WHY
SINGERS AND DANCERS ARE
WRONGLY CONSIDERED "BANDS"?
People think so absolutely normal to consider merely singers and dancers groups as being "bands". Also jornalists with some competence make this mistake, sometimes without the notion of this error. However, if this denomination is wrong, why it happens?
At the dance music media, all over the world, his managers developed a pretending modern language, which taken loaned some rock'n'roll stereotypes. The rockers valorize so much the structure of a band, specially when they comment facts about live gigs. Thence, the dance music, a segment with the reason of being is always referred to night clubs and gym academies, created a "new esthetics", denominating the dance music grouping stars as "bands", it doesn't matter if they're just dancers or singers constantly controlled by the DJs and producers.
It's worth to mind, in traditional music, there was a frequent custom, for generalization, to call all the solo singers and groups joined as "artists". This custom was massified for long times and had reach the circuit of brazilian "middle of the road" music (a.k.a. "brega").
With the new custom of dance music to use "action" slangs, in ideologic conception that tries to suggest a dance music fan to go to see surf campeonships and profit the holidays to the moutain bike practice. With that, the dance music speech, opposite to mention "all the singers from the parade", now says "all the hot bands now". It was a modern and presumely daring tentative, but it favoured a generalized stupidity that reaches everyone and also the media.
In brazilian music, another strategy had bagun in Bahia, which influenced the expansion of the famous "popularesco" (brazilian "middle of the road" music), in special axé music and pagode. The Bahia, one of Brazil's federative States, has a music strongly associated to the Carnival, with electric trios (trucks made as mobile music stages) and carnival revellers. The touring ideology creates an illusion that the called "Bahia music" (axé music and pagode) is a rich blend of tropical rhythms, hiding a cruel reality, where the unlimited commercialism makes the rules from what must to be successful in Bahia and in the rest of Brazil.
The presumed "Bahia music" reveals, in true, a lot of groups so musically seemed, without a real identity, whose singers don't write songs and therefore the're helped by the ordered music made by the called "rent songwriters", people with some reputation, sometimes a doubtful reputation, whose in the most only reproduce melodic stereotypes from the regional Bahia's music, so consecrated by the internationally famous songwriters Dorival Caymmi, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
It gives a minor credit to the use of "bands" word, but it wasn't mule, in this case, because there's really musicians between those group members. It reffers only to the called "axé music", a stereotyped and distorted blend of reggae, frevo and caribbean rhythms. In pagode (a commercial distortion of samba music), the word "band" gets completely nonsense.
The pagode groups, like É O Tchan and similar, show the forming only made by one or two singers and two or three dancers. Only in a few cases there's really musicians. In the romantic pagode from São Paulo (other brazilian State), which melody style follows the music made by brazilian songwriters Michael Sullivan and Paulo Massadas, it is also notorious that all the members of these groups don't play any instrument and just make the same coreography popularly known as "to move the legs". Here the "band" word is still nonsense.
In Bahia, as well in the pagode as in the axé music, is a practice of the music industry to make commercial artists as being considered "creative players", using the word "band" to elevate the reputation of the simple music servants, making us to believe that they're performing artists doing a "rhythmical salad". The reality makes these illusions over and, in the case of É O Tchan, the real "band" who is behind the singers and dancers is not mentioned. Thus, how to consider a group as a "band" if the musicians behind are unknown? The stupidity makes its own tricks to illude the public oppinion.