Are Globo's telenovelas with their back turned to Brazil?

I saw the ending of the telenovela “EM FAMÍLIA” which ends in a classical music concert in PARIS.

I do not think the FRENCH TOURIST AGENCY could have done a better job at promoting tourism to the French capital. Since the telenovelas are often sold to DOZENS OF COUNTRIES, I am sure Paris will see a boost of tourism.

Why is not a BRAZILIAN DESTINATION featured? There are plenty of chique, luxurious and sophisticated ones.

Why not pick a luxurious resort in the Brazilian northeast such as Trancoso, BA, why not feature Campos do Jordão, SP or the charming town of Lavras Novas, MG?

(And if they think there is no equal to “Paris” in Brazil for the purpose of a romantic ending in this telenovela, then this is marvellous opportunity to CREATE / DEVELOP A BRAND.   Hollywood at some point in time was also just a sleepy Californian town.)

If you do it well, you might find THOUSANDS OF CHINESE TOURISTS wanting to visit this or that brazilian destination, featured this or that telenovela.

Same thing for FOOD.   Why not feature people consuming Brazilian food (like PÃO DE QUEIJO) and drinking GUARANÁ?   This would also be an opportunity to popularize uniquely Brazilian brands in Brazil and abroad.

But instead the rich main characters in the telenovelas live in NORTH-AMERICAN STYLE HOUSES, dress like NORTH-AMERICANS, live in MIAMI if the really have enough money, and travel to EUROPE whenever they can.

It almost gets to point of BRAINWASHING Brazilians into believing that: The richer and more sophisticated you are, the less Brazilian want to be and the less you want to have to do with Brazil.

But all this is also true in general, valueing foreign culture and overlooking local culture is also true when it comes to the SOUNDTRACKS.

Take for example the telenovela “CORDEL ENCANTADO”, a French/Northeastern (nordestina) fairytale.

The (Brazilian) soundtrack features songs by Brazilian artists, many of them Northeastern. But it is definitely NOT REPRESENTATIVE of Northeastern music in any way:

1) The artists are often more "neutral" Brazilian artists, guitarists and singers, with an affinity with more international musical genres such as ROCK, JAZZ and BLUES (take Lenine, Maria Gadú and Zé Ramalho for example).

2) And most importantly, where is the ACCORDION?

If there is an instrument that REPRESENTS Northeastern music, then it is the ACCORDION. But there are only TWO soundtracks out of SIXTEEN that feature the accordion:

a. Saga of Felipe Catto (which is by the way a tango!) and

b. Xamego of Luiz Gonzaga - after all he COULD NOT BE COMPLETELY IGNORED...

The Northeast has a great number of marvellous accordion players, from DOMINGUINHOS to Mestrinho, from Oswaldinho to MENINÃO.

WHERE IS THEIR MUSIC ON THIS ALBUM?

ANY ONE OF THEM is more representative of Northeastern music than 90% of the artists on that album together!

What is even worse, when it comes to the INTERNATIONAL SOUNDTRACKS, often any little bit of genuine Brazilian music (that could identify the telenovela as being Brazilian) is removed.

Take for example FLOR DO CARIBE, which only features English and Spanish songs in its international version!

If it is sold to SPANISH speaking countries, why would the viewers prefer an ENGLISH song to a Brazilian song?

If it is sold to ENGLISH speaking countries, why would the viewers prefer an SPANISH song to a Brazilian song?

And in ANY OTHER foreign country it makes EVEN LESS SENSE to swap Portuguese language songs for English and Spanish ones.

The bottom line is:   WHY IS GLOBO SO AFRAID OF BEING BRAZILIAN OR TO SHOW THE REAL BRAZILIAN CULTURE TO PEOPLE?

Thoughts on the opening and closing cerimonies of the FIFA world cup

First, congratulations to the organizers of the opening ceremony for not showing a half-naked woman dancing samba.

This stereotype is doing today as much harm to Brazil as it is doing to one of its most important "trademarks" : SAMBA itself.

But there are some things the cerimony could have done better:

The opening ceremony showed parts of brazilian folclore, such as FREVO, DANÇA GAÚCHA, COCO and CAPOEIRA.

Among these, what came across rather nicely was (the internationally already well-known) CAPOEIRA, with its acrobatic moves.

Unfortunately though on the other hand the less famous FREVO wasted this opportunity to impress the spectator: The dancers did not show any of the sometimes acrobatic, sometimes subtle, but always spectacular and unique moves that are so characteristic to FREVO. I do not know why, this might be due to the difficult surface on which the dancers had to perform, or simply, the dancers selected for the show were not good enough.

This is a shame, because without these moves, FREVO is reduced to some "hopping around" in circus-like costumes - in short, it looses its essence.

The last part of the show featured three singers (two american and one brazilian): world famous JENNIFER LOPEZ, rather little known PITBULL (whose most brazilians learned about during the cerimony) and CLAUDIA LEITTE.

The choice of PITBULL and JENNIFER LOPEZ for the official song has already surprised most brazilians, even more the choice of the opening song.

After all the song was an american song with an american rhythm, instrumentation and sound, sung by two americans, with only “a participation” of a brazilian singer at the end.   (The only attempt to relate this song to the host nation, by the way)

There was some attempt at giving it hispanic flavour as two of the singers had Spanish surnames, and one of them even sang part of it Spanish.

But even with this Spanish touch the song is deeply rooted in the musical culture north of Miami:

One should not confuse Hispano-American culture with Hispanic-American culture born in the U.S. The latter has a strong influence from other popular currents of U.S. american music (such as afro-american hip hop). PITBULL is such an example, after all he is a rapper...

I do not think this was an attempt to approximate brazilian music with north-american hispanic music. FIFA knows very well that hispanic-american music and brazilian music are two different pairs of shoes, such as FRENCH CHANSON and BRITPOP.

I also do not think it was an attempt to produce a song with internationally well-known artists or with an international flavour (in this case FIFA could have asked MICHEL TELÓ or GUSTTAVO LIMA).

I assume that it was simply a concious choice to feature two U.S. artists, with a song aimed at the U.S. public. After all the U.S. is very large market and “soccer” has a lot of potential to grow there.

Similarly the closing cerimony featured two non-Brazilian artists, WYCLEF JEAN and CARLOS SANTANA and ALEXANDRE PIRES.

Again the U.S. american influece in the music of WYCLEF JEAN was very obvious. He is called a haitian artist, but I do not know what of haitian music remains?

I think it is only dangerous selling U.S. music for music from other countries, it can kill diversity.