Renato Gama Olhos Negros Vivo

Awesome Gatefold Vinyl LP with a bonus 7 inch! Renato Gama is an extraordinary and gifted musician. Based in Vila Nhocuné, a popular neighbourhood in the east of São Paulo’s periphery, “zona leste”, Renato Gama beautifully personifies the pulse against prejudice and social injustice that comes from the margins of Brazilian society and what social elites have chosen to ignore. A voice to be heard, for sure!

Renato Gama’s diverse musical projects, worth to mention is the Nhocuné Soul band, are a form of cultural and artistic crossbreeding with the goal of social emancipation. Renato Gama knows in person what people have to deal with in the periphery: a hostile environment full of difficulties, and despite all disadvantages there is a creative soul which flourishes, which raps and jazzes, which makes poetry and tells stories out of the poverty and inequality left by a careless State.

Last January Renato Gama gave an interview while sitting in the middle of a dirty narrow alley on the fringes of São Paulo. As he was talking about his project ‘Olhos negros no espelho’ and the live performance ‘Olhos negros vivo’ a police siren abruptly stormed the background and he, lowering his voice, said calmly: you see, this is the siren that shapes our world and makes up the things that we see etched in the retina of those ‘olhos negros’, the black eyes.

The live performance ‘Olhos negros vivo’ deals with the world of the black people, with their feelings and love, their parenting… with their committing suicide and being murdered. ‘Olhos negros vivo’ is a voice in the periphery, the experience of living the periphery, reinventing it and creating stories that speak the language of the people. Renato Gama’s music is a means against the standardization of cultural expressions and social relations in the periphery.