Catching Up With... Os Mutantes

Of all the unexpected returns to music after years of obscurity or self-imposed exile, the re-emergence of Os Mutantes in 2006 had to score high on the unlikely scale. Having faded into a state of suspended animation in 1978, the band founded by brothers Sergio Dias and Arnaldo Baptista in Sao Paolo in 1966 never found much commercial fortune during their active years, but has since become a common touchstone in the American and European underground for their kaleidoscopic psych-pop, with echoes of their quirks turning up in the musical DNA of everyone from David Byrne and Beck to Of Montreal and Devendra Banhart.

But a reunion seemed doubtful. Arnaldo had already refused Kurt Cobain’s personal request for the band to reform to open for Nirvana’s 1993 In Utero tour, and the lingering effects of extensive LSD usage and injuries caused from a fall from a third story window in a mental institution made touring difficult. But as their stature grew, spread among a new generation of internet-savvy listeners who could finally find their albums, rumors of a reunion began to cross from the realm of speculation to reality. By 2006, with London’s Barbican Arts Center offering the brothers a headlining slot in their Tropacalia exhibit, Os Mutantes was reborn, so successfully that a series of American shows followed. Now, with their first new album in 31 years, Arnaldo has again opted out, leaving Dias to enlist countryman Tom Zé to become his creative foil for Haih or Amortecedor, a wildly imaginative song cycle that proves that Os Mutantes is ready to mingle with their musical offspring.

Paste: At what point during the reunion tour did you realize you wanted to make another Os Mutantes record?

Sergio Dias: From the first day on, for sure. When we got together, I said, “Let’s do a new album.” I didn’t want us to do only things from 30 years ago. I encountered a bit of resistance [laughs], but then I started to work on writing and I met Tom Zé, which was great. He was an old partner of ours in the beginning, and we didn’t see each other for something like 30 years, and then we met on the first week that we did here in Sao Paolo. And we just connected like perfection. It was great. So he became the partner of my life. I never had such a great collaborator. So we started to write the music, and then everything caught fire. Spontaneous combustion.

Paste: Did you know what kind of record you wanted to make?

Dias: No. I just knew that I didn’t want to look back or rely on anything that we had done. What we wanted to do was to be perfectly honest about what we are feeling now and what it was to be like in the 21st century. We’re not the same people we were before, so it would be awful to be mocking anything that we had already done. I think the best thing to do is what we did before, to not think about it and just play.

Paste: At what point in the record-making process did you start to get an idea of what this record was going to sound like when it was put together?

Dias: In the writing, when we started and when we had the first three or four songs, I said, “Wow! This is something. This is new.” Then the songs moved to the arrangements, and, for example, “Querida Querida” is something that is very powerful. We started to use other instruments like the Egyptian oud and the nay flute, from Egypt also, was great for the beginning of “Teclar.” The songs are like a Christmas tree. The arrangements are what you put on it. But if you don’t have a very pretty tree, it will look awful. So when the songs started to come together with the lyrics and everything, it blew my mind.

Paste: About how long was the songwriting process?

Dias: The entire record took about one year. We took our time. We didn’t want to rush or anything. We dedicated the last year to this.

Paste: What were some of the first songs that you wrote for this?

Dias: “Amortecedor,” which is not on the record, is a very powerful song, and it’s going to be released on the internet only. It’s song where I did the lyrics and Tom Zé did the music, which is a new one. Normally, Tom Zé is very strong on lyrics and I would do the music, but this time it was reverse, and it was very strong. The lyrics consist of just one word, where if you break it down into other words, it’s like a dozen other words. It makes total sense. “Amortecedor” means “shock absorber,” like for a car. But you can break it down to “a,” which is just an interjection. Then “amo,” which is “I love,” and “amor,” which is “love.” “Amortece” is “love weaves,” and “tecedor” is “the weaver.” So “Amortecedor” is “love weaves pain.” There’s a lot of other things that come with this word. And Tom Zé did fantastic music underneath, so it was great.

Paste: So you had worked with him earlier.

Dias: About 40 years before. But when we met, I was just a kid, 16 or 17. And at that time, the age difference makes a huge gap. I probably wasn’t able to communicate right with him, but now I know. It’s great because the start of our life was basically the same, and then we had different lives, and we join now in this moment. It’s great to see that we’re the same.

Paste: What does the title of the record mean?

Dias: “Haih” means “raven” in the Shoshone language.

Paste: What inspired you to use that for the title?

