I adore the Brazilian ‘bololo’: the correct use of Latin

Last December, the company’s year-end party was a Bermuda Triangle of musical styles. From team anthems to that moment’s sertanejo, everything went through Saboto’s sound system. Except for two attempts of mine to drink and dance to Shake It Bololo ft. Classics of MPB. In both, the song was abruptly interrupted by someone (I do not know who) who certainly does not deal so well with the popular use of Latin languages, especially street Portuguese.

Very far from comparing MC Bin Laden to Marília Mendonça in the importance of popularizing social themes, because you already know I melted for Marília a week before her plane crash, I am convinced they are my most extravagant recent discoveries and useful to social communication research. Wow!

Besides the danceable sound and the ridiculously fun lyrics (because it is very fun, I crack up almost every time!), what “Bololo” (the remix version, linked in the first paragraph) brings me is concrete data: more than 26 million views; a language of its own related to the relationship with the world; it is never boring.

Note, madam and sir, that if there is a hard type to deal with in the world it is not the neurotic, nor the hypochondriac, not even the fraud, but specifically the bore. The bore can also be called a corner. Know the corner guy? He goes to the party and stays in the corner? He has to be moved by forces foreign to any place other than the corner, because he is a child who soiled himself in the corner of the room.

‘Let the boys play’

For those of us who work in media production, there is a passage in “Bololo” where people repeatedly shout: “let the boys play” (deixa os garoto brincar), which I hear as “let the guys publish” (deixa os cara publicar). Basically, very basically, I have been carrying the word of “Bololo” with me wherever I go.

No song is more “state-breaking” in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) than “Bololo.” Love it or leave it, but let it serve as a flick on the ears about what is solely musical, fun, a language I also want to understand, speak and write fluently (one more? 😆).