Dear Tropicalistas,
Tropical Diaspora is always searching for the important things behind our vinyl projects. We emphasize cross culture experiences in Humanity! One of our sources of inspiration for our records on vinyl is Brazil, a former Portuguese colony that has given birth to one of the most unequal and unjust societies in the world from a social and racial point of view. However, the excluded part of this society hasn’t been silent, it has been working for 500 years in the creation of their own identity. We can right now observe a strong movement arising from the peripheries everywhere. The combination of creativity and consciousness is shaping this new identity; people making poetry, music, dance, painting and much more, telling stories out of the poverty and inequality left by a careless and cruel State. That society is divided in classes, that classes can be reduced to those who possess the means of production and those who do not, that the elementary tensions that arise from this crude fact causes class struggles seems to be a basic truth. But we should not forget that classes are made of real people culturally embedded and that as strong as class struggles the elementary class relations also produce class solidarity, the fuel of social communion. For those whose condition is peripheral, for those who have been culturally expropriated and marginalized these questions are an open wound felt in every aspect of life.
Now, we would like to introduce you a great artist from this rising movement that we at Tropical Diaspora® Records are proud to know! The artist we want to tell you about came to us through another great artist, the artist behind our last release on vinyl the LP Olhos Negros Vivo, the multi talent musician, composer, producer, poet, theatre director and friend Renato Gama.
We are talking about Melvin Santhana!
He is a singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist from São Paulo. The focus from the beginning of his career was black musicality with strong Afro Diaspora influence. He is on the road working with music for more than 20 years connected with various circuits and aesthetics of the contemporary black musicality. With elements of jazz, soul, samba, afro-beat and hip hop, his last album ABRE ALAS is the mirror of his artistic and musical plurality. This Album bring in their lines pertinent black socio-cultural issues embedded with cultural and artistic references that bring their identity. Besides the music, Melvin also dialogues directly with the theatre and the cinema, being part of important projects.
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