Photographs and commentary by Sean Barlow

Imagine summer in February. On stage in oceanside Recife in northeastern Brazil is a groovin' band fronted by two ten year olds wearing wooden sandles and pounding out rhythms. The rainbow crowd of black, brown and white 20 something Brazilians dance to the coco rhythm and clap time. Later, the group Dominico plus 2, including Moreno Veloso (son of Caetano), range between hard rock and soothing samba. And then there's the "surprise" guest artist, Manu Chao, that everyone in town knows about. Late at night, a visiting DJ from the U.K. plays bhangra beats and the crowd loves it. The backdrop for every group is a huge screen where they project evocative images of drawings and abstract figures. The combination of musical and visual delight is powerful.

These free, open-air concerts of three to four concerts per night are part of the Porto Musical conference and festival. They take place the week BEFORE carnaval kicks into high gear. And the buzz and anticipation for carnaval is palpable. You hear music groups practicing all over town..Carnaval starts on the Friday before Mardi Gras. Then the street bursts alive with local marching drum corps called marakatu and twelve piece brass bands doing frevo. Carnaval revelers second line behind them. On five stages around the Atlantic-facing island of Recife Antigua, stars from Brazil's northeast such as Lenine, Elba Ramalho, and Nacao Zumbi play for jumping, joyful, dancing, crowds who know all the lyrics to the songs and sing along. I felt I died and went to heaven.

This immersion into northeastern Brazilian culture for me was thanks to the inaugural edition of Porto Musical which was a huge success. Porto Musical represents a ground-breaking model for how to conceive and produce a North-South dialogue where professionals in the world music industry can exchange information, network and forge relationships, and of course experience great local, regional and national artists. Highlights from Porto Musical and carnaval are in the works for Afropop Worldwide radio. This is the first of a two part report for Afropop.org--the second will be more focused on carnaval 2005 and this first one on Porto Musical.

While the most successful world music conferences--WOMEX in Europe and the Association for Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) in the U.S.--have proven essential for networking on behalf of the advance of world music, there is an understandable but unfortunate low participation by music and media professionals (other than artists) from "source countries" in Africa, Latin America and Asia. The travel costs to Europe or North America are prohibitively expensive. Add to that the fact that many of our colleagues in Africa and Latin America are simply out of the loop about WOMEX and APAP. So the WOMEX team--in partnership with local production team led by Astronove Cultural Initiatives and the Pernambuco State ministry of Science and Technology and the Porto Digital technology initiative--decided to launch a WOMEX-style conference with a similar mission south of the equator. This benefited some 250 Brazilian artists, music business people, journalists, government workers engaged in culture and new media, new media entrepreneurs and others, as well as some 30-50 "internationals" who participated. Most internationals were invited speakers.

The Brazilian press gave plentiful coverage to Porto Musical and published interviews with many of the international presenters. So tens of thousands Brazilian readers know about the international interest in local culture. Readers also got a sense of activity and energy surrounding the creative industries in Recife and how locally based technology companies are forging ways to partner with culture. By contrast, local radio as far as I know did very little coverage. Radio throughout Brazil is shockingly bad. Tuning up and down the dial in Recife you hear mostly American music and middle-of-the-road Brazilian pop. It's common knowledge that Brazilian radio runs on payola. You pay, we play.

The Porto Musical conference was based on three tracks--Go Brazil! Go International! And Go Digital--for Brazilian presenters, international presenters, and technology presenters.

