LETTER FROM RIO
In Brazil, the electoral campaign, which is in full swing, suddenly made a detour to the concert stages in May. And a month later, it was justice that had to enter the dance. On the left, ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva enjoys the historical support of the giants of popular music such as Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso or Gilberto Gil and more recently of Anitta, the Brazilian pop star, who encouraged young people to register on the electoral lists to “change president”. The call has apparently worked well and has provoked the ire of those who support Jair Bolsonaro. Because, on the far right, the president also has his stars, less known internationally but well established in particular in the rural regions of the country. Their musical genre is called ” countryside “, a kind of Brazilian country that we often interpret with hats and cowboy boots and that we always hear in agribusiness fairs. The sertanejo grew as Brazil became an agricultural power and has since emancipated itself from rurality to also conquer the urban public.
The two artistic camps, well divided politically, had never publicly challenged each other. But then on May 14, the singer sertanejo Zé Neto, in concert at the Agricultural Show in Sorriso, in the state of Mato Grosso, denigrates Anitta and adds: “We, our stamps are paid by the people. We are not dependent on the Rouanet law. »
The sentence could have immediately fallen back into oblivion; it was, after all, just a recurring criticism of President Bolsonaro about culture. The Head of State has always condemned the Rouanet law, passed in 1991, which offers tax reductions to companies that support a cultural project or an artist. According to Bolsonaro, artists “would be fed on public money”, which would explain their support on the left. He has always promised to put an end to it and his government has indeed drastically reduced the maximum ceiling from which an artist can benefit through this mechanism.
A profoundly immoral phenomenon
Except that this time, Zé Neto’s little sentence snowballed and turned against its author and then against the main artists, sertanejos and supporters of the president. On the evening of May 14, the journalist Demétrio Vecchioli reproduced on Twitter the recent fees of the artists sertanejos paid not “by the people” but by the municipalities. Quickly, the press inquiries show that the budgets are larger than those of the Rouanet law and that, without being illegal, the phenomenon is profoundly immoral.
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