The singer from Pernambuco, Siba, extols the “non-capitalist treasure” of Brazilian popular culture, while calling his audience to action: “we have to have courage, lose the fear of recovering pride, conscience and the importance of socialist”.
O Brazil de facto followed the first edition of the Northeast Fair of Family Agriculture and Solidarity Economy (Fenafes), in Natal (RN), in June, and talked to the artist after his presentation at the event. “These moments when I have the privilege and opportunity to sing for people who are, in fact, imbued in this struggle movement, are the most meaningful to me.”
Siba spoke about the conjuncture of Brazil and Latin America, and dealt with the connections between art and politics. “I think we don’t do anything – especially an artist, even if he wants to, imagines, thinks he is – disconnected from the moment and what’s around him and from a conception that, if not in the intention, in consequence is always political .”
“We need to let go of this idea that everything is going to be all right, because I think that this country can go very wrong and has gone wrong. And maybe we also need to abandon this idea that there is a possibility of good capitalism for the Latin America and for the third world”, he said.
Read the full interview:
Brasil de Fato: Siba we are here at the Northeast Fair of Family Agriculture and Solidarity Economy, which is the result of the struggle of families that historically organize themselves against different forms of oppression and injustice. In addition, at this moment, they demand rights in the face of so many dismantling of public policies. How can we relate your songs to the struggle for recognition and appreciation of family farming?
Siba: I am an artist that everything I have done in my career, which is not so short anymore, has to do with the fact that there is something in Brazil that we call popular culture, which is nothing more than this space, this field of cultural activity of the damned of the earth, of the excluded.
So, necessarily, I am part of everything you said there. If you take away the maracatu and the popular culture of Siba, there is only that “i”, which is a little line that falls anywhere and there is no way to support it. So, fatally, I’m part of it all.
And those moments when I have the privilege and the opportunity to sing for people who are, in fact, imbued in this movement of struggle, are the most significant for me. Of course I live off what I sing, what I write, what I create and I don’t choose where I sing. But it is in those moments where I fulfill myself as fully as possible.
I am part of it all.
Even Siba, not only here in Natal, but in the most recent presentations, we see your political manifestations with a clear representation. Here in Natal, for example, you defended the socialist project for Latin America and presented the flag of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) on stage, among several positions that we also hear in the lyrics of the songs.
I think that we have been reaping the bitter fruits of a certain passive posture, of perhaps believing in a certain natural sense that things evolve for the better, and that we will always have a better future. For me, this whole process from 2014 onwards is proving that the good is not necessarily like that [de um sentido natural].
The common good is necessarily, logically, the consequence of the power movements of politics and the concrete world. So I think we need to let go of this idea that everything is going to be all right, because I think that this country can go very wrong and has gone wrong. And maybe we also need to abandon this idea that there is a possibility of good capitalism for Latin America and the third world.
So, as a consequence of that, we have to have courage, to lose the fear of recovering pride, conscience and the importance of the socialist heritage, I have always said this in concerts. It seems kind of logical, kind of basic, but a lot of people forget about it.
We also need to abandon this idea that there is a possibility of good capitalism for Latin America and the third world.
People are afraid to say that much of what we consider today as the rights of social-democratic capitalism are consequences of pressure, of the heritage of the radical left. For that, we have to stop being ashamed of recovering our legacy of the extreme socialist left and the communist debate, which is very important and has 200 years of super-rich debate that informed and formed all concrete socialist experiences, that part went wrong, but that also brought great achievements.
We have to stop being ashamed of them [das conquistas] and display them with pride, we have to have them on our horizon, because if not, we’ll go back to a place we once had, that we’ve already seen that doesn’t work anymore.
Brasil de Fato: Siba and piggybacking on this perspective of a history that does not follow a linearity of evolution, we can remember achievements and challenges for a socialist project for Latin America in this sense against coloniality and imperialism that are present today, but have to do with also with a conception of living history. So I would like to ask about this, the importance of recognizing that we have a position now, but it messes with the past and opens new struggles and dreams for the future, right?!
