The Reign of Drag in Brazilian Pop Music
By: Tommy Shalloe
Tags: Queer, Drag, Pop Culture, LGBTQ, Brazil

‘Tô chegando

Se prepara pra jogar

Vittar, Gloria Groove

A-RE-TUZA

A drag queen behind the counter of movie theater concession stand in an exaggerated large blond wig and a red costume covered in popcorn buckets, reluctantly waits on a long line of customers that seem to represent typical American cliques as seen in Hollywood movies like the queer cult classic, Mean Girls (2004). The drag queen is Brazilian pop singer Aretuza Lovi and the scene is the opening of her 2018 music video for the song “Joga Bunda” on which she is joined by Pabllo Vittar, undisputedly one of the South American country’s biggest pop-stars at the moment and queer icon, and also drag rapper, Gloria Groove.[1] Vittar is seen ripping tickets in the movie theater and flirting with handsome men who seem to be enticed by the pop-star’s presence, in bright red outfit and purple wig, while their girlfriends get angry and pull them away from Vittar’s enchanting vibe. Meanwhile, Groove hands out 3D glasses in the doorway to the theater and drops them on the ground on purpose in front of a girl who is clearly laughing at her being in drag. The music video, directed by Felipe Sassi,[2] is an allegorical political statement on LGBTQ+ communities taking center stage of the pop music industry in Brazil.

Lovi, Vittar, and Groove’s video, released in January of 2018, coincides with reports released on violence against Brazil’s LGBTQ community having hit all-time highs in the last ten years according to Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB), one of the country’s oldest LGBTQ rights organizations. 2018, a critical election year for the South American country’s rickety democracy, would see the rise of homophobic, racist, misogynist, and fascist presidential candidate: Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro, who has made brass claims about homosexuality being the consequence of parent’s not beating their kids enough, sparked national protests about his very prejudice rhetoric which gave birth to the chant and social media hashtag #EleNão (“#NotHim” in Portuguese) by feminist, LGBTQ, and Afro-descendent social organizations across Latin America’s most populated nation. This candidate, that many in the world have begun calling the “Brazilian Trump” or “Trump of the Tropics”, won more than 48% of the vote in the first round on October 7th and finally winning against Fernando Haddad, candidate from currently imprisoned former president, Lula Da Silva’s party PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores) in a runoff on October 28th, leaving Brazil’s most vulnerable populations in a place of uncertainty about the future of their political rights when he takes power in January of 2019.

Meanwhile, just days before the October 7th election, Pabllo Vittar released her second full-length album, Não Para Não on October 4th after the album’s debut single, “Problema Seu”, released a few months earlier reaching number one on iTunes Brazil’s charts and reaching number 8 on Spotify’s Top 50 streaming list for Brazil, cementing her place as one of Brazil’s reigning pop queens. The visibility of queer artists on the mainstream pop scene is a political transgression to the homophobic violence that is on the rise. Artists like Vittar, Lovi and Groove know this and do not shy away from their country’s current political crisis, all showing their support for the #EleNão movement on their official social media accounts. Their “Joga Bunda” is a political affirmation that they are here to stay, whether the homophobes like it or not.

The song which was released as a single in January of 2018, also appears on Aretuza Lovi’s latest album titled Mercadinho, a full-length LP with 12 upbeat dance hits, mixing pop with other Brazilian styles like Samba and Funk. “Joga Bunda”, for example, contains lyrics that invite the listener to “shake their booty” like the song’s protagonists in its video, clearly created for the São Paulo and Rio nightclub scene. The electro-pop and urban vibe of the music is not exempt of its own political reading as it represents the space in which queer communities have been able to forge community spaces: the nightclubs and cabarets.[3] However, this invitation to dance is a convocation to move one’s body to the subtler but very political message: join us queens or you are going to have a bad time.

Lovi opens the song announcing her arrival on the scene with her gang, making her grand entrance as any queen should. She begins to evoke a third person “she” one could only imagine is a royal third person in which she is referring to herself: “ela joga bunda, ela é quem comanda” (“she shakes her booty, she’s the one in charge”) and making autobiographical references to her upbringings (as Bruno Nascimento) in the small farming town of Cristalina in the southern Brazilian state of Goiás: “Filha de um bom samba / Rainha da granja” (“Daughter of a good samba / Queen of the farm”). The contagious pop beat and rhythm already making the club goers shake like their queen commands them to, Pabllo Vittar’s verse doubles down inviting the listener to come over and feel the movement if they want to play with them remarking that “quem está convocando é a Queen Vittar” (“Queen Vittar is the one summoning you”). Vittar’s use of the English word “Queen”, not only means being the queen of the club, but the queen of pop and a drag queen (there is not Portuguese translation for this term therefore the English term is used in the local LGBTQ community for this type of performance art) which emphasizes the performativity of this gender-bending genre of pop taking Brazil by storm.