Dias: Well, I was very close, and the band, also, to the crows. I was playing jokes, and I was looking at this crow [that's] on the cover for like an hour, and at one point he looked at me, like, “Ok, you’re next.” So I took a picture of him, and it came out very nice. My dream was to have a crow for a pet, because they are very smart and peculiar and magical. It’s not an ordinary bird. There are a few of them that talk. It’s an amazing bird. Edgar Allen Poe and a bunch of stuff are connected to them. That’s how the thing started. A few of the songs are mocking the crow, like, “Ha hah ha hah” [makes squawking noise]. And the Shoshone thing is because I was watching this movie about the Lewis & Clark expedition in America, and there was this Shoshone lady that was very important in this expedition because she was the one who drove them to the right spots to meet the Shoshone tribes. She was a very important woman as an example of being a strong entity.

Paste: I see. I was wondering, at the beginning of the record, “Hymns of the World Pt. 1,” what is being said in that dialog there?

Dias: I have no idea! I just found that thing on YouTube, and it’s Putin talking to the entire Soviet army. You see in the end, “Hymns of the World, Pt. 2,” the Russian anthem, the Brazilian anthem, and the American anthem are all altogether. It’s very hard for us foreigners to realize America without Russia. We were raised with Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev and all these guys. I think, for example, Putin is much more interesting than [Hugo] Chavez. He’s a better opponent, if you know what I mean [laughs]. It was more fun when you guys had Russia instead of this guy who is like [someone] from Clear and Present Danger. It was more poetic, if you know what I mean. Competition was much healthier. Now it’s just plain war and destruction.

Paste: Seeing that it was dangerous for you to make records in the '60s, does it feel different now that you don’t have that danger hanging over?

Dias: I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen with this National Anthem of Russia and the American National Anthem, if we’ll be crucified [laughs]. It’s difficult to predict. At the time, there was a lot of pressure regarding the danger, but when you’re kid, you feel like you’re immortal and you don’t care. It was like a prank that you were always doing on censorship. As far as censoring a word in a song, instead of changing the word, we’d put a noise on top of the word. So everybody knew we were censored, but when we played live, we’d sing the normal lyrics. So we were always kicking back, if you know what I mean. But when Caetano [Veloso] and [Gilberto] Gil got arrested, for sure, we got more conscious about the danger. Many times, we were under the menace of being kidnapped or taken from the military. It was hard. Very hard.

Paste: Does it feel different to have the freedom to make your art now?

Dias: Well, I don’t feel that, really, because we didn’t care about them at the time. We were too young. We didn’t have a very political point of view of being outraged by this. It wasn’t something that we were taking that serious. We were basically mocking the hell out of them. You know, when Kennedy died in ’63, I think that was the first coup d’état. That was a very shocking thing, and Brazil was for three days in official mourning when Kennedy died. We were sent back from school, and I remember it like today. It’s amazing to see how America was, and how a President in America was so respected and so cherished and so loved. Obama now has a strong position in the world, especially because of being an Afro-American, and there’s a lot of weight on his shoulders. But now is different times. I think then it was less corrupt. You could know exactly who was the enemy. Now it is more shady. You don’t know exactly what’s going on in the world. For example, the breakdown of the dollar and the economy: We didn’t foresee that. That was done under everybody’s nose and nobody realized it. So who was responsible for this? And now there’s a bunch of people in trouble in America, and it’s very hard to think about it, people losing houses and their possessions and jobs. This is very important for the American people to think about. Who is really the enemy? Who is the bad guy? Because Brazil always had trouble with the economy, we’re used to that, but for America it’s a hard blow.

Paste: Absolutely. Do you consider this album to be political?

Dias: Oh yeah. For sure. But it’s very mellow, also, in the lyrics. For example, “Querida Querida,” the first song, is beautiful in a political way, because the guy is saying, “Oh darling, oh my darling, the people are going to survive in spite of our charity, in spite of our smiles, in spite of our generosity.” It is a beautiful tune, and it’s very strong.

Paste: How about “Baghdad Blues”? What inspired that?

Dias: Oh, the music inspired me. Tom Zé heard a little song, just strumming on the guitar, “da da da da,” and I was immediately transported to those cabarets in Tangier, Algeria and Paris in the ‘20s, and the decadence. The melody is this kind of oriental thing, and immediately made the connection that Baghdad was the Paris of the Orient. So it is full of things from today, and it’s impossible to think about Baghdad and not think about Saddam Hussein or Ali Baba or Scheherazade and One Thousand and One Nights and the war and the bombs. It is a kind of a journal of everything we know about Baghdad. A long time ago very close to there were the Babylon gardens. So it’s very hard for us to see suddenly all this pain and destruction.

