Hail fellows well met,
We're back in SazPaz now, and slowly getting back into the swing of things, but just last week we were spending a lovely few days swanning around Gaby's friends' (the ones whose wedding we're going to in Greece this June...) luxury compound in Tabatinga - about a mile from our hotel in Ilhabela as the crow flies, but a gruelling eight-hour trip in gridlocked traffic in reality, as the previous night's storm chaos spilled over into the next day and the queue for the ferry ground to a halt.
Anyway, once we'd finally arrived and settled in, we took in the private beach (where we were accosted in the sea by a flamboyant artist who kept namedropping until we went wrinkly and had to get out), had an amazing BBQ courtesy of Giorgio's granddad, opted to stay an extra day, gorged on ice cream and pannetone, and eventually made our way back on Thursday night for a homecoming pizza with Gaby's grandma and the cats. Not even the untimely smashing of my favourite mug by a restless and housebound Valente could dampen our spirits.
Since then we've been out clubbing, at an uninspiring and massively over-air-conditioned sertanejo barn called Woods, and have decided we're way too old for that sh*t; and on Saturday we visited an amazing, all-gold-leaf restaurant called "The Best Pão de Queijo in the World" for an absolutely obscene Nutella milkshake, in one final act of defiance/sugar rush before reality sets in again.
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Now seems as good a time as any to examine the short history of a cultural phenomenon that's as synonymous with the post-Christmas period here as short-lived exercise regimes and flash-flooding: the Carnaval novelty song.
Every year some idiot-savant comes up with the feelgood hit of the summer, a cartoonish earworm which is blasted out of every car window and soundsystem, covered, spoofed and memed to death until Carnaval ends, at which point it is immediately consigned to the graveyard of history. I've often considered making my fortune writing such a song, as it seems to require no talent or effort, but it's surprisingly hard to predict what will catch on with the masses. The only common factor is that it should sound good blasting out of the back of a flatbed truck by the beach, and even that's stretching the definition of "good".
My first exposure to this cultural quirk was in 2014, when "Lepo Lepo" was all over the airwaves like a rash. In many ways "Lepo Lepo" is the platonic ideal of a Carnaval novelty song: minimal production values, four chords, a lively pagode beat, and a gibberish title which is a euphemism for the singer's genitals, with an added dash of everyman populism (the chorus goes: "I don't have a car / don't have a roof / if she stays with me it's because she likes my / ha ha ha ha ha ha ha lepo lepoooo"). It does very little to dispel unwanted Brazilian stereotypes. The song and its authors, Psirico, were simply too beautiful for this world, and have not been heard of or mentioned since.
In 2015 we were in England for Carnaval, so missed out on the musical herpes that is "Baile de Favela", but we were back in 2016 for "Metralhadora" by Banda Vingadora, who stepped in at the last minute when it looked like Carnaval was going to pass by without a defining song (we are forever grateful). Notable previous entries include "Rebolation" in 2010 and of course "Gangnam Style", which was imported from South Korea in 2012. Note the subtle difference with songs like "Ai Se Eu Te Pego" and "Beijinho no Ombro", which were also big during Carnaval but were engineered to last a little longer, and are still played to this day.
Now the sound of summer '17 has arrived, and it's bloody awful: a tinny dribble of a song called "Deu Onda" ("onda" meaning "good vibes" in this context, more or less) whose coarse braying is a far cry from the tender romanticism of "Lepo Lepo". The chorus is "what am I to do? / My d*ck's in love with you". I pray you never have to hear it.
I have, on the other hand, crafted my first compilation of the new year, and my people will be in touch to work out Skype details later in the week, etc.
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