Dancing to a different Drum: Negro Leo talks about Rela
02 December, 2024The rhythm and drums came from the black slaves; the dances from the indians, and the white colonisers brought the costumes to the Bumba-meu-boi festival. With each bonfire lit for Saint John, the June festivities in Maranhão are transformed into a time of rebirth and celebration. The story of bumba-meu-boi originates from a time when Pai Francisco, a slave, killed his master’s pet ox so his pregnant wife could eat ox tongue. The furious master forces Pai Francisco to resuscitate the ox. Shamans and healers are called to help the slave and, when the bull is resurrected bellowing, everyone takes part in a huge party to celebrate the miracle. The galloping drums of the bumba-meu-boi rhythm from Maranhão dominates Rela, the ninth album by Negro Leo, as he delves deep into this accessible mixture of canção torta, Autotune, funk, breaks, and maximalist arrangements. It sounds fresh and vital and though there is an incredible list of contributors, it’s all centred around Leo and his carnally charged ideas where the traditional recasts the modern, twisting it into new shapes.
Last year I caught an early show of Rela being performed at the Não Existe festival. Leo, along with Rodrigo Coelho and Eduardo Manso, performed a version of the album-in-progress in a sweaty cramped corner of the festival. I was greatly impressed as the pounding beat of the boi rhythm rolled over us while a topless Leo moved among the crowd.
But this weekend I caught up with Leo and we had an exchange through the preferred Brazilian way of communicating, WhatsApp.
I ask Leo about his relationship with the boi rhythm. “I am from Pindaré-Mirim, land of the Pindaré ox, in the Maranhão lowlands. During my childhood in Rio, the boi came to me through my mother, through tapes, through photographs. After I became a musician, my mother always encouraged me to work with the boi. It’s in my blood.” I ask him if he was intentionally thinking of creating a new form of Brazilian music using this rhythm. “It’s not a strategy, it’s not something conscious. But if the public and opinion makers see it as something new, I’ll go with it!”
The title Rela refers to a new electronic dance based entirely on percussion and the pulse of the boi rhythm. “I want to call the music on the album ‘Boi Bass’,” Leo replies. “That’s marvellous! Boi Bass! We’re calling it Rela, but it could be known as that overseas.” I ask Leo about the production by Renato Godoy, whereby he has masterfully stitched together a dense mix of genres and contributions from a vast array of collaborators. “He is the architect and engineer of the house. I could say that I showed him a sketch and said, ‘The house can be built here with this layout, etc.’, but the result is way beyond that house.” He talks about how the album was put together. “At first, I just wanted to merge the boi with beautiful melodies, and he [Godoy] presented this idea of merging keys, rhythms, sounds from other regions of Brazil, because our matrix is our matrix, ‘alligators don’t eat birdseed’. Then there’s the synths and bass-lines, because it’s an international matrix. Another important thing was Renato’s sense of practicality. The album was made very quickly. He knew how to bring together the team of co-producers from his own label [QTV]. Everyone received a sample pack and did what they wanted. Mbé, Kiko Dinucci, Os Fita, Vasconcelos Sentimento, Lucas Pires, all came up with different ideas and Renato knew how to harmonize these impulses, because the kid is hardcore!”
The contributions from the QTV stable are a crucial element. “Everyone who is on the technical specs is essential; this is a collective album; it’s what we always dreamed of doing, the QTV ensemble!” he continues. “I want to highlight the participation of Vasconcelos Sentimento and Lucas Pires, as well as Renato. This quadrant, including me, I think is ossobuco [A cut of meat with bone marrow in the middle, although I’m not entirely sure what he means here]. Bernardo Oliveira [label boss], who wrote the text for the album with me, was also very important for the conceptual cohesion. And the participation of Juçara Marçal [Metâ Metâ] was also a great honour. As I said, the QTV ensemble.”
I comment on the use of the histrionic James Brown shriek, made famous by the Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock track “It Takes Two”, on Te Amo. He says, “James Brown’s voice is timeless, right? That’s what’s etched into the minds of the children who are yet to be born. It’s almost a meme.” The genetic origin of the meme (from Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene) is spot-on here, an idea spreading and mutating vertically throughout different cultures and societies.
The album’s lyrical subject matter is highly sexually-charged. The first track, “Date my Age”, with the participation of members of the legendary Banda do Zé Pretinho, reels off the names of dating apps and sites, “Tinder, Bumble, Happn, Grinder, Inner Circle, Jaumo, Ashley Madison, Translr, Badoo, Zoe, Yubo, Lovely…“. I ask him about what he thinks of these apps. “Maybe a sociologist could answer better than me, but in principle, things change. It’s the experience I have at 40 that makes me see today’s youth from a different perspective. So, you can see some things happening… stay interesting. We chose points of contact with recent history on this album. Dating apps are part of that mix.” Elsewhere Leo has talked about this current generation. “This generation is probably as healthy as the previous generations that saw the birth of sexual techniques from the Kamasutra to the Fang-chung Shu. If there is any malaise in this generation, it’s not that they don’t talk enough, it’s that they don’t do enough.”
What was Leo listening to while making the album? “Things from Brazil: piseiro, funk, pagodão, arrocha, brega funk, mandelão, tuin, sofrência [a sertanejo subgenre]; in short, lots of things.”
I ask Leo for some listening recommendations. “I recommend that the reader of this article listens to all the albums released by QTV from 2014 to the present day and see the action of time, of the ecosystem, in the discography.” He’s absolutely right. It’s quite a remarkable catalogue, an alternative recent history of Brazilian music.
To finish, Leo mentions the film he’s been involved with, Aquele Que Viu o Abismo (He who looked into the abyss), jointly directed by Leo and Gregorio Gananian, which has been playing festivals in Brazil. It’s a Futurist-noir filmed in Brazil and China. Leo plays X, involved in a plot of murders and looking for the essence of humanity in a technological world. And, frankly, nowadays who isn’t, but just maybe some of that essence can be found in Rela.
Rela is out now on QTV Selo for a pay-your-own price on Bandcamp:
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