https://rollingstone.com.br/musica/chrando-cancoes/

https://rollingstone.com.br/musica/chrando-cancoes/

A voice asks for help from ourselves, but are we listening?

My first time was with instrumental music, listening to a K7 tape. The music was “Tribute to William Clarke”, Flávio GuimarãesExponent of the harmonica in Brazil. There in the dark of the room, that blues touched me and I cried. The first time I mean here is my first cry listening to music. The year was 2001, I still have a harmonica student (I think now you can understand my arroba, cigarite) and, besides this instrument, I already risked my first compositions, mostly sambas of a boy of just over 15 years trying to understand the world, strongly inspired by the work of Adoniran Barbosathe second artist who made me cry, with a partnership with Vinicius de MoraisGood morning sadness”.

The hoarse voice of Adoniranembargoed by emotion and many cigarette cards, it was probably a torn and, even without any parity of life experience with his authors, me, a boy, heard that and cry: “If he comes sad, he feels with me, here at this bar table / Drink from my glass, give me his shoulder / which is for me to cry, cry with sadness / sadness to love”.

It was curious for me to hear men made exposing their sadness and being vulnerable. It was not Renato Russo Singing “I always needed a little attention…” and later: “I made a man, I was afraid and couldn’t sleep” in “The Vampire TheaterFrom 1991. They were crowns of another deceased music era.

It turns out that today, thinking about it, I see that composers have been trying to tell us a long time ago that, unlike countless songs, man cries, man shows that he cries and can also expose his vulnerabilities in art form.

I grew up with the misleading term “fragile sex” related to women and female, so if it intended to be a “male goat to dance, a man with H”, as provocatively sang Ney MatogrossoThere would be no room for vulnerabilities in my armor, as it would make me less man, more woman.

Ney Matogrosso performs in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2019 (Photo: Pedro Gomes/Redfers)

But music has shown and shows that this math is wrong, and the search to balance the two halves that make up us should be the goal. Jorge Ben Jor sang in the track “Hermes Trismegisto and his Heavenly Emerald Table”, On the album The Emerald Table 1974:

And how all these things are and come from a
for the mediation of the one,
So all things are born
of this only thing by adaptation.
The sun is your father, the moon is the mother.

Sun and moon, male and female, representing the necessary balance between the two forces, but perhaps everything was very coded to understand. So, came Gilberto Gil in one of your most pop albums, Enhancement (1979), and brought us a anthem and a guide with “Superman (the song)”:

One day
I lived the illusion that being a man would suffice
That the male world would give me everything
What I wanted to have

Nothing
My Woman portion, which had been safeguarded until then
It is the better portion that I bring in me now
Is that makes me live

And, on the trail of Gilhe came PEPEU GOMES and sang:

To be a female man
Don’t hurt my male side
If God is a girl and boy
I’m male and female

PEPEU GOMES in “Male and female”(1991)

I realize that there is a counteramply task in the work of composers to disarm this ideal man who is offered daily as a model. A plural force that offers new perspectives such as those of Gil, Ney, Pepeu and another that still claims the basics: being able to cry freely.

Be with Factorsinging the verses of Accioly Neto In 1994:

The goat can be brave
And cry
Half a world of money
And cry
Be strong like a backcountry
And cry
Just in the memory of a kiss
And cry

Or with Gonzaguinha, author also of “Man with h”But here with“A man too (cries warrior boy)”, 1983:

A man also cries,
Brunette girl,
Also wants to lap
Mild words
Need affection
Need tenderness
Need a hug
Candura itself

Recently, the soccer player Neymar Jr. collapsed in crying after defeat by Saints for the Vasco By 6 x 0 and, the next day, the crowd was to charge the team for the washed. However, I want to use the leader’s attitude as a thermometer from where we are still in this discussion, where a man cry in public is still a taboo. “You are one of the biggest player on the planet. If you cry, imagine the rest of these guys.”

Neymar Jr. Crying
Neymar Jr. After eliminating the Brazilian World Cup 2022 against Croatia (Photo: Marvin Ibo Guengoer – Ges Sportfoto/Getty Images)

Yes, the basics are still necessary. Men suffer in silence, and in this silence, in this anguish, they external their pain from the worst form, using violence directed to other men and also to other women. We need to remember that in 2024, Brazil hit the record in cases of femicide and the suicide rate between men is 7.2% higher than among women. Men need to seek help, speak, open and even cry, how they sang Mano Brown (also Santos fan) in 2002:

What good is me to be tough and my heart be vulnerable?
The wind does not, it is smooth, but it is cold and relentless
Borrou the poet’s sad lyrics
Ran on the brown face of the prophet
Worm, get out of the line
The tear of a man will fall
This is your bo for eternity
Says man doesn’t cry
Okay, spoke
It doesn’t go to the group, brother
Then Jesus cried

I understand how these attitudes can be a first step to finally free ourselves, how ironically is implicit in the sample chosen by Kl jay to “Jesus cried”:“Free at Last”, Al Green.

Perhaps if we men stop to hear this collective voice that have been offering us for years for years through music, we can open a discussion about which masculinities fit within our subjectivity. I’m sure there are many, far beyond the models of Superman, With capital or tiny H, which understand our plurality as righteous beings in our feminine and male powers, endowed with sensitivity, the same one we access to make art and transform the world in which we live.

+++ Read more: Kendrick and Tupac: the same glory, different paths

Lucas Cirillo (@cirigaita)

He is a producer, composer, bookkeeping, member of Latin Grammy Academy, self -declared sound nerd, likes to dive into the album abyssal and bring stories to his productions, to surface, along with some fish, when the river is good for fishing: his other passion.

Source: Rollingstone

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