THE MANGUE BEAT FATHERS
UpToDate – Did Chico Science create this new school of pop music called mangue beat?
Chico Science – Absolutely. That's obvious. I brought the guys together, took some percussionists from Lamento Negro and put them with members of a band I had, which was called Lostal. We got together and started Chico Science & Nacao Zumbi. Before all this happened, I made these experiments with Gilmar, who's a drummer. He played in Lamento Negro, and we started to rehearse and discover new things with the maracatu. I christened this thing of bringing back regional rhythms and connecting them to world pop music. Taking these elements and adding guitar and bass, and using the sampler, using technology. I gave it the name mangue. I thought it was good to call it mangue, because of the city, because of poetic notions I was living through. A really strong name. The word 'beat' was added by the media. Not just a concept and an attitude but also the thing of the beat, getting the beat recognised as mangue beat too.
That's where the movement thing started from, the involvement with Fred 04, from Mundo Livre, working together, sharing ideas. So I did that manifesto / press-release at the beginning. We've lost the direction of the thing a little because each one has to work in a different place, has a record-label, has shows... It's very difficult to structure. The thing grows and you see that you can't manage to centre things anymore, to be there chatting, exchanging the same ideas with that nucleus we founded. We needed to get out to get more into it.
UpToDate – Does mangue beat have any social manifestation, like recuperating the region?Chico Science –I think this cultural tension is felt all over brazil. It's a question of working with regional rhythms. It's about having something to do and things to work with. Not just in the Northeast but also in the rest of Brazil. That was my first idea, the concepts came later, most of them created by Fred.
