kickass concert almost turns into riot

There was a festival this weekend (big surprise) called the Mercado Cultural, which featured, among other things, an art show and cultural exibit at the large park area of Salvador known as Campo Grande. The months of December, January, and February denote the holiday season, and therefore the party / music / cultural scene swung into high gear this year starting on December 1^st. I had heard that the art show wasn’t a whole lot to get excited about, and I did see some of it on Friday but they were already packing up when I got there (9-10pm). I got the feeling I hadn`t missed much. The music scene, on the other hand, was something else. There’s a public band shell theatre near Campo Grande called O Concha Acústica do Teatro Castro Alves where I had been once before to see another public show, and on Friday night I saw Chico César e Quinteto da Paraíba. Chico César is a guitarist who played this particular night with a string quartet and a drummer. The name that kept running through my mind when I was watching him was Paul Simon (when he was good). The best way to describe it, I guess, is a mix of traditional folk acoustic guitar and modern rhythms. I don’t know if that’s really accurate but it’s the best I’ve got. I think most of his music were love song or ballad type of things, and they were all very good. The crowd, as a result, was all ages, and towards then end the music got a little bit faster and he ended on a danceable tune which everyone liked.

Last night, however, I returned to the shell to see Nação Zumbi, a band from Pernambuco (state north of Bahia) which the local paper said “is one of the major names in music for Brazilian young people, with a wealth of vibes at the extremes of traditional roots and contemporary pop … reinforced with rock, dub, trip hop and psychedelia.” Chico César was all right, but these guys were awesome. The band consisted of a great guitarist, singer, bass player, drummer, percussionist, and three additional drummers who played traditional bass-type (i.e., held with a strap over their shoulders) drums like Olodum. They were loud, guitar-driven, and hard-rock sounding, with a lot of distortion and wah-wah complemented by MTV-inspired stage moves. They kept from sounding cliché through the use of the drums and skilled musicianship, and I’m sure the fact that the singer was singing in Portuguese added to the exotic sound for me.

Towards the end, however, things nearly went tragically wrong. They were playing a fast and loud song which everyone was dancing to, including some young men (and one 40-year old guy who peaked out 15 years ago) who started moshing. Some of them were pushing each other towards the stage. A large, muscular man in shorts and a tank top somehow made it past security and up onto the stage, to the surprise of the lead singer, who got a nice big hug from this guy. In seconds there were around 8 security guards surrounding this guy who was ripped off the lead singer and very forcefully thrown into the security area (where the guards stand) below the front of the stage. The guards, in addition to some bystanders, proceeded to drag and kick the guy to the side of the stage. People were booing and my guess is that they were calling for an ass-kicking, which is what this guy was almost guaranteed to get in about 1 minute. The lead singer, however, followed the security guards and yelled at them not to hurt him, and at one point jumped off the stage and I’m guessing got between the security guards and the guy and made sure they didn’t hurt him. At the same time, in the right hand corner of the stage, more people spilled into the security area and began kicking the guy who was on the ground, and more booing ensued. At this point people where I was (up in the back) started looking around at each other, thinking probably what I was, which was that we were teetering on the edge of a riot. I sort of braced myself for what I expected was going to be some crazy shit.

At every event like this there is a military police presence, and in the past they’ve been known (at least during Carnival) to dish out a good beating to anyone caught stealing or otherwise interrupting the festivities. I’ve heard that this has been curbed somewhat in recent years by the fact that all MP groups now require that at least one woman cop be with them at all times, and this seems to keep the men from beating people up so much. With regards to this particular incident, the MPs had not yet gotten involved, but my sense was that once they were there wouldn’t be any turning back. I was also a little surprised that they didn’t respond very quickly – maybe they were trying to let security handle it before they stepped in.

Luckily, however, the lead singer, who was now in the security area between the the guards and the guy who jumped on stage, managed to calm everyone down. Additionally the guitarist got on the mic and said something along the lines of not wanting any violence, that’s not what they were about, etc. People started cheering when he said this, and the lead singer managed to persuade security to let the guy who had jumped on stage back onstage with the band. He (lead singer) then repeated what the guitarist had said, and the guy who jumped on the stage said something as well that I couldn’t really understand, but was something along the lines of “these guys are great, we just want to have a good time, etc.” and everyone started cheering loudly. Afterwards the guy was very gingerly and anxiously led offstage to the left by some other security guards. The lead singer said they were going to take a break and then come back to finish the show.

By this time people started pouring out of the theater, however, and only the diehards stayed. I wasn’t sure I’d understood what was going on with respect to the return of the music, so I decided to take off too.

I don’t know why the lead singer was so adamant about making sure the guy who stopped the show wasn’t hurt – he had to be angry and shaken up. I have a theory, though, which may or may not carry any weight. There are many people in Brazil who are no strangers to violence, at times even at the hands of the police throughout the years. If something similar had happened in the US there would have been violence, because of our unending thirst for it, maybe because we glorify it on TV and in movies and don’t understand what it’s really like in real life – horrible. I think that the lead singer knew that things were not going to be pretty if the show erupted into a riot, and was willing to do everything possible to avoid it, just because he knew how bad things could get, and had seen it in the past enough to know he didn’t want to see it last night.