Clara Crocodile — Original LP cover open, back to front.
The year was 1980 and a mad composer let an impetuous monster escape from his laboratory…
Despite being one of the central figures of **São Paulo’s avant-garde** movement, **Arrigo Barnabé** was born in Londrina, Paraná, on September 14, 1951. His family was relatively well-off, so Arrigo had a classical education and piano lessons at the conservatory.
He moved to São Paulo city at age 19, to study in the Architecture and Urbanism College, which was known for bringing together artists from different areas. One of them was the cartoonist Luiz Gê, who became his friend and introduced him to the comic books univer, something that would influence him throughout his entire career. Later, Luiz would make the artwork for this album and also the next one, Tubarões Voadores (1984).
Arrigo Barnabé drinking a coffee, 1980.
However, after an art festival in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, in 1971, where he heard Karlheinz Stockhausen for the first time, Arrigo left the architecture college and went back to Londrina, determined to be a musician. He started to study modal music, electronic music and especially atonality, a type of composition that lacks a tonal center and where the notes of the chromatic scale function independently.
“In Londrina, at that time, I read Balanço da Bossa (1968), by Augusto de Campos (...) and this book also talks a lot about how popular music ‘drinks’ from classical music, but with some delay. You see, the impressionism of classical music will appear in popular music 50 years later. So, I start to think, theoretically, that the next step would be a approach between atonalism and popular music.”
Arrigo Barnabé interview at **‘Som a Pino’** Podcast (2022)
So, in January of 1972, Arrigo called his childhood friend Mário Lúcio Cortes — who was also musician, but not pursued a career — and they start to compose what would become the song ‘Clara Crocodilo’. Originally, the music was composed as a modal concert piece, without lyrics. But it was the 70s, and Brazil was experiencing what became known as “years of lead” (1968-74) of the military dictatorship. AI-5 was in force, the act that removed most civil rights and institutionalized political persecution, strict censorship, arbitrary detention, torture and extrajudicial killing.
“In ‘Clara Crocodilo’ I was living a moment when I felt highly powerless. I began to understand what was happening politically in this country, that we were living in a dictatorship, that suddenly they [police] could arrest and torture me. Fuck, I thought: are we not going to do anything?…”
Arrigo Barnabé interview on ‘Movimento’ magazine (1981)
So, inspired by Luiz Gê’s comics, and titles like Spirit and ***Spider-Man,*** Arrigo thought this androgynous monster, an anti-hero, the counterculture incarnate, who could face all that oppression. A sound representation of a riot feeling. It took seven years for Arrigo to finish the song and finally understand that Clara Crocodilo was not a character, but the music itself.
In that meantime, he returned to the University of São Paulo, now to study music. There he composed some of the other songs on the album and formed a band with Antônio C. Tonelli, Paulo Barnabé (his brother) and Itamar Assumpção, another big name in São Paulo avant-garde movement. The band was called "Navalha" (razor) until 1979, when happened the 1st University Song Festival, organized by TV Cultura. To play at the festival, Arrigo brought together his band from São Paulo with some old friends from Londrina, and formed "A Banda Sabor de Veneno" (The Taste of Poison Band), name of one of the songs performed, as well as “Infortúnio” and “Diversões Eletrônicas”. This last one won the award.
Photo of the band ’Sabor do Veneno’, (left to right): Gilson Gibson, Vânia Bastos, Baldo Versolatto, Mané Silveira, Rogério, Regina Porto, Ronei Stella, Chico Guedes, Paulo Barnabé, Arrigo Barnabé, Bozo Barretti, Otávio Fialho, Suzana Salles and Felix Wagner.
With the success at the festival, the group gained notoriety and funds to produce an album. They even signed a contract with PolyGram, but it was broken due to creative differences, so Arrigo needed to opt for an independent production. Finally, on November 15, 1980, the album was released, where it would be trapped, for more than 20 years, the dangerous outlaw, the delinquent, the villain, the public enemy number one: Clara Crocodilo!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J242Gv3SUfoILt4W7ua25k2BHZQ_kiTE/view?usp=drive_link
SIDE A Acapulco Drive-In Orgasmo Total Diversões Eletrônicas Instante
SIDE B Sabor de Veneno Infortúnio Office-Boy Clara Crocodilo
4:30 4:37 7:49 3:30
2:31 4:50 6:59 7:21