I’m not going to risk giving a booklet, script, model to anyone here. I just think that we do nothing – especially an artist, even if he wants to, imagines, thinks he is – disconnected from the moment and what is around him and from a conception that, if not in the intention, in consequence is always political. .
I think it’s the artist’s obligation today to be aware of the moment in which he lives and to seek to process it primarily on a personal level. And trying to understand how his work reflects and dialogues with the political moment and how he puts his work in dialogue with the policies that will always be there.
What we call popular culture only exists because there are excluded people in this country.
From this perspective, I understood since 2014 that I don’t have much way to pretend that what is happening in this country is not happening. And that it is necessary to put yourself, even because I have no illusion that anything I write or say on stage will change anything. But sometimes I think like this, time goes by very fast and soon I’ll be six feet away and people will tell the story of this sad moment in the country. And there will be two, three, 10, 20 or 30 artists who were talking about it. I want to be one of them.
Because it’s like I said before, my small or medium job, it wouldn’t exist without popular culture. And so I have an obligation to be responsible for something that is bigger than me, something that I am a part of and that forms my work. My work would not exist without popular culture. And what we call popular culture only exists because there are excluded people in this country. So I can’t pretend that I’m not part of it and that’s why I don’t think I can escape taking a stand.
And speaking of not escaping from taking a stand, we see your most recent albums with very direct messages about the situation the country is going through, of forms of oppression and exclusion that have intensified in recent years. At the same time, the album Baile Solto (2015) and Coruja Muda (2019) are very different. What about these latest albums?
Baile Solto speaks of one of a conjuncture that was precisely the rise of the right in the country. He tries to read this. I don’t know if with great clarification, but with a very honest feeling, I think. And that bears witness in favor, perhaps a little of this more progressive conception, of a left that perhaps believes that the simple affirmation of a better world justifies it. I don’t know if I totally agree with everything that’s put there at that moment, but it’s very sincere. I think that, in general, it is a record that is very coherent with what it tries to say.
Then came Coruja Muda, which I think is a more open record, which makes a less assertive political reading in the sense that we do not know and are unable to understand all the movements that are at stake. But we clearly state that it is necessary to dream and believe that another world is possible. And for that we have to have the courage to even point the finger at the reactionary forces as well. So that’s it, every moment, I try to reflect on my limit what I’m seeing around me.
Siba, here in the conversation you have already addressed popular culture more than once, even in a condition of a certain reverence. And then I would like to ask you a little more about your experiences, it’s not that with popular culture, how were those lessons learned, right? And how can this popular culture make, let’s say, conversations so vivid in your work?
When I say that my work comes from popular culture, I mean that it has elements, poetry, a certain logic of the relationship between poetry and rhythm, rhythm and things that you recognize from these popular practices. But all this is a very small thing. It is the work of an artist, a simple artist, who is professional and who has this is inside this other bigger thing.
These non-capitalist practices can be inspiration for consciously anti-capitalist practices.
But when we’re on stage, it’s a very small thing next to that, which is something that is incomparable, a complex of practices, of activities that are inserted within a non-capitalist conception of the world, of people who have been in a good part of 500 years of history. of that country on the fringes of the processes of advancement of citizenship, access to rights, comfort and such. And what really did and matters to the case is this. They are activities of this world that until today keep this logic that is not capitalist and that brings us a very important reference and a possibility of a country, of a better world, not governed by merchandise, not governed by the transformation of everything, of things and of people, of thoughts in merchandise.
I think that’s the great lesson and the great importance and strength of popular culture. So it’s necessary never to say or think that an artist like me represents that. An artist like me reflects, in a very small way, this thing that is bigger and that is actually the great treasure that this country has. The hope of this country.
These non-capitalist practices can be inspiration for consciously anti-capitalist practices. And that something more forceful, more affirmative, stronger can be done in this country here, based on these activities as well, but with a political horizon of struggle and an activity with great clarity. Because I think the time for this subjective, non-concrete hope has also passed. We have to look at a fight that really needs to bring concrete results.
Editing: Rodrigo Chagas
