Photos Cíntia Augusta (flickr.com/photos/citcity2)
Seen as one of the most sagacious Brazilian Indian rappers,
Fábio Parteum talks about the influences of the Philosophy in his process of creation
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It was in the rainy night of the last 26th of November, in the up-to-date Emme Studio club, in Sao Paulo, during the premiere party of the Night Virtual Plot, that the MC and producer from Sao Paulo Parteum, that days before had launched the EP “ The authority of reason ”, said, still on top of the stage, beside his partners of Mzuri Sana, that the Philosophy (as study of basic problems related to the existence, to knowledge, to the truth, the moral and esthetic values, the mind and language) was making influence in his processes of creation.
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As seen in the work Interpretation of the Dreams (1899), where the Austrian philosopher Sigmund Freud joins series of studies that originated in annotations and analyses of his own dreams, Parteum, while weaving such a comment, unconsciously, translated in words the "thoughts" of the magazine O MENELICK at that moment. And, subjectively, he gave us a present with an interesting list.
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At the age of 35, married and the father of little Cora, Parteum, which received us on Plot Studios, in Pines, lives his life on the top of creativity and productivity. Main piece of the Virtual Plot, music lover of the cinema, skate, video and of the technology (almost always he is armed by his Ipad, Iphone, Macbook and other electronic personal items), yes, Parteum is kilometers far away from his time. Even more if we think about the heads that drive the national rap.
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An interview with him is never "only" an interview: it is a lesson. His comments and answers essentially flow into hairy artistic references. Jay-Z, Kennie West, Caesar Camargo Mariano, Beto Villares, João Marcelo Bôscoli, Herbie Hancock, Pete Rock, James Yancey, Nigel Godrich, Stewart Copeland, James Yancey, Native Tongues, Descartes, Sartre, Freud, those are some of the names that he quoted during our conversation. A truthful New Year’s gift. Here comes 2011!
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“Living life in alternate days is the same as sinking in an empty swimming pool"
Interest in Philosophy
In fact everything began in the university, in Cásper Líbero, on then the course of Publicity and Propaganda. I was 19 when I started it, a phase where you begin to know yourself a bit better, learning how to deal with your emotions and so on. At that time I started to read what most of the people read when you learn about your area: Sartre, Discard, Schopenhauer and much more.
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I’m alive, therefore I exist
A human experience depends on you to be alive. You can only notice other people’s experience, what pleases you or not, checking your particular bank of emotions and sensations.
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In fact, nobody knows anybody. What happens is that there are moments in which people meet each other. The understanding is always based on your own experience, and not on the others’. You know the world because of your feelings.
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The Origin
I watched the (movie) Inception (The Origin) alone, Friday night in a room of cinema in the shopping center. Me, my telephone and my camera. After the show I made a movie of my experience on watching Inception with my camera. This video is posted nowhere, but from time to time I watch it on my camera.
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On my way back home, I turned on my iPod and started to listen to Force of the Suggestion, a song recorded by me in January of 2007. Since that, I was asked myself how could a song recorded by me in 2007 have a lot to do with a movie that I watched three years later? I didn’t want to find many answers for that, but I believe that our doubts are the stimulus we need to move on to the next step.
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“Life is the moment, and moments change, and maybe in certain moments
of my life Philosophy will be the most important thing”
Dreams Interpretation
People more intelligent than me say that dream is nothing more than your mind organizing and putting in drawers information that you will need to access all the rest of your life.
I had a recurrent dream where all my friends appeared. I know there is a variant of this dream that had already appeared somewhere, movie perhaps, I don’t know. I don’t know if it was since that moment it started to appear for me, but I already had it many times, not anymore. It even turned into a rhyme.
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I was inside a swimming pool and all my friends were around, and I shouted for help because I was sinking. Suddenly a woman appeared, that I don’t know who was and that I couldn’t see her face. And she was saying: “I don’t understand you. The swimming pool is empty”. Then she disappeared. And the swimming pool was really empty.
