Abstract
In 2016, Brazilian political scene was shaken by the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. For months, national news discussed the details of a long legal and political process, fueled by dozens of protests for and against the former president Rousseff and her now-rival the then acting president Temer. In this subchapter, we discuss a particular kind of street demonstration, performed by activists that sung together a version of the movement “O Fortuna” from the cantata Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff, with just a single verse: “Fora Temer” (Out Temer). In online social networks, the videos of the performance circulated intensely, creating a collective environment of political participation through music. In order to investigate the particularities of this case, we combined an ethnomusicological approach with a social network analysis on YouTube videos. At the end, we argue that political-musical acts such as “Fora Temer” constitute a strategy for political action that is performed in two levels: the physical and acoustic occupation of urban space and the spread of audiovisual registers of protests enacted through social media, a case in which, once more, music favors the consolidation of political subversive messages through soundbites.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Street (1997), in his book “Politics & Popular Culture” (55), “The soundbite is, in this sense, just another version of the slogan, and like the slogans of the sixties—drop out, turn on—it is tailored to the medium, linked to techniques of marketing and cultural expression.”
- 2.
The full lyrics of the parody are: “It’s a big ad/Very big ad/ It’s a big ad we’re in/ It’s a big ad/My God, it’s big/Can’t believe how big it is/ It’s a big ad/For Carlton Draught/ It’s just so freaking huge/It’s a big ad/Expensive ad/This ad better sell some bloody beer.” (Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wM2c3WtDjQ. Accessed November, 14th, 2017).
- 3.
The information was collected from the event’s profile page at Facebook (Available at: https://www.facebook.com/events/1536817656623231/. Accessed in December, 10th, 2017).
- 4.
Available at: https://www.facebook.com/events/1536817656623231/. Accessed in December, 10th, 2017.
- 5.
Calero was minister from May, 24th, 2016 to November, 18th, 2016, when he resigned due to divergences with the government, particularly the then-chief minister of the Secretary of Government, Geddel Vieira Lima, who later was removed from office due to the same episode. For more detais, see, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/americas/brazil-president-temer-corruption.html?_r=0. Accessed in December, 10th, 2017.
- 6.
In the occupation at the head office of the Fundação Nacional das Artes (National Arts Foundation, Funarte), in São Paulo, it was possible to find similar demonstrations, sparked by the concert held in Rio de Janeiro, in May, 17th. In São Paulo, in May, 26th, the cry, “Fora Temer” became the chorus for Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Later, in June, 10th, and once more in Rio, over 50,000 people chanted the Carl Orff’s parody with the watchword “Fora Temer” at the Cinelândia square, situated downtown. In June, 11th, the artists from the collective recorded the “Carmina – Fora Temer! – Burana” version in studio, now described as the “Brazilian anthem of democratic resistance” (Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwSxVYPe0OQ. Accessed in December, 10th, 2017).
- 7.
Available at: https://www.facebook.com/ajplusenglish/videos/733229963485180/. Accessed in December, 10th, 2017.
- 8.
Mídia Ninja is an independent collective of journalists, among professionals and amateurs, who are left wing activists and cover more than a hundred Brazilian cities. The collective’s first video on the demonstration that was posted to Facebook can be watched at https://www.facebook.com/MidiaNINJA/videos/651361565021992/. Accessed in December, 10th, 2017.
- 9.
For instance, the video posted by the collective OcupaMinC RJ, that can be watched at: https://www.facebook.com/OcupaMincRJ/videos/575289119343036/. Accessed in December, 10th, 2017.
- 10.
An audio file of the performance can be listened at https://soundcloud.com/user-834050360/carmina-burana-fora-temer. Accessed in December, 10th, 2017.
- 11.
At Instagram, several vídeos can be found by using the hashtags #ForaTemer, #MusicaPelaDemocracia or #OcupaMinc. One among various examples is https://www.instagram.com/p/BFh_2b5yK7W/. Accessed in December, 10th, 2017.
- 12.
Google Trends is a tool made available by Google that shows the most popular keywords used among the latter search terms. The data provided is presented correspond with the normalized frequency in a range from 0–100, according to the absolute number of searches performed during the specified period.
- 13.
There is another peak for “fora temer” in August, during the Olympic Games in Rio and also next to the end of the impeachment process, when this expression gained autonomy from “carmina burana” protests.
- 14.
“Bota o retrato do velho outra vez” is considered one of the first Brazilian campaign **gles, and it was produced for the presidential campaign of Getulio Vargas, in 1950. The piece refers to the return of the former president after the interval between his dictatorial government (1930–1945) and his second term as president (1950–1954), now democratically elected. “Varre Varre Vassourinha” was the **gle for Jânio Quadros’ campaign in 1961. It was about swee** away corruption and unruliness. Finally, “Lula-lá” (1989) is one of the most successful **gles of the modern era of Brazilian electoral campaigns. The title is an anaphoric pun, repeating the last syllable from the candidate’s nickname—“lá”—that also means “there” (at the presidential chair) in Portuguese.
- 15.
Bennett mentions the already classic image from a protest against the Vietnam War, where the protesters insert flowers into the barrels of the rifles of the policemen sent to contain popular insurgencies. The performance has inspired similar protests all over the world, including the afore-mentioned Carnation Revolution, but also, and more recently, in Yemen, Egypt, Iran, among various other countries, and it still inspires protesters, since it has generated the movement expressed through the catchphrase “Flower Power” (by its turn, a reference to other catchphrases from social movements, like “Black Power”).
- 16.
According to the author, “is not just that in listening to popular music we are listening to a performance, but, further, that ‘listening’ itself is a performance” (Frith 203).
- 17.
On the role of rumor in politics, see the interesting essay by Seymour-Ure. On the relation between rumor and information disseminated across social media platforms, see Rojecki & Meraz (2016).
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Trotta, F., Chagas, V. (2023). Music, Politics, and Activism: The Case of the Use of “Carmina Burana” in Brazilian Protests Against the Impeachment in 2016. In: Granja do Amaral, D., Obute, A.C. (eds) Mediascapes of Ruined Geographies in the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31590-9_14
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