Christmas can be pretty odd, if you think about it. Taking some time off at the end of the year to be with your family and friends – I get that. Buying presents for them – sure, why not. Putting up a sparkly tree while singing Gregorian chants - OK, whatever floats your boat. Hanging large socks on the mantelpiece for a portly stranger who flies down the chimney on a fleet of reindeer… Sorry, who did you say you know at this party again?
The rituals surrounding the basic goodwill-to-all Christmas message can get very weird very quickly, even on your own turf and through the comforting filter of tradition. Abroad, these eccentricities are thrown into stark relief. Apparently the folks who celebrate Christmas in Japan do so with large
buckets of KFC following a canny marketing push in the ‘70s, while Mexicans traditionally wander the streets inviting themselves into other people’s houses in homage to Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, except with piñatas. Similarly, a foreigner might look askance at, say, the Only Fools & Horses Christmas special in the UK, or the French willingly baking a choking hazard into their
galettes du roi, for reasons that no one can really remember.
Brazil has plenty of these seasonal quirks – for one, it’s boiling hot in December so the Saint Nick/reindeer look is pretty counterintuitive, leading to amusing sights like Santa’s grotto in Guarujá two years back, home to a very sweaty man in a red vest and white beard. Also, everyone opens their presents on the night of December 24th, so surely even the dullest of kids must immediately realise that (SPOILER ALERT) Father Christmas doesn’t exist, and yet there he is every year.
One tradition that you can set your watch to in Brazil is Roberto Carlos’ Christmas show, which is invariably filmed in November and aired in late December. It’s been going for over 40 years, making it one of the longest-running annual TV events I can think of, and is so ingrained in the national psyche that I must be the only one who still notices how bizarre the entire spectacle is.
Roberto Carlos, for the uninitiated, is a soft-rock crooner and
bona fide national treasure (and not, as I first thought, the
left-back namesake with a foot like a traction engine). It struck me as rather quaint that someone so unassuming could become almost as big a symbol of Christmas as Santa himself - imagine if the UK ground to a halt every year to watch a Cliff Richard TV special - but then it has only recently become clear to me just how spectacularly popular he is over here. He’s sold more records in Latin America than the Beatles, and has collaborated with anyone who’s anyone since the ‘60s. In Brazil, Elvis isn’t “the King”; Roberto Carlos is.
He got started in TV and film, as part of the family-friendly “Jovem Guarda” rock scene, and must have nailed his own brand of Beatlemania as he successfully transitioned into middle age crooning romantic numbers in Portuguese and Spanish. Nowadays, apart from the occasional album of standards or ill-advised remix project, his only commitments are the Christmas special and the Roberto Carlos cruise (“Emotions on the High Seas”) which ships out every February and fits his current appearance - basically that of a washed-up cruise-ship entertainer – to a T. Gaby really wants to go on the Roberto Carlos cruise one day, although she would never admit this to her friends.
RC has also acted as a sort of canary in the mine for Brazilian society – during the military dictatorship you were either Team Carlos (clean-cut, mop-tops, etc) or Team Caetano (Veloso, who spearheaded the crazier Tropicália movement and ended up in political exile in London) - but the former later admitted that some of his songs were subtle homages to Caetano, disguised as
love songs to fool the censors. And even Rob isn’t impervious to the current recession: next year’s “cruise” will take place at a resort on dry land, and this year’s TV special had noticeably reduced production values…
My knowledge of his back catalogue is limited to a
live CD on the car iPod, but from what I’ve heard, I must say the man has some tunes. The big hits are “
Detalhes”, a sweeping ballad of betrayal and regret, and “
É Preciso Saber Viver”, a singalong in the “Hey Jude” mould. He does a nifty line in upbeat songs about his cars (“
O Cadillac” and “
O Calhembeque”), and can exhibit a decidedly unromantic streak on tracks like “
Cavalgada”, an astonishing six-minute epic which recounts his sexual predilections in uncomfortable detail, via horse-riding metaphor. Interestingly he doesn’t seem to have many Christmas songs, although he goes on about Jesus a lot.
Mostly “
água com açúcar” (“water with sugar”, i.e. nothing to get worked up about), and his longtime songwriting partner Erasmo Carlos has
the superior LP, but you can see the appeal. He’s actually had a pretty rough life, as everyone he’s known and loved has died in tragic circumstances, which adds some depth to his more introspective work. Even his
Keanu Reeves-esque onstage demeanour comes from losing a leg when he was a kid, so my usual barrage of snide cynicism feels a bit mean-spirited on this occasion.
Slashed budget notwithstanding, yesterday’s Christmas special followed a tried-and-tested formula – a professional Greatest Hits revue, in more-or-less chronological order, with cameo appearances by the pop stars and it-people du jour to keep things interesting. These grasps at cultural relevance sometimes lead to mildly comical attempts at duets, but the general mood is one of unabashed hero-worship and back-patting. A walking catalogue of diva-esque eccentricities at this point (demanding that everyone wear only blue and white, that kind of thing), Rob meets and greets his guests, visibly goes through the motions until the final singalong of “Jesus Cristo”, doles out roses to the audience, then exits stage right with a wry smile, presumably to kick back and relax for another year.
And well he might. He often seems as baffled as anyone by the last half-century of adulation and fame, but then not much makes sense this time of year…
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| Bonus photo: Ridaut backstage with Robbie C |
On that note, let's get the phrase of the week out of the way: it translates as "beauty doesn't put food on the table", meaning appearances aren't everything if you can't back it up (with food, obviously).
