In Brazil’s largest city — an ever-evolving metropolis of intertwined cultures — diasporas from across the globe use music, art and dance to make their mark.
I’m still two blocks away when I hear the samba beat, subverted by a deep, assertive bass. At the far end of a pedestrian lane paved in white tiles, a Beaux Arts villa called Casa de Francisca glows red and purple from within. Its tall second-storey windows are flung open to reveal hundreds of party-goers. Behind the villa, there’s São Paulo’s historic centre, the silhouetted at night.
After his set, we sit down together and Kalaf puts it to me like this: “The African diaspora in the Western world take whatever jobs are available from the bottom of the pyramid,” he drawls. “They’re immigrants, invisible all week long. No one knows their story. But come Friday they’ll get their best outfits from the dry cleaner, call the barber, take pride in their presentation. That’s why we call it kizomba design.
This quarter of the historic centre has suffered its share of neglect. Though São Paulo’s crime rate is lower than that of more touristy Rio de Janeiro, Kalaf admits “this is not a city to play with”. He tells me to be vigilant, and to hide my phone in the streets from thieves on bikes. Still, he loves the kizomba vibe around Edificio Copan. “São Paulo doesn’t have the beautiful nature of Rio. It’s rough around the edges, so people only have each other and the culture to embrace.
The São Paulo Museum of Art, designed by architect Lina Bo Bardi who immigrated to Brazil from Italy in the late 1940s.But I prefer the street’s São Paulo Museum of Art, or MASP, a giant glass box hoisted in the air by stout concrete legs painted a shouty shade of red. When its architect Lina Bo Bardi immigrated to Brazil from Italy in the late 1940s, she imported Italian modernism and the notion of public gathering spaces. “She was a woman of the people,” says Fernando.
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