When Brazilian Brega took over Berghain: Rosalía remixed by Miss Tacacá & Clementaum 🇧🇷
I am really looking forward to Rosalía’s upcoming time in Latin America where she will also make a stop in Rio de Janeiro on her Lux Tour.
My secret hope for that Tour Stop is that she will embrace and engage with Brazilian contemporary music. The reason for this is that I was able to experience her song “Berghain“ being played by Brazilian Producers at the Berlin Club Berghain in January- and the remixes continue blowing my mind. This was during CTM Festival.
Miss Tacacá played her own Remix of Berghain which you absolutely have to listen to at least once, while Clementaum played a Funk Remix by Levysso
https://on.soundcloud.com/LlBlpZ23VA5RywJEiI
https://on.soundcloud.com/HmsoluyJR3Y4fXPa9v
https://on.soundcloud.com/HmsoluyJR3Y4fXPa9v
I feel like the Miss Tacacá remix of Berghain reveals why the song is called that way, while not being a techno track a Priori. Each segment of the track fulfills a bit of a very own mission, so parts of the song can be used separately, cut into pieces. Therefore the creative options of using the song are really endless. Especially because they feauture these very high quality classical instrumentals by London Philharmonic artists and vocal segments by Björk and Yves Tumor. For instance, within the Miss Tacaca remix, the Yves Tumor part, which is borderline traumatic Shouting “I will fuck you til you love me” is turned into a hardgroove ending, hence could be mixed into another fast-paced techno section, while the start of the sone featuring strings is turned into a dembow beat, hence is perfectly compatible with a “gasolina” type transition.
While I did the enjoy the Taylor Richardson techno remix at Rosalia’s own concert in Madrid, I feel like no music genre takes Better Advantage of this, as much as Amazonian Brega from Brazil.
Brega is Amazonian Sound System Culture
The remixe by Miss Tacacá (indigenous Amazonian trans 🏳️⚧️🇧🇷 producer 🪶🏳️🌈) introduce Berghain into the Amazonian Sound System culture that brought life to Brega, or how it’s called today, Rock Doido. Find an excellent reference of the genre below
My first encounters with that sound go back several years, during work in the Madre de Dios region at the border between Peru and Brazil, the birthplace of psychedelic cumbia. A genre fueled by ayahuasca, the 70s, tropical fevers, indigenous ritual , and a good amount of chaos.
I didn’t know then that on the Brazilian side of the forest, selectors were already catching radio signals, shaping something new. São Paulo’s gays were early to it (of course), catching what would come after the global rise of Baile Funk, at parties where sanitary precautions were dismissed in pure debauchery. There, hits were sampled into a trashy mix of synth/body maximalism.
Brega (and its feral cousin Rock Doido) feels like an error in the system — but that’s the point. Its logic is the recycling of everything, copyleft by design. A form of globalization imagined from the end of the world, where resources are scarce and life is rich.
Electro Brega, born in the sound systems of Belém in the Amazon, is now catching international attention. Even Gaga joined the wave, releasing a Brega version of Fun Tonight on Chromatica.
So of course I had to catch a train for a Berghain all-nighter when I saw Miss Tacacá and Clementaum inaugurating the Era of Brega in Europe at CTM Festival earlier this year.
I did still manage to catch another Brazilian Artists at CTM. Stefany Egedy focuses her research on the future of music after acoustics.
Stefanie Egedy with Holger Lund
But back to Berghain:
Fans were slapping fans from all sides across the Halle dancefloor. The girls and the gays were getting it on and hundreds of gringos were first exposed to the new fever of Latin Dance music: Brega 🇧🇷
I really hope to see Rosi. performing the Brega Versions of the Song together with the dolls in Rio.
I really wish for Rosi to grow within Brazilian Music as much as she has bloomed within Caribbean genres, and it would be great to see Miss Tacacá on stage.