Scene 1
IX - Afrika
Yannick Dellas - Centro Cultural Afrika
Well, my name is Yannick Delass, singer, songwriter and guitarist, priest of the Rembolada. I've been in Brasil for nine years, to be completed in May, and here in the neighborhood I've been here for four years. Before Brazil, I lived between Cape Verde and Santo Mê Príncipe. And where were you born? The Democratic Republic of Congo, where there's a war going on.
I'm from Kinshasa. But I found this house here, an old Italian man's house, which was a restaurant for many years. But it used to be a steakhouse, and here we are in a kitchen. And there was this painting here in the hall. I think it was here. There was a painting here and there. The guys who were there, the owner who had also bought it, who had never been here, came once on the day I came to visit the property, one of the owners.
Then they took a painting and left one for me. I think this painting is for the decoration of the house. So I wanted to leave it here and keep it at the entrance. Yes, but the project here was initially to create a cultural center, where there could be a legitimate space for promoting African culture.
Because for a while there had been... I noticed that there was a lot going on about Africa that had nothing to do with Africa. So I decided to create a space for conversation and debate, to bring together that fictitious Africa, in other words, the unknown Africa, with the real Africa, which is the one we are bringing today.
Because, somehow, today's Brazilians, who we call Afro-Brazilians, came from there. But it's not the same people who lost it, history has changed, it's a different story, after 500 years nothing stays the same, right? So there are also some cultures that they brought here that we lost there. So it would be good to bring these cultures together to make it richer for both sides.
That was the initial aim of this space. And also to contemplate many, who in my area really inspired this, which is that people had nowhere to express themselves artistically. I'm one of them too, I had nowhere to play, so I imagined that there were a lot of people, I imagined it and then I went after these people, so I decided to make a space.
I think that in this whole story I was just brave, it's not about intelligence or having the conditions, it's just about being brave and not being afraid to break down. The space has been running since then with its own funding. And for the last three years, the space has never been paid for. And I'm getting my own money, playing there, gigs here, gigs there, royalties there, money coming out of Africa again, sent here, calling my mother, doing something to keep the dream going.
But it's doing well, at least in terms of legacy. What it's leaving behind, the history it's building... And the importance it's gaining for the neighborhood and the city's music scene. That's the great victory of this space so far. The space is becoming an artistic reference.
Sociologically, it has taken its place. We can talk about it, it has its place in the Bixiga scene. It's from São Paulo. There are many artists who would never get the chance if they didn't start playing here. We started with a cumbia scene here, today cumbia is popular in the neighborhood and throughout the city.
We brought Coco to the center, when there was none, and the coconut movement started up a lot. We're trying to get African music culture going here too. This is proving a little more difficult, because many people also have a caricature of this culture, so people are just getting to know it.