BRAZILIAN POP GROUP ROUGE IS NOT A BAND
Teen music phenomenon is announced with
the function they don’t have
The five
girls from brazilian group Rouge - They sing, they dance, they entertain, but,
with the exception of one girl member who plays acoustic guitar, they don’t
play instruments and just decided to write themselves the songs they sing
after their first album.
In
2002, a five girls group started to be a big hit in the radio stations from
Brazil, with a song that apparently join technopop and arab pop elements,
without making a hibrid music with both sounds yet.
This
song has a strange title, "Ragatanga", which is, in true, a version
of a wierd pop hit, "Asereje", from the vocal group called Las
Ketchup. This spanish trio made guest performing in this brazilian version,
that improved the original chorus lyrics, a babbling version of the first
words from the hip hop classic "Rapper’s Delight", a hit performed
by the group Sugarhiil Gang, in 1979.
The
brazilian group is called Rouge, formed in São Paulo city by the five young
girls selected by the tests made by the brazilian succursal of the US
television teen show Popstars.
This show has the brazilian version produced by the SBT network, a company
managed by the brazilian TV entertainer Silvio Santos (aka Señor Abravanel).
Announced
so ostensively as a "band", the Rouge group doesn’t practice this
role. The five girls just sing and dance, making na immitation of womb dance.
The music they sing is not, in principle, written by themselves (who had to
ask their manager to write new songs) and neither in the studio sessions they
tried to play an instrument, with the exception of one girl member, who plays
acoustic guitar.
It
comes to be witty to see the Rouge fans reaction from this text, with their
irritation that could be seen, several times ago, by the punk hardcore fans.
Nowadays, teen pop fans are so "very nervous" and also commercial
rock fans as the listeners of the Rio de Janeiro's Rádio Cidade station
(102,9 mhz) (the pop and hitmaker station which thinks it's a "rock
station"; this is a big lie). These post-Seattle's 90 scene rock fans, in
their alienated ableless to get critical sense and relevant revolting, they
use their irritableness as a sport to disguise their leisure (or their
tediousness).
We
comprehend that the Rouge group has an instrumentist and the girls is now
trying to write songs, but the fact that the group has only a musician doesn't
characterize they as a "band". The Rouge must to have, at least,
three instrumentists, and the ideal situation is the Rouge must have, at
least, four instrumentists. These are criterions adopted by music specialists
and we have to consider them. So if not, it will make a disorder, and in the
next time there will be any pretend "boy band" to be a
"band" because their members play "self abusing" in the
bathroom, or any aerobic gym athlets to be a "band" because their
members "play the ground". And one of them can say: "How I
don't play anything? My feet play the ground!". Let's discipline the
concepts, in the name of the good information.
The
ridiculous, in this process, is that these girls are presented as a
"band" in the several Internet sites, in several web or paper pages
and in several newspaper sections, but few people (as our staff from
"Boys Not Band") can distrust of this. But let’s place this
"very normal" practice to the fourty years ago (referred to the 2003
years, when this text was written) to see the crowd reaction that time.
Let’s
suppose that, in some date of 1963, a master of ceremony of the very crowded
bar tells the people that, in a little time, a new "band" will be
presented. He comments, in his announcement, that the group is a big hit and
the crowd fells curious and so stimulated in their expectation. So the five
girls group entered on the stage and there’s no instrument on place, neither
a bass, an organ nor a small drum. The five girls just sing and dance a song
list that seems to be written by other people (generally two producers and one
group’s manager). The crowd is informed that the musically lazy group
(because this group doesn’t have women instrumentists and songwriters, but
only singers and dancers) is the so announced "band".
And
what’s the crowd reaction in that old time? Serenity, comfort, joy and
solidary commotion? Nothing like these. The reaction, exactly, is a revolting
and louder hooting, if we not remind the someone dare to throw some objects to
the stage, making the girl group get out of their useless gig. The present
people, inevitably, made questions like "where are the musicians?",
"these girls don’t play anything else?". The
"instrumental" sound is limited to a simple high fidelity vinyl
played on the backstage, practice popularly famous with the name playback.
But
currently, when the democracy were distorted by the capitalism rules for the
diffuse and vulgarization of the human stupidity, sickness to reach most of
the worldwide popular tendences, a little of people is really ready to react
against that equivocated mean of the "band" word. So, the band
word have been in various centuries a colective word of musicians, people who
practiced the instrumental and composition music works.
Just
to have so many stupid people in the decisive and influent media roles, in
special in a country like Brazil, when people dared to extinct the journalism
college certificate exigence, with the appology that to give to unable writers
the right to express their miss of knowledge to people, it never deserves to
accept with naturality these global mania to call the just singers and dancers
groups as "bands". So considering the most of real musicians that
learn the instrumental playing during years, dedicating their minds to the
exaustive music compositions, to know how verses sound better and what is the
right melody, and what are the music arrangement to be played by all the real
band members, who join their individual talents in the exaustive rehearsals
inside the car garage or other similar places, making trouble to the
neighbours and also in the members parents.
All
this sacrifice is made and the glory gets to turn to people who the one
strength is to sing in a shower bath, people who cross their arms so
comfortably and wait the other one to compose, play instruments and make
arrangements, because the "band" only needs to exercise the
choreography and their mimic performances to the playback presentations or
also in the "live" gigs.
We’re
not against the success of groups like Rouge or the worldwide All Saints and
Spice Girls, but in the brazilian case it’s another example of the old
unfortunated practice of those national female groups, since 25 years ago.
Since brazilian groups like Harmony Cats and A Patotinha,
groups with doubtable talents formed by female singers, are released by
the local hit parade and everybody with common profile, making difference for
the time of every hit tendences. We had Meia Soquete, Paquitas, Banana Split,
Sublime, and so many others falled to the hard ostracism, everybody being
nothing like groups invented by smart producers, generally a Record label
executive with pretending music knowledge, and two musicians or studio
producers.
How
to call some women to record a label, if the one they sing is made by a group
of men, if the instruments are played by other men (but if some else could be
played by a woman, it makes no difference, because she is not one of the
performers)? Further that a vocal group appears only singing and dancing in
the gig performances (or almost live gigs, supported by the playback), it
could be so reasonable if most of this group members would play instruments,
make arrangements and write songs in the studio. Facts like this happened in
soul music world, when vocal group members played one or many instruments in
the studio sessions.
But
the very backward Brazil’s label market, always investing in the music
decadence for the easy success and equally easy manager richness, still bets
the same groups who hide, behind the apparent affection and charisma for their
membership, all the process of exploitation, manipulation by their
"discoverers" and "producers", pressure and lack of
autonomy of their performers. To have an idea, for manipulations and pressure
like those, the world lost the biggest rock and roll icon Elvis Presley.