Butler states that “the body appears as a passive medium on which cultural meanings are inscribed or as the instrument through which an appropiative and interpretive will determines a cultural meaning for itself (Gender Trouble 8). In other words, Butler states that while all gender is performed in society, it is not performed willingly, rather learned through cultural impositions on society. Drag performance is usually an exaggerated performance of the opposite sex, and this is transgressive due to its questioning of those social norms that inculcate proper “masculine” or “feminine” performance. The queens in the “Joga Bunda” video are all characters, alternate personas pushing the envelope in terms of the performativity of gender and these drag queens are flaunting that in the faces of a society that has shown to be extremely homophobic and violent towards their community. And it is Gloria Groove’s rap that makes the strongest revindication of the LGBTQ community’s right to celebrate their identities in the song.

This drag rapper/singer declares in her verse that “If Aretuza invited me, I am going to shake my booty.” Groove states that she is going to shake her booty and that moment is hers and she is not going to back down: “Esse momento é meu, Bee / Eu não vou deitar.” She highlights the unity of the three’s friendship, complementing the beauty of her two colleague’s personas and evoking past artistic collaborations her and Aretuza on the song “mercadinho,” while telling the DJ to turn up the music, “que eu vou ficar mais um poquinho” (“because I am going to stick around for a while longer”). Groove’s last verse is a warning for the homophobes reassuring that with these three queens, they will either get used to queer visibility or they are going to have a bad time, especially with their continued success: “Are, com GG e PV / Se acostuma bebê / Senão Vai Passar Mal[4] / Com o nosso Proceder.”

Through a very kitsch and colorfully queer aesthetic, Felipe Sassi captures the song’s political message through a narrative of, not only gender, but character performance that turns these three Drag Queens in to the heroines on their own film. In the middle of the music video, the girls transform from movie theater workers into Hollywood silver screen stars, a common trope in drag performance. Aretuza Lovi emerges underneath her concession stand counter in a very flowy turquoise night gown and a blond wig reminiscent of Marylin Monroe or another 50’s Hollywood actress while Vittar’s ticket pulling booth goes dark and when the lights come back on, she is now dressed in a sparkly silver outfit. Both stars come out from behind their counters to shake their thing for the camera and strike glamourous poses. Groove then puts on her 3D glasses and when she removes them she has magically changed into a glamorous black dress in which she proceeds to rap and dance for the camera on the ramp of the movie theater entrance. Finally, the camera cuts to the movie theater audience wearing their 3D glasses, eating popcorn and enjoying their film. Their film, however, is an over-the-top performance of the three queens now sharing the same screen, dancing and singing together in a an under-the-sea themed scene in which the stars seem to be interpreting a type of mermaid, important mythological figure for queer culture.[5] These sirens are drawing all of the Brazilian industry’s attention through their gender-bending performances and catchy dance hits with Pabllo Vittar leading their way.

The gender performance that these drag queens of pop carryout is a constant questioning of the binary system of heteronormativity. Whether they be in a concert, music video, or late-night talk show these artists are always representing themselves to the public in their female drag personas with very few exceptions.[1] Vittar’s stardom has caused a linguistic chaos when radio and television hosts try to discuss the artist, switching frequently between masculine and feminine pronouns in Portuguese in the same sentence. Her stage name, Pabllo, being related more to a masculine name (however, not common in Portuguese) also adds to this crisscross of gender performance. Butler argues that all gender norms are essentially a performance in such that they repeat social norms that “work, animate, and constrain the gendered subject, and which are also resources from which resistance, subversion, displacement are to be forged” (“Critically queer” 23). Even though her argument points out that everyday performances of gender are socially and culturally constructed, Butler also explains the subversion to heteronormativity that drag performance represents: “Drag is subversive to the extent that it reflects on the imitative structure by which hegemonic gender is itself produced and disputes heterosexuality’s claim on naturalness and originality” (Bodies That Matter 125). Vittar does not shy away from this dispute, and constantly questions her society’s blatant hypocrisy as being the country with most murders of LGBTQ peoples while boasting at holding one of the world’s largest Pride Parades on São Paulo’s emblematic Avenida Paulista every June.[2] The success of stars like Lovi, Groove and Vittar within a politically polarized country with high rates of hate crimes towards LGBTQ individuals is a sign in and of itself of such hypocrisy.

The 25-year-old Pabllo Vittar exploded onto Brazil’s music scene in 2015 with her Portuguese cover of “Lean On” by American electronic dance trio, Major Lazer, which she titled “Open Bar”. Since then, her career has not stopped. As a young boy, Vittar would sing on local television shows in his native Maranhão and even sang in a local Catholic church’s choir section. Vittar got her first break since the “Open Bar” video to be the band lead of primetime televisions how Amor & Sexo. Since then she has done activism work for LGBTQ rights, hosted multiple television shows, participated in reality shows on Brazilian TV, as of 2018 has recorded two studio albums, has done voiceover acting for a new Brazilian produced adult cartoon for Netlfix called Super Drags (2018), and has recorded numerous collaborations with both Brazilian artist as well as international artists, most recently with rising English pop artist, Charli XCX on the dance hit, Flash Pose.