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Years later, when I learned to write rhymes and such a thing I composed: “Living life in alternate days is the same as sinking in an empty swimming pool”. It is necessary to be very well, with very good days in the sequence so that I wake and say “It can bring me something!”
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I see all my dreams much more like something that can open doors than unique and true answers that will make my doubts disappear. Doubts never disappear.
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Mathematics
Dj Quik – that has already produced for Dr. Dre – and it’s considered a legend of the western North American coast, says that he could only make good music when he started to make music between the notes. When it comes from a man of jazz you can say: wow valiant.
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You don’t expect to hear that, or better, the great media doesn’t expect to hear that from a rapper. And such a thing, a rapper speaking and showing that, gives me this idea that mathematics doesn’t need to be exact all the time. Because of the fact that I produce, I count the whole time.
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I think therefore I exist
In music, especially on Rap, we exist first. And I place myself on that too because, in theory, we are only a body. I say that because the most difficult thing nowadays to find someone that he says: “no, I just buy and download rap discs, go to the shows. I am a rap fan”. That is very difficult to happen nowadays. People say “I have a blog”, “I am Dj”, “I take some pictures”, or “I negotiate an artist” and so on. It’s really hard to find someone that simply says that likes rap, buys the discs, goes to the shows and follows the scene. If there is, it’s very well hidden.
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Erosion of attention
Nowadays people consume much more in quantity than in quality. A guy says “I downloaded many albums this week”. So, I ask: But which of them have you deeply listened to? Have you listened to lyrics by lyrics?
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It’s similar to the way the writer Maggie Jackson entitled it; she called this phenomenon Eruption of attention.
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The experience of listening to an album is quite similar to the one of watching a movie. It’s not the guy’s fault for having downloaded 20, 30 albums that week ‘cause that’s good. The problem is that he has no time to deeply listen to them. It’s like a race to obtain as much information as possible but not essentially use them. I believe it’s a bit dangerous.
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Slap on the face
Only after my daughter’s birth I started to notice how boring I was with so many things.
Before that, I had no reason to be better. I thought that hitting for the first time and saying “no, it’s not like that!” I would communicate in the most effective way. I just wanted to speak in a clear way, I didn’t want people thinking that I was nice, boring or cool, I just wanted to communicate effectively. And the less painful process on doing anything is doing it fast. So, in order to focus on what I do, I thought that I had little time to talk to people. I had no pleasure on talking to people. I thought that I had too much more to talk to the world than the world to talk to me. Even that, deep in my mind, I believed that I was wrong, I could just get a slap of life when Cora was born.
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Since that, and I don’t need an art critic to tell me that, I know that my music is much better, I know that I’m a better person and I can see the word in different colors.
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Privacy
I was listening to an interview of John Mayer that he canceled his Twitter account to get through a period of digital clean (limpeza digital) cause all the things he shared on Twitter weren’t supposed to be shared with those 4 million followers he had but with his father, mother, brother, girlfriend. And that now he has some rules.
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Authority of Reason
People may access the EP Authority of Reason through the website parteum.com, where there’s a link. I want to physically launch this EP on March, but I’m adding some songs to this work. Together, I want to launch a DVD with some pictures taken of my quotidian, once I’m always recording. If I skateboard I record, if I go to my nephew’s house I record, if I go to a second-hand bookstore I record, if I go to a computer shop to buy something I record, if I go to my friend’s house, a cinema student that got some movies of the 50’s for us to watch I record too.
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At that one year away since my daughter was born I recorded many things that I didn’t show to anybody. Neither to Secreto nor to Suissac; neither to my brother nor to my wife, I didn’t show it to anyone. It’s mine, my process. I believe the same happens to all artists.
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My idea is to be focused on the shows, create more things. I intend to make presentations on March.
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People want the artist to be an artist 24 hours per day, and I’m not that. I am Arian; I try to have the control of everything all the time.
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parteum.com
myspace.com/parteum
parteum.blogspot.com
twitter.com/parteum
