Grupo Instituto questions authorship on CD!

Unintentionally, the group Instituto adds more spice to the heated MPB discussion about album numbering, authorship, copyright, musical formats, artistic renewal, etc. It's not that the four young men organized around the also nascent Instituto label have a firm opinion on such matters. Their intervention arises from the difficulty of conceptualizing what they are and what their first album, "Coleção Nacional", is. Rica Amabis, 28, Tejo Damasceno, 26, and Daniel Ganja Man, 24, are music producers in São Paulo. Rodrigo Silveira, 24, is a visual programmer. Together, they don't form a musical group, they say.

"Instituto is a label, a studio and a musical project," Silveira tries to explain. ""Coleção Nacional" is a compilation we produced to present it," Damasceno continues. "Instituto is a production nucleus. It's a new concept," Amabis interjects, hesitantly.

Although more or less newcomers, the young men already have militancy in new pop. They work on the technical production of the recently released Racionais CD. They co-produced the soundtrack of the film "O Invasor", starring rapper Sabotage. They will sign six tracks on Nação Zumbi's new release. Rica Amabis released the solo CD "Sambadelic" (99).

"We're not a band, nor artists. I'm a producer and program samples. Ganja Man is a producer, but also a musician," Damasceno defines. "I'm more producer and sound technician, I don't consider myself a musician," Amabis states. "It's a culture where the producer ends up becoming a bit of an artist," Damasceno finally admits.

The album presentation text for the press, prepared by producer and journalist Alex Antunes, is more incisive: "What is a producer, what is a DJ, what is a solo artist, what is a 'project'?

In current pop music the barriers between categories are being anarchically blurred and ignored by a generation for whom technology is just a lighter to ignite the fuse of creativity, and 'signature' is one more opportunity to mess up the notion of authorship." Antunes continues: "Remixes where nothing from the original recording appears, or the emergence of so-called 'bastard pop', where kids simply attach samples from two or more songs, regardless of labels, to create an instant hit via the internet — this is a nightmare world for culture's jailers."

The Instituto "kids" themselves pour cold pessimistic water on Antunes' theoretical enthusiasm: "Alex is dying to invent a movement and put a manifesto on everything," Amabis laughs. "We just want to bring together people who like the same sounds — samba, reggae, electronic, hip hop, a bit of jazz," he simplifies.

The "crew" is not small. Across 14 tracks, almost always under the central nucleus's supervision, names from hip hop vanguard (Sabotage, Rappin' Hood, Z'África Brasil, BNegão, Zé Gonzales), mangue beat exponents (Fred Zero Quatro, Otto, Nação Zumbi under the pseudonym Los Sebosos Postizos), post-mangue beat kids (Bonsucesso Samba Clube), gaúcho pop artists (the lunatic Flu, members of Ultramen and Comunidade Nin-Jitsu, gathered under the nickname Traidores da Babilônia), tradition canons (Cila do Coco), etc. alternate.

The explanation for such a large gathering of musicians is also prosaic. "It seems complicated to make, but it wasn't. Everyone's friends, they show up at home. We kept recording," Damasceno says, owner of the house/studio/label/institute.
One of Instituto's precepts is to intervene on each guest's work. Sabotage sings samba, Rappin' Hood's lyrics practically disappear in the final mix, Fred Zero Quatro goes reggae, rapper Fernandinho Beatbox (from Z'África Brasil) does vocal percussion in samba time, etc. "The whole CD is people doing things they don't normally do," Damasceno says.

Authorship also becomes a smoky concept in the visual imagination of "Coleção Nacional", which portrays people in everyday situations, but always with faces hidden by a white towel with the Instituto's red logo. If this symbolizes the extinction of the author, the young men aren't affirmative even there: "It's an unplanned game that has yielded various interpretations," Silveira says. "The photos also play with terrorism, with not being identified," Damasceno reveals. "Who are the guys behind the towels?" Silveira asks. They are the Instituto.