Marina Sena says she will return to MPB, but what is MPB in 2023?

[ad_1]

♪ OPINION – “MPB Marina will be back, guys. I do MPB, okay? It’s pop, but it’s MPB. I hate it when people say I left MPB.” The phrase said by Marina Sena over the weekend, in a show at the 2023 edition of the Primavera Sound festival, sounds curious to say the least. Or anachronistic, out of season. MPB is the acronym created in the festival era, starting in 1965, to designate music produced and sung by a generation of singers, composers and musicians created in the second half of the 1960s, most of them with university education, even if incomplete. Strictly speaking, MPB has never been a musical genre, as the MPB repertoire encompasses songs, sambas, toadas, baião and other rhythms. However, the acronym MPB ended up being assimilated and disseminated as a genre. So much so that there are MPB icons – Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, Edu Lobo, Elis Regina (1945 – 1982), Gal Costa (1945 – 2022), Gilberto Gil, Maria Bethânia and Milton Nascimento, as well as the former Djavan and João Bosco – and there are samba idols, as if there were a wall that separated the geniuses of MPB from the samba greats like Martinho da Vila and Paulinho da Viola. This imaginary wall further separates popular singers – such as Roberto Carlos and Odair José – from this elite of Brazilian music. 27-year-old singer and songwriter from Minas Gerais, Marina Sena will not “return” to MPB because she simply never belonged to MPB. Just as, strictly speaking, Adriana Calcanhotto and Marisa Monte were never part of MPB either. And there is no demerit in this for anyone. The three artists mentioned are from other generations, from other classes. On the scene since 2014, Marina has already emerged in a pop universe of which MPB is just one (excellent) reference. Especially because, if understood as a genre, MPB only had a golden decade after the festival era – the 1970s – and began to implode in the market from 1982 onwards with the explosion of Brazilian rock. Currently, MPB represents a niche in the Brazilian music market. Artists like Caetano, Chico, Gil and Bethânia still attract audiences to their shows, but they are far from the mainstream dominated by the pop stylization of genres such as country music, funk, pagode and forró. Marina Sena drinks from the rich source of MPB. So much so that she did a (controversial) show with Gal’s repertoire to celebrate the dead singer last year. But Marina’s sound was never MPB. Not even “pop MPB”, as she labels it. The fact is that the artist from Minas Gerais will enter a new artistic cycle from 2024, breaking the partnership with music producer Iuri Rio Branco – a timely change because Marina’s second album, Vício elegant (2023) did not double the effect and achievements of the artist’s previous album, De Primeira (2021). However, in practice, the “MPB Marina” will not be able to return because, strictly speaking, it never existed. MPB singer – if the acronym continues to be perceived as a genre… – is Mônica Salmaso, an interpreter who has been admitted to the select club of this always majestic, but increasingly anachronistic, MPB.

[ad_2]

Source link