Brazilian musician Martinho da Vila comes to Portugal to pay homage to African-based religions in Brazil and to slaves, in an effort to raise awareness against racism and prejudice.
“You don't make an entire album these days, do you? A song or two is recorded and posted on the internet and social networks, but my label asked me to make an album, an album” and “I had the idea of making an album different from mine, which normally have a lot of rhythm, many choirs and many sounds”, said Martinho da Vila, justifying the option for an unusual record.
“I thought, 'I'm going to do something smaller.' And then I thought of opera”, in which the “songs are all kind of dramatic”, justified the musician, who presented the album in Brazil on May 13, the day of the abolition of slavery.
The disc includes rearrangements and duets and features three new songs, associated with the African and indigenous matrix of Brazil: a tribute to a capoeirista from Bahia, an Indian and the religion of the slaves, which mixes traces of Catholicism and animism, Umbanda.
In Brazil, “the subject of slavery has already been outdated, but there is still a little bit of slave labor in Brazil”, warned Martinho da Vila.
Brazil is “a very big country and there are some regions in the north of Brazil, not very inhabited, which tend to attract people to work with better salary offers. Then, later, [people] get there and can’t leave”, explained the musician.
As for the fight against racism, Martinho da Vila admits that this is an ongoing process in Brazil but also in Europe, referring to the case involving Brazilian footballer Vinicius Jr., from Real Madrid, who has been targeted by racist insults and has already led to international condemnation.
“Prejudice and racism are a worldwide disease, but they can be cured”, stated Martinho da Vila, evoking the South African leader Nelson Mandela: “no one is born racist, they learn to be racist. And if you learned to be racist, you can learn to stop being.”
Despite this, “prejudice has already diminished a lot”, considered the musician, noting that in the recent past “you didn’t see images of black people on magazine covers or in advertising campaigns”, a sign that “things are slowly changing”.
In Portugal, Martinho da Vila will present his new work at the Coliseums in Porto (May 26) and Lisbon (May 27), followed by the a concert in the Algarve (Fuzeta), on June 04th, on the occasion of the Pé Na Terra festival.
With regular concerts in Portugal, Martinho da Vila admitted that he has changed his image of the Portuguese and that today he has a faithful relationship with his audience on this side of the Atlantic.
“There is great empathy” and “I like Portugal a lot”, but “when I was younger I had a different image of Portugal and the Portuguese”, he said.
The image of Portuguese immigrants in Brazil was that of “people who were not very polite, ruder and rougher”, he said, acknowledging that his view changed when he visited Portugal: “Portuguese is docile, it is interesting”.
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