Brazil, home of the sound system

So, I went to Brazil kind of hoping to stumble across a chap making great-sounding ARP2600 clones out of old coke cans and sweet wrappers and selling them for $99 each. If he's there, I didn't find him. Instead, I saw sound systems everywhere. Around carnival time, there's a 4K rig in every front garden and pick-up truck on the road, all of them playing 'Sou Chicleteiro' by Chiclete Com Banana. I didn't know where these sound systems came from until I found one back street in the market area of Belém which was full of speaker shops selling, building and repairing them. Apart from lots and lots and lots of drums, there was hardly any music gear for sale (cheap strat copies, Behringer gear and cruddy-looking-but-not-cheap Voxman effects), but the place was full of crossovers, 12v powered mixers, racks and racks of power amps and battery-powered car stereos. Unfortunately, I didn't get to my camera in time to catch the guy on a bike with a full-on sound system attached to the front and back riding down the street, but it looked about 120% less rubbish than this one...


Comments:
Yay! Tom's back!

Sorry guv'nor! we didn't know you'd be back today - We would have tidied the blog up a bit.
 
Chiclete com Banana translates to Banana Bubble-Gum. If only Suzanna Hoffs had posessed the foresight to call her group this....

Welcome back Tom.
 
Actually it means "Chewing Gum With Bananas", and it´s a reference to an old song. The lyrics talk about mixing up brazilian with foreigner culture. Unfortunately, decades later, this is still a rare situation.
 
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