For a musical capital, Goiânia is a very quiet city. In the hot afternoon hours, the metropolis of 1.5 million inhabitants, built 1,000 kilometres from the coast in the heart of Brazil, takes on the appearance of a ghost town. Cars drive between ugly concrete towers and faded Art Deco buildings. Pedestrians are rare. From time to time, small Mandore ibis appear, with scarlet eyes and grey plumage. Not a song comes from their beaks. And yet, the capital of the state of Goiás is the centre of one of the most powerful cultural phenomena that contemporary Brazil has ever known, the sertanejo.
Literally, the music of the sertão, of the interior, of the remote inland region, far from the coast and dedicated to breeding. country of brazil which therefore has its capital, its national holiday (May 3) and now crushes with its hegemony the other famous styles of the country: samba, bossa-nova and popular music… but also cultivates sulphurous links with agribusiness and the extreme RIGHT.
According to data from Spotify, the barometer of musical hits, seven of the ten most listened to artists in Brazil over the past decade on the streaming platform belong to the sertanejo, as do eight of the biggest hits. Local country singers (and their subgenres) ranked first on the portal in twenty-four states of the federation (which includes twenty-six plus the federal district), in 2023, and today they gather up to 16 million monthly listeners on Spotify, compared to just 4.2 million for Caetano Veloso, the “god” of tropicalism.
“A stupid thing”
But who in Europe knows Di Paullo & Paulino? With 2.3 million monthly listeners, this duo is almost as popular as the great Chico Buarque. Aged 67 and 63, the two brothers in cowboy hats and flowery shirts are veterans of the sertanejo. From their base in Goiânia, and aboard their double-decker bus, they travel thousands of kilometres across the country. “We like to play in small towns in the interior more than in the capitals.” the friends confide in unison, from their recording studio in Goiânia.
Elias Antônio de Paula (alias Di Paullo) and Geraldo Aparecido de Paula (Paulino) almost always are in unison. The brothers spontaneously combine their voices obeying the classic structure of the sertanejo, which is the duo., with a high first tone and a more serious second receding tone. “The vocation of the sertanejo is to console the children of the sertão who emigrated to the big cities and have the saudad [nostalgie] from his homeland,” Paulino insists. “Sertanejo has long been marginalized, considered something for hicks,” Di Paullo deplores.
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