I was invited to present on best practices for getting attention in the U.S. media--radio, print, television, and web. The audience for my talk was mostly local artists, artist managers, journalists, and record label people. The Brazilians are already pretty media savvy though they're frustrated by the very narrow-format, payola driven radio system. They were all ears for how to get on the radar screen in the elusive and prized American market. But in some ways, they did not need my talk. There are already models for meta-media that seem to work just fine. For example, Recife's iconic and beloved Chico Science, creator of "mangue beat" along with his bandmates Nacao Zumbi (Chico died tragically in car accident in 1997) invented a mythology about growing up poor in Recife and making money plucking crabs from the muddy mangrove tidal plains that enabled him to go to parties where he heard rock and soul music which in turn fed his musical consciousness that all went into making his totally original and powerful marakatu-rock-hip hop fusion. In fact, Chico was a middle class kid whose parents worked for the government. Either Chico made up the story or the press got it wrong and Chico let it stick. Either way, he successfully manipulated the media to create a very marketable media image.

I guess the lesson is: if you don't have a good story, there are other options! Not that I want to encourage fabricating fables for gullible world music journalists! (that goes to my beef about journalist colleagues in the field who too readily regurgitate press release materials and too lazy to dig deeper to get at the truth. After all, myths can be interesting to write about too.) My main message to the Porto Musical audience was simply this: ask yourself  "what is your story?" and then practice telling it well. Journalists love personable, vivid, and insightful interviewees. That gives us "hot tape" for radio and T.V. and quotable passages for print.

Related to this is a reality check on how media coverage works: on the one hand you have lots of talented roots pop artists from around the world (the producers) and a growing world music audiences in North America and Europe (the consumers). The challenge is to get on the radar screen of the gatekeepers mediating between the two i.e. journalists, editors, radio hosts, talent agencies, club bookers, festival producers, A&R people at record labels, and publicists.

Examples I gave of themes for successful story-lines included "death and resurrection" about artists who've faded from the limelight and were "re-discovered" later in their careers (Buena Vista Social Club, Cesaria Evora, Orchestre Boabab) or artists in the thick of the history of their societies (Thomas Mapfumo, Fela Kuti, Gilberto Gil). You have to give ammunition for publicists to present to journalists and for journalists to present to their editors. Of course, I reassured the audience that first of all the artist has to have a high level of talent that wows the international audience and crosses the language issue. More profoundly the artist whose performance create a kind of spiritual transendance for the listener (think Nusrat, Los Munequitos de Matanzas). And of course, there's always great groove bands (Afrobeat, rumba, salsa) and technical brilliance (Congolese guitar, South African and North African vocals). So it's not all about playing the media game successfully but not every artist is Khaled or Youssou N'Dour. And you have to be smart with the media and other gatekeepers.

The internationistas for the most part focused their presentations likewise on realistic reports of their areas of expertise and Best Practices suggestions for their sectors of the industry: Ben Mandelson on how to work with an international record producer; Gerald Seligman and Robert Urbanus on how to deal with international record labels; Bill Smith on how to work with a talent agency an in turn the international touring market; Marc Benaiche and Jon Kertzer on the state of new media distribution of world music; myself on how best to get coverage in the U.S. media. And then presenters offered follow-up "consultations" to whomever requested one.

What also made Porto Musical different was the focus on the potential for partnership between the creative industries and technology led by Porto Digital, an ambitious initiative to create a high tech industry enclave in Recife as in Silicon Valley. Sixty-eight Brazilian companies and institutions--including ICT companies, universities, support organizations, and others are now based in the Recife Antigua (the beautifully restored old city). They do everything from software programming to making video games. Multinational companies such as IBM and Microsoft are also players here. The success of the Indian high tech industry is an enviable model. Porto Digital's goal is to make Brazil an attractive competitor for tech out-sourcing and original production which in turn will attract foreign investment.

Thanks much to the WOMEX team--"Networking is the best" as Borkowsky Akbar the WOMEX impresario says--and to Claudio Marinho of the state secretariat for Science, Technology and the Environment and to Pier Carlo Sola of Porto Digital and to Paulo Andre and Melina of Andronove Cultural Initiatives for producing and supporting Porto Musical and for inviting myself and other internationals to participate. The overwelming consensus was that this first edition was a success on all levels and there is already planning underway for PM 2006. Bravo@ More info at www.portomusical.com. I look forward to more world music conferences in the southern hemisphere!