Playground magazine

Mixing your poisons always gives you more of a hangover. But it is also enriching and, at times, inevitable. Choosing between vodka, hip hop, whisky, precursors of krautrock, rum, ambient, Jägermaister, soul, beer, progressive instrumental rock, caipirinha and carioca funk isn’t easy in Brazil. And even less so in São Paulo. And even less so at Sónar, which kicks off its carioca festival this Friday with a radically ambitious, eclectic selection. Here you find yourself required, at least musically, to  get drunk on a roster that features worldwide giants like Kraftwerk, Mogwai, James Blake and Four Tet alongside the strongest artists from the national scene (stars like Emicida and Criolo) and up-and-coming artists from all over, even from Spain (like Za!). All of it is blended together in a mixture of vanguards and colours that is going to leave São Paulo, a city that had really been spoiling for a festival like this, with a major hangover.

Few people have seen that need so clearly - called for it more intensely - than Dago, a DJ present on the roster for Sónar São Paulo and also at the mother festival in Barcelona this coming June. For the last three years he has also been the producer and owner of Neu Club, where every Friday he shakes up the night for the people of São Paulo with what he calls “batidões globais”. An empire of enormous buildings, home to 11 million inhabitants, São Paulo today is a metropolis with one of the strongest cultural energies in the world. Much of this strength, as Dago tells us, lies underground:

“I would say that São Paulo is a city with many scenes, and many of them are connected to each other in some way. I feel the city to be more alive than ever, but I think that the best things are hidden, in isolated actions. In spite of there being many clubs, I feel a contradiction: I hear similar things everywhere, but I also see things that impress me musically every day.”

Maybe the ambitious Sónar festival will act as a meeting point and showcase for all of those hidden talents, although the hidden underground culture is still one of São Paulo’s main attractions today. A member of the festival’s artistic team in the city, Chico Dub, highlights “the very interesting exchange” implied by Spanish artists such as Za! and John Talabot visiting São Paulo and, at the same time, Brazilians like Psilosamples, Ricardo Donoso and Dago himself going to Barcelona. He concludes:

“São Paulo is without a doubt the most cosmopolitan capital of Latin America and the country’s musical Mecca. There has been a big increase in the number of electronic music producers in the city and country in recent years, whether for the dance floor or experimental. And that is fantastic for consolidating the scene”.