- Canada to further cut international student, foreign worker permits
- YouTube launches new TV-focused tools for creators
- White Sox heading for worst season in MLB history
- China the top challenge in US history: senior diplomat
- Hong Kong democracy tycoon's son warns time running out
- New migraine drugs no better than cheap painkillers: big study
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs again denied bail in sex trafficking case
- Brewers clinch division title as MLB playoff race heats up
- Man City blunted by 'giant' Inter in Champions League stalemate
- US stocks dip despite larger Fed interest rate cut
- Man City held by Inter as PSG pinch win in Champions League
- All Blacks recall Beauden Barrett for Australia Test
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 20, wound 450
- Spurs late show saves Postecoglou blushes at Coventry
- PSG snatch late goal to beat Champions League debutants Girona
- Gittens' late double gives Dortmund Champions League win at Brugge
- Man City blunted by Inter in Champions League stalemate
- Hidden talent: French Olympic star Marchand opts for disguise
- MrBeast named in California lawsuit over 'Beast Games' show
- Gauff splits with Gilbert as coach after 14-month run
- Hundreds of thousands at risk in Sudan's El-Fasher: UN
- Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to new sex crime charge
- Venezuelan opposition candidate says letter conceding election was coerced
- Ukraine official claims Russian advance in Kursk has been 'stopped'
- X update allows app to bypass Brazil ban: internet providers
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 14, wound 450
- US Fed makes aggressive rate cut, weeks before election
- Arsenal's Odegaard faces lengthy injury absence
- India coal expansion risks massive methane growth: report
- China the top challenge in US history, top diplomat says
- US Fed makes larger half-point cut in first reduction since 2020
- Ronaldo's Al Nassr appoint former AC Milan boss Pioli
- Ainslie 'relieved' as British book place in Louis Vuitton Cup final
- Struggling Roma replace sacked icon De Rossi with Ivan Juric
- Women's NBA will add 15th team in Portland in 2026
- Brazil fires need harsher punishment: environmental police boss
- Boeing to start large temporary furloughs amid Seattle strike
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill nine, wound 300
- 'Emergency' declared over falling UK butterfly numbers
- McIlroy outlines threats to golf peace deal
- Stock markets, dollar slip before US rate decision
- Russian advance in Kursk 'stopped': Ukraine official to AFP
- UN members demand end to 'unlawful' Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories
- Snapchat pushes 'safer' platform image, but not everyone agrees
- Three dead, 100 wounded in new wave of Lebanon device explosions
- So where does the oceans' plastic waste come from?
- Allied war heroes buried in Netherlands... 80 years on
- Marsh coy over Australia's choice to open alongside Head
- New London sculpture pays tribute to trans community
- Lebanon doctors tell of horror after pager blasts
RBGPF | 5.79% | 60.5 | $ | |
GSK | -0.31% | 42.43 | $ | |
CMSC | 0.02% | 25.055 | $ | |
VOD | 0.49% | 10.23 | $ | |
NGG | -0.46% | 70.05 | $ | |
SCS | 0.71% | 14.11 | $ | |
BTI | -0.34% | 37.88 | $ | |
AZN | 0.06% | 78.58 | $ | |
RYCEF | 1.37% | 6.55 | $ | |
RIO | -0.02% | 62.91 | $ | |
RELX | -0.82% | 47.37 | $ | |
BCC | 1.33% | 137.06 | $ | |
BCE | 3.09% | 35.61 | $ | |
JRI | 0.45% | 13.44 | $ | |
BP | -0.37% | 32.43 | $ | |
CMSD | -0.12% | 24.98 | $ |
Row over 'machismo' in song by Brazil icon Chico Buarque
In 1966, the late bossa nova singer Nara Leao asked Brazilian music icon Chico Buarque to write her a song about a long-suffering woman waiting on her man.
Fifty-six years later, the widely loved song, "Com Acucar, Com Afeto" (With Sugar and Affection), is at the center of a firestorm in Brazil after Buarque said he had decided to stop singing it over criticism of machismo in its lyrics.
"The feminists are right," Buarque said in a documentary series on Leao's life that debuted on January 7 on Brazilian streaming platform Globoplay.
"I'm always going to agree with the feminists," added the singer, now a 77-year-old living legend of Brazilian popular music.
That triggered a tempest over "cancel culture," political correctness and feminism in a Brazil that is deeply divided heading into elections in October that will decide whether polemical far-right President Jair Bolsonaro gets a new term.
"This has reached the height of craziness! All because of the Feminists. CRAZINESS!" read one typical reaction on Twitter.
"That took a long time, didn't it?" went a typical reaction from the opposite camp.
"I always hated that shitty machismo-filled song. I think people who romanticize it are bizarre."
The song is written from the perspective of a woman who has prepared her man's "favorite sweet, with sugar and affection," but is stuck waiting for him to come home while he is out carousing at bars and ogling other women.
Despite it all, when he finally gets home, she sings, "I'll warm up your favorite dish... and open my arms for you."
- 'Suffering woman's song' -
"You have to understand that in those days, it never crossed our minds that that was a form of oppression, that women shouldn't be treated like that," said Buarque, an adored singer-songwriter known for his satin voice, blue-green eyes, heartthrob smile and a storied career spanning six decades.
"I'm not going to sing 'With Sugar and Affection' anymore, and if Nara were here, I'm sure she wouldn't sing it either," added Buarque, whose repertoire includes numerous songs written from a woman's perspective.
Leao, who died in 1989 at age 47, is considered one of the founders of bossa nova, the silky smooth musical genre that evolved from the Brazilian samba in 1950s Rio de Janeiro.
Buarque said she had asked him for a "suffering woman's song." He complied, and went on to sing it himself, as well.
But some commentators pointed out Buarque had not sung the song live since at least the 1980s, dismissing the row that erupted in the media, on social networks and in cultural circles as a trumped-up controversy.
"We need to pay attention to the fact that this episode was used to rail against feminism and social movements, supposedly responsible for censoring artistic creations and impose political correctness," columnist Amara Moira wrote on website BuzzFeed.
"None of that actually happened. But in these times of fake news and hair-trigger reactions, it hardly matters."
Whether the song and surrounding controversy are ancient history or not, they gave rise to a new musical creation this week.
On Wednesday, singer Viviane Davoglio and songwriter Iavora Cappa posted a revised version of the song to YouTube, called "Com Ternura e Com Afeto" (With Tenderness and Affection).
In their version, it is the female protagonist who goes out for a night on the town, then comes home to her crying man -- who warms up her favorite dish.
A.Gasser--BTB