[INTERVIEW] Italian singer Aramà on her love for Brazilian music from Pará and Amazônia
In an exclusive interview, Aramà shares her story about falling in love with the culture from Pará’s Belém, the inspiration for her lyrics and production, and what’s next for her.
Brazilian music has long influenced artists around the world. If Frank Sinatra fell in love with bossa nova in the 1960s, acts like Billie Eilish and IU show that the genre resonates with the younger generations as well. And as Brazilian artists like Anitta and Pedro Sampaio take funk carioca to the world, acts like Cardi B and Tove Lo embrace the genre in their music and performances.
But the list of Brazilian genres making their way into art made by foreign artists expands farther away. Italian singer Aramà, for example, got her inspiration from the genres arising around the Amazon rainforest (Amazônia) region — more specifically, the State of Pará.
More known for birthing lambada, Pará is also the land of brega, tecnobrega, guitarrada, carimbó, and a fusion of subgenres influenced by cumbia, zouk, and other genres of afro-indigenous origin. Also heavily influenced by music from the Guyanas and Suriname, the music of Pará goes through constant reinvention, boosting creative endeavors in the Amazônia region.
“I always had a calling for Amazônia”, Aramà tells me in an exclusive interview. So strongly is she influenced by the place and culture that even her stage name was chosen by inspiration of a native bee of the region, “aramá.”
Aramà grew up to bossa nova and MPB played by her father at home, but her love story with Pará began through her assessor Isabel Rezende. Being herself from Belém (the capital of the State, also known as “Belém do Pará”), Rezende suggested Aramà to get to know the local tecnobrega scene in hopes that it could help craft her sound. It worked: Aramà fell in love with the place and its array of sounds and moves. “The first time I watched a live performance of carimbó, I cried with emotion”, Aramà tells.
More serendipities took place in order for Aramà to place Pará’s music in the centre of her sound. By the time of her second album release, she was invited to perform in Belém. The concert, held at the cultural hub SESC Ver o Peso, featured local musicians and dancers. “It was a hit”, Aramà shares. That’s where she met the mother-in-law of Felipe Cordeiro, an avant-garde musician who’s also among the new generation of Pará artists keeping traditions alive.
Cordeiro would become a dear friend and the producer of Aramà’s latest single, “Medusa”, which also features guitarist Chibatinha, known for his work with the band ATTOXXÀ, from Bahia. “There are so many connections that I did not expect to happen”, Aramá says.
The flavour of Pará genres such as brega and guitarrada can be felt in the beats and guitar in “Medusa”. But lyric-wise, the idea for “Medusa” comes from Ancient Greece. “I became fascinated with the [Greek] myth of Medusa and I felt like I needed to give voice to women.” In the lyrics, she sings: “Blame me for what I’ve never done / Like Medusa”. The myth is a motif for Aramà to represent the stories of women dealing with pain and abuse.
“I want to always give out a message. We’re going through hard times in the world — there’s a war going on right after the pandemic — and people are in need of meaningful content, not just fun. That’s why I try to be a little more cultural with my [song] themes. With ‘Medusa’, I wanted its sound to be ‘lighter’, to take a bit of the weight off of the theme. It doesn’t replace [the weight], but it helps the sound get to more people — especially younger people.”
Just like “Medusa”, Aramà’s next album will feature more songs inspired by Greek myths such as Ariadne (which will feature trans actress Marcella Maia), and “Pandora”, another track produced by Felipe Cordeiro, released in 2021.
Through Cordeiro also came Aramà’s collaboration with his fellow paraense Luê, “Bora Jogar”. Aramà was familiar with Luê’s work and agreed right away when Cordeiro suggested that the two would record together. “I already admired her work, so I said: ‘Let’s do it!’”. “Bora Jogar” is a sexy blend of tropical house, guitarrada paraense, and cumbia-cadenced beats. The visuals of the video were inspired by Amazônia’s fauna and vegetation.
Among Aramà’s collaborations with Pará artists, there’s “Summer Sky”, from her first album, La Verità (2017), featuring the instrumental duo Strobo; and a collaboration with Aíla to come.
But Aramà’s involvement with Pará goes beyond channelling its genres in her music and collaborating with Pará artists. She also supports the social project Movimento de Mulheres do Nordeste Paraense (Northeast Pará Women’s Movement), to which she was introduced while watching Summit Amazônia, an event held by Vogue Brasil.
Aramà’s list of collaborators is not restricted to Pará musicians that explore local genres. Besides Chibatinha, who brought his background in Bahia’s pagode to “Medusa”, she has also worked with the prestigious dance music DJ Boss’n’Drama, from Paraná (South Brazil), and the soul music singer-songwriter Walmir Borges, from São Paulo; among others.
Singing in Portuguese, English, and Italian, Aramà is at the intersection of different genres and cultures. It’s a very unique position to be in, and she is able to identify points of convergence and divergence. “There are divergences among the two cultures, but not in the sense of them not being rich in sounds”.
There used to be a lot of great regional music influence in Italy’s mainstream [music]: music played with tamburello and mandolin; lots of pizzica tarantata. I found this same mixture of sounds in Belém do Pará: tecnobrega, pop, carimbó, Amazon sounds, a lot of percussions.
(…) Pará’s culture is so rich in sounds. I see the love that Pará people have for synthesizers, tecnobrega, and combining all of that with pop and more commercial trends.
Italian music lost a bit of that [regionalism].
But keeping in touch with her roots is also one of Aramà’s ideals when creating. She did that in her collaboration with Boss’n’Drama, “Pizza e Guaraná”. “We wanted to add a sound reminiscent of 1960s’ and 1970’s Italian cinema”, she tells me.
Now, Aramà is trying to add more Italian music elements to her sound. “We have to acknowledge our ancestry”, she says. “I’ve always wanted to do that. That’s a part of why I got so attached to the culture of Belém: the way they take so much care of their roots.”
Just like a bee, she speaks as someone who extracts the best nectar from the places she touches base on. With all that much inspiration and good company, we can only be excited for the music that is to come for Aramà.
[This interview was conducted in Portuguese and edited for clarity. Aramà’s words were translated to English by the writer.]
More about the music from Pará and Amazônia pop for you:
- My curated list of 4 experimental, indie projects to understand the music of Brazil’s Pará in 2021
- My blurbs on Gaby Amarantos, Os Amantes and Pabllo Vittar for PopMatters’s 10 Best Brazilian Pop Albums of 2021
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