in lyrics by female rappers – including topics such as men’s violence against women, unequal pay, sexist attitudes and so forth – Silvana Imam’s lyrics celebrate feminist icons ranging from Simone de Beauvoir and Valerie Solanas to Pussy Riot and Gudrun Schyman of Feminist Initiative, Sweden’s feminist political party. There is thus a characteristic emphasis on sisterhood, on «my girls», in Imam’s lyrics. But gender is not the only issue at stake in her music. She is also the first prominent queer rap artist in Sweden, which certainly breaks new ground in the largely heteronormative hip hop genre. And while she fills her lyrics with clever references – which in this song includes Narcissus, Cain and Abel – she also has a transnational perspective, herself having roots in Syria and Lithuania. In «I.M.A.M.» she is thus «writing the New Iliad, the New Bible and the New Qur’an» (Quote from the lyrics).

It has now been twenty-five years since Public Enemy’s call to «Fight the power». One of the most exciting things about Silvana Imam is how she brings this spirit into dialogue with a political analysis of the interconnectedness of transnational, queer and feminist issues – taking the «revolution from Stockholm to Saudi Arabia», as she calls it.

This text was published first in the second Norient book Seismographic Sounds.

Biography

Kalle Berggren has a PhD in Sociology from Uppsala University, Sweden. His research focuses on the intersections of gender, sexuality, race and class in Swedish hip hop.

Published on August 18, 2017

Last updated on April 11, 2024

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Seismographic Sounds

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Gingeas (Uploader): «Wrecking Ball» (Song), Synthesia (Program), Note Count: 1,136,985 (2014)

Black MIDI: Notes Like Bullets

Short Essay

by Raffael Dörig

An average pop song counts around one thousand notes, while a typical Black MIDI track is several millions. Black MIDI composers – called «Blackers» – try to challenge computers, ears, and eyes with enormous numbers of super-short and dense notes. The home of this competitive, technology-based and transnational micro-genre is YouTube – and its community is growing fast. From the Norient book Seismographic Sounds (see and order here).

At the chorus, my computer started to stutter, leaving the catchy melody tumbling into chaos. It couldn’t handle the 1.1 million notes of EpreTroll’s Black MIDI version of Miley Cyrus’ «Wrecking Ball.» I tried to play a Black MIDI track in its purest form, from a MIDI file that triggers notes on any software synth (or hardware synth capable of MIDI). A million MIDI triggers pulled, my computer crashed. So, I turned back to YouTube, where Black MIDI tracks can be consumed in the form of screen recordings, safely for my computer. It looks better, too: the screen recordings on YouTube show the one million notes playing in programs like Synthesia, a piano training program in the style of the Guitar Hero game. It becomes an audiovisual thing: notes are presented as colorful bars falling down the screen, hitting a keyboard on the bottom.

What Counts is the Note Count

Black MIDI started in Japan around 2009 when users on the video platform Nico Nico Douga started publishing remixes. They used only one virtual grand piano, but a very high number of notes - once hundreds of thousands, and now dozens of millions. These numbers are proudly noted in the titles or descriptions of Black MIDI tracks. They rise higher and higher by the year - an important part of the competitiveness of this scene. The basic method is to fill up the score with lots of very short notes, keeping the main melody in the front. Some of the note triggers are clustered on lower pitches to create beats, some create long notes to sound somewhat like string synths, some are stacked to form very fast arpeggios imitating the fake polyphony of early monophonic game soundtracks - for example, the typical Commodore C64 sound. Some are just there for visual purposes, creating patterns, images or words when played in Synthesia or similar programs.

In standard notation, the scores become just a black cluster, hence the name Black MIDI (see images). Needless to say, these scores are impossible to play by hand on a real grand piano. Black MIDI seems to echo 20^th century experiments with the mechanical player piano by composers like Conlon Nancarrow (player piano with punch roles) or Marc-André Hamelin (MIDI piano) who wanted to challenge notions of playability by both humans and machines.

Black Score. Ryan TTC (Uploader), TheSuperMarioBros2 (Blacker): «Red Zone» (Song), Singer Song Writer (Program), Note Count: 1.1 Million (2013)

A Transglobal Japanophile Community

Other predecessors might be found in Tracker software of the 1980s and 1990s and its use in the Demo Scene (which also contains the aspect of challenging hardware and showing programming skills). This history is all googleable knowledge, possibly known to many of the mostly teenaged Blackers; however, these don't seem to be main references for them. Black MIDI is deeply rooted in game culture: the medium, the competitiveness (the note numbers are its high scores), the bragging about the computer’s capability of playing the files without lagging, the pseudonyms, the similarities to fast-paced music games, the arpeggios, and the compositions. The most popular of the blackened songs are from computer and video game soundtracks, most notably the Japanese cult series Touhou.

Touhou are «bullet hell» games with millions of colorful bullets raining down the screen that the player has to avoid. So, these 1.1 million notes were actually bullets, and I was in note hell. This is a Kawaii version of war though where everything’s kind of pink and the tunes are as saccharine and catchy as J-pop hits. And pop it is. Black MIDI is juvenile fun that adults don’t get, beautifully senseless, in a feverish adolescent high speed; it’s related to game culture and the digital folklore of vernacular remixes and parodies; it’s distributed via the global mainstream channels of user-generated content, where people from different continents who never meet in person and don’t know each other’s real names form spaces of belonging: true pop of our times.

This interview was published first in the second Norient book Seismographic Sounds.

Biography

Raffael Dörig is the director of Kunsthaus Langenthal, Switzerland, was co-founder of Shift Electronic Arts Festival and the Interdisco netlabel; occasionally he acts as a musician and DJ. He runs a blog called «Dispokino».

Published on August 14, 2017

Last updated on April 10, 2024

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Seismographic Sounds

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«Dick, Pussy, and Ass for Everyone»

Biography

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The Queer Star of Swedish Hip Hop

Biography

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Black MIDI: Notes Like Bullets

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