It is extremely difficult to know where Dacal-the-singer ends and Andréia Dacal-the-person begins. Moving in a scene — rap, ragga, Jamaican dub — increasingly divided between "conscious" artists and artists with no consciousness at all, this 29-year-old from Rio (of which almost 15 are also dedicated to music) dares to hold the banner of responsible thinking, ideological militancy and even political correctness, bringing to her music a blunt worldview.
Raised on skateboarding, a sport she fought for to the point of intervening in Niterói politics, Dacal is a product of the underground and has been tracing on the Brazilian map (she is also intimate with Geography, having graduated from Federal Fluminense) a pilgrim trail always on the margin, inculcating and absorbing ideas from seemingly isolated people, but connected by the great arena of activism that the Internet has become. With a mouse in one hand, a mic in the other and much inspiration in her lungs, the singer and instrumentalist filled her music with values ranging from the search for the human spiritual core to contesting the "crystallized structures" of Brazilian society as sociology would have it.
Her trajectory had a pause around 2005 and 2006, when she dedicated herself to encapsulating all this vision in her first album, Caos, Roots, Controle, released in March 2007 by the no less alternative Tomba Records, produced by label owner, producer, DJ, guitarist and friend Bruno Marcus (whose résumé includes generous contributions to Brazilian alternative rap, as in work with the Quinto Andar collective). Caos, Roots, Controle did not play on MTV or radio committed to their own tail (which is tied), but figured on most MP3 players and on dials of radios dedicated exclusively to Jamaican-inspired music, marginalized by nature.
With her mix of ragga, rap, dub, samba and MPB, handled with scientific excellence and blended with the synthesizing power of someone who steps equally in favelas and forró halls, samba terreiros, reggae shows and rap parties, Caos, Roots, Controle introduced Dacal to a huge variety of DJs, musicians and admirers of her sound, but by no means foreshadowed what was to come, such as her later participation on the debut album of the excellent Italian trio Dubzoic and sparks lit on the Portuguese project Bandulu Dub, not to mention her emblematic participation on the mixtapes Istambul Riddim (Brazilian) and Dub and Blaze (Italian).
With her pen sharper than ever and performance at eruption point, Dacal is, isolated and intensely, preparing material for a new batch of songs. Her achievements are certainly honorable, but she is aware (if she is!) that the path is arduous. As she herself sings, full of conviction bordering on asceticism, "every day discipline, apprentice". Dacal, her music and personality, her excellent vocal range and triggered thoughts, is always ready for battle.