22 February 2010. Carlinhos Brown, the famous Brazilian artist, has given a unique interview as Ambassador of Countdown 2010. William Wisden, Director of Sotao Das Artes, a Countdown 2010 partner, has interviewed him some time ago in Brazil.
Read the interview and leave your comment below:
1. Carlinhos, does your music act as an incentive for people to become more responsible towards the environment and develop more appreciation of the ecological balance?
I think that as a songwriter and composer I have a responsibility. It is a privileged position. I have to inform people correctly. I have to convey what really effects the public, how they are living.
People who make music should concentrate this responsibility in themselves, knowing that their thoughts will be passed onto others, causing them to do things. It is a general form of exchange with the public, but it can have specific consequences.
2. At the 2009 Salvador Carnival you used a life sized replica polar bear and a humpback whale to draw attention to climate change. Are you thinking of using something similar during the Biodiversity Carnival which will be held in South Africa on 5 June 2010?
Yes. I think that the time which we are passing through is one of extreme importance. It is a moment of alert and this alert will result in change. Because of this we are calling people´s attention to these matters, so that they understand better. It is necessary to do something now.
We need to recognize that we emerge from nature, that it feeds us, sustains us and it is seeking our attention, in the sense that we need to take care of it. At the same time, this is an alert for people too. What we are saying is: Do you want to survive on this Planet Earth? Does humanity want to go on living here…? Because it took millions of years for the planet´s biodiversity to evolve and it will take a very long time to recuperate.
3. Where you live, both in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, do you see the population preserving their natural surroundings or destroying them? Is the situation getting better or worse in your opinion?
Today the large majority of people are aware of the problem, but there is still lots to do. I consider Salvador to be one of the dirtiest of cities: people throw things on the ground, and out of their car windows.
4. When you see fishermen using bombs to kill fish in the Bay of All Saints, or people throwing rubbish out of their car windows or leaving it on the beach, how do you feel? Do you believe that it is a natural human instinct to pollute or a lack of awareness?
It is a lack of understanding. People think that because previous generations had fish, then there will always be fish and other animals. I think that fishing using bombs is really out of order! But it is not only fishing.
For example, the gifts that will be given to the sea goddess at the Festival of Iemanja need to be talked about too. We can´t put plastic dolls, plastic flowers, aerosol sprays and bottles of perfume into the sea. We need to return to how it was before: using eggs to make offering, putting perfume into animal hides, etc. There are lots of issues like this that we need to think about.
5. When questioned by researchers about the origin of milk and honey, it is reported that children raised in urban areas replied that the origin is the supermarket, rather than cows and bees. What have you done or can you do to help alter this scenario?
I envisage the following: to change this scenario it is necessary to review how all of us are educated. The world is currently educating its children to be consumers without looking at where things come from.
When a child responds like this, it is because he does not know that there is a farm labourer out there, but he knows that there exists a computer. He believes more in the keys of the computer, than in the shears of a plough. The plough is always needed to turn the soil, to produce the grain, to make the flour and the bread that feed us. Of course we need to recognize this! I made some records on this. You will find these on youtube.com, Zanza and Argila.
6. What was your relationship with nature during your childhood? Did you rear animals? Travel outside the city to camp? Going fishing, etc?
I was born in a forest, which was Candeal. It was an area of untouched, native vegetation in Salvador, before being turned into a space to build shops, roads and all the rest. I was also surrounded by fish in my childhood, because Candeal had a spring. Then they built embankments, so that the buildings could be constructed and the water only flows underground now.
7. Do you visit areas of environmental protection? The Atlantic Forest? Have you ever been in the Amazon or other places?
I go to Saipiranga (an untouched area of Mata Atlantica, on the Bahia coast, near Praia do Forte). I have visited a number of places. Not enough!
8. Do you think music like biodiversity is being threatened by monoculture?
In all types of movement and action it is important that the world is a place of progress, but what we do today is focused very much on what is directly in front of us, without looking to the sides or behind us to other cultural forms. It is most important that these changes happen soon, otherwise the cane and corn plantations – the monoculture – will dominate everything.
Much of this is related to consumerism, people thinking only about plants being for food and not part of a general ecology, and, yes, this can also be said of music. How much knowledge of the properties of plants has been lost, because we did not pay attention to indigenous knowledge, to the natural cures that were used by traditional healers? It is a process that is going on the world over, not only in Bahia, Brazil.
We are losing our tribes and, at the same time, we are losing our humanity. We are not looking after one another as if we all belonged to a single tribe. We leave people lying on the street. We don´t feel for them, because we do not consider them to belong to our family.
Interview by William Wisden on behalf of Countdown 2010, 31.01.2010
