Romulo Mattos *

In a statement recorded in the book Memórias de um Legionário, Legião Urbana guitarist Dado Villa-Lobos does not skimp on the importance of the band’s singer Renato Russo to the rock generation of the 1980s. for his fellow rockers Tom Jobim for the bossa nova and the MPB gang in the 1950s and 1960s. And he uses Gilberto Gil’s song “Gilbertos” about his teacher João Gilberto to deal with his bandmate, transferring his lyrics to the band. eighties rock context: “Appears every one hundred years, one / And every twenty-five an apprentice.” While to conservative minds this parallel established by Dado Villa-Lobos seems heresy, they are two of the most prominent Brazilian generations in popular music – and no one intellectually mature would agree with the validity of imposed hierarchy in art and culture.

If an unusual comparison appears at the end of the aforementioned book, it begins with the guitarist’s recollection of the death of Renato Russo on October 11, 1996. Dado Villa-Lobos recalls that he received the news on the phone at 2:15 am, which left him “stunned” despite learning about his music partner’s shaky health when he said goodbye to him for several days before. The musician also mentioned how much attention was paid to the death of the singer in today’s edition of Jornal Nacional, the program with the highest audience on Rede Globo. To convince journalist Lilian Witte Fiebe of the legitimacy of creating a special story about the life and death of Renato Russo in this TV news, William Bonner threatened to play the kilometer-long texts from Faroeste caboclo, in an unusual way explaining the importance of the Urban Legion to Brazilian pop culture. Dado Villa-Lobos also mentioned the path before the funeral, during which he listened to songs from the band’s recently released album A Tempest on radios installed in cars stopped at traffic lights. Finally, he mentioned the crowd of fans at the Caju cemetery in Rio de Janeiro with flowers and guitars; it gave the environment a strong dose of emotion.

Why are these stories still grabbing our attention 25 years later, as evidenced by the various stories that have spread across the Internet? They belong to the leader of the most popular rock band in the history of the country, which has sold over 15 million records. But it is better not to limit the discussion to quantitative indicators. If your lyrics combine love, friendship and politics with a poetic quality, the tunes co-created with Dado Villa-Lobos and Marcelo Bonfa have made them easier for Brazilians to absorb. Legian Urbana was at the forefront of musical and cultural renewal during the political re-democratization, besides being most responsible for the consolidation of the rock chain in the 1980s, when the genre stopped swearing and became appreciated by record companies. The group, which played in clubs or discos, played with growing success in gyms, and at its peak in football stadiums.

Unlike the current music scene, Legião Urbana was a massive rock group that was heavily involved in political issues. It seems inconceivable today that a few decades ago a large Brazilian audience would consume songs that criticized: machismo (“A Dança”); a sharp comparison of the prison and school systems (“O Reggae”); militarism or war (“Soldiers”, “Plants under the Aquarium” and “Song of the Warlord”) and the most evil elements of the military dictatorship (“What is this country?”, “Faroeste Caboclo”, “1965” and “La Maison Dieu”); imperialism and consumer society (“The Coca-Cola Generation”); the naturalization of violence in the modern world, human failures reflected in Justice, and cultural alienation generated by television (Badder-Meinhoff Blues); bureaucratization of access to social rights (Metropolis); and the right-wing New Republic governments (Theater of the Vampires, Metal Against the Clouds, and Perfection). However, when buying the records of the group Brasiliense, fans came in contact with lyrics that: defend the historical struggles of the working class, while not forgetting about the environment (“Fábrica”); engage in gay topics (“Soldiers”, “Daniel in Cova dos Leoins” and “Boys and Girls”); and they carry out political protests without brochures (Lost Time and The Indians). Finally, these numerous listeners could come in contact with extracts from “Internacional Comunista” subconsciously mixed with “Será” in the introduction to the 1986 Dois album.

It is worth emphasizing that the singer hated the military. Along with his college friends in Brasilia bars, he cursed the dictatorship through the microphone – definitely a dangerous position. And, in addition to being physically affected by the repression of that period, he saw his own songs vetoed the bureaucracy of military governments in the first half of the 1980s. Renato Russo’s critical appetite for dictatorship was also evident in songs recorded by other bands such as Veraneio Vascaíno, which appeared on Capital Inicial’s 1986 debut, “Oh no, the military must return.” (…) Have these people forgotten? (…) Have we really forgotten (…) how bad it is not to have freedom? “. In the same program, he mentioned fascism, which, in his opinion, it was necessary to talk about:

“I think the big press hesitates, it steps on the ball, and here in Rio de Janeiro there are big newspapers that give a whole page to fascists and bald people (…). Nazis are everywhere. (…) I mean they are sexist, they are intolerant, they are idiots, and the problem is that they are idiots with ideology. And suddenly I, as a person, as a person and as an artist, in order (…) to preserve a purity of conscience, it would be nice to give an answer to this. (…) I think information is important. Fascism, prejudice and intolerance are based on a lack of information. “

Twenty-five years after the death of Renato Russo, his texts and public statements are important for understanding and criticizing Brazil in the conditions of fascism and neoliberalism, and this is the main reason why his figure is highly revered – despite the fact that we live in the context of the trivialization of ephemeris, for which contributes to the accelerated production and consumption of news on the Internet.

* Romulo Mattos – Historian (PUC-RJ)

** This article does not necessarily reflect the views of the Forum.