Paste: As someone who has been an artist for all these years, when you look at the world, does it seem like a better place than it was 40 years ago?

Dias: Well…the speed of development of everything is astonishing. If you think about going back 20 years there were no computers at all, and now the entire race is based upon it. If you think about the internet now, and the power of it, [Os Mutantes] is back because of it, because of these kids that started to connect with us. We had no band, we had no manager, we had nothing, and suddenly we are playing again. This is only because of this connectivity. All of these things are really becoming extremely fast, and I think we’re in a moment of huge transition for the human race and for man as an individual to be able to deal with all of this. Let’s say if you live in Oklahoma on a farm, it’s a very different speed than if you were living in Sao Paolo or New York or someone else. Now we’re living four lives in one. Then, we had more time to digest everything. So I don’t know if it’s better or not. I think it’s just the process of evolution, and maybe we’re going to have to mutate to handle all of this information or wake up parts of the brain that are too sleepy. There are so many diseases now like panic attacks, and it’s like an overload of information. The world now is so small. I remember my mother went to Europe by boat, and it took like three months. It is amazing.

Paste: Back when the band broke up in 1978, did you think the band would ever get back together and make more records?

Dias: I never said “no” to life. I never imagined that this would happen again, and so many people tried to reunite us but with the wrong intention. The way that I thought it always would happen would be with a phone call like when we were kids, and that’s exactly how it happened, because when the Barbican started, the curators told the management there that there was no sense in making a [festival] for Tropicalia without Os Mutantes because we didn’t exist anymore. Somehow this leaked to the press and was distorted, and somebody thought we were going to play at Barbican, and it started to pop up all over the world that we were going to be playing, and we didn’t know anything about it. Then the radio here was saying that me and brother were already rehearsing, so we started calling each other. Then Dinho [Leme], the drummer, said, “If you guys want to play, I’ll play.” Then I realized it was serious, and I put them back together. It was outrageous, because without playing a single note, like a month after we said yes to Barbican, we were touring the major places in America. That was an amazing thing. It was beautiful. We came back by the kids’ determination.

Paste: Was there any particular moment when you realized that there was a whole new generation of kids that was discovering your music?

Dias: Oh, yes. When we played the Barbican, it was outrageous. We didn’t play anywhere else before, so it was a shock to see all the power of all the people that were there. But also Pitchfork, to see 18,000 kids and there aren’t many Brazilians in Chicago, to see them singing in Portuguese, that was extremely impressive. It was like when we were kids and trying to sing Beatles but not knowing what we were talking about. It was very powerful.

Paste: Before that, had you been aware that Os Mutantes were being rediscovered by American kids?

Dias: No. Not at all. I had no idea. When they told us, “Ok, you guys are going to open for the Flaming Lips at the Hollywood Bowl,” I said, “What?!?” And then they told us we were going to play that Fillmore, and I said, “No. That is impossible.” That is where I was when I was 17, and I was looking at the other bands.

Paste: I read somewhere that in the '90s, Kurt Cobain tried to get you to open for Nirvana. Is that true?

Dias: Yeah, that is true. Kurt Cobain wrote a letter to Arnaldo, and he made a drawing of himself saying that we should get together. I never knew about this until later. And Sean Lennon suddenly started to write me, asking who were my influences, and it was funny because my influence was his father! It was amazing. And David Byrne called me and asked me about putting together a compilation. Just things where you think, “Oh, someone wants to do this…OK,” but I had no idea that it was so deep. It really took me by surprise. That gives you a very strong sense of responsibility that you have to do something for them, because it is something that you owe to the people that were inspired by your music. You have to put out some new material and let your face be slapped whether it’s good or not. You have to take risks to be alive. And I don’t want a dead band. It wouldn’t be honorable.

Paste: Does it change things at all not to have your brother with you?

Dias: Well, not really, because it has been such a long time without him. When he came back to do the Barbican [show], it was so hard for him, and I think it was a wise decision for him to stop. It was too hard on him. The damage that was done because of the accident, because of his jump, it was pretty hard.

Paste: Well, it’s nice that he at least got to do the reunion shows.

Dias: Oh, yes. For sure. I was very happy to be able to be with him on the stage. It was great.

Paste: So through this whole process, do you think you learned anything about yourself that you didn’t know before?

Dias: I learned to be very humble and to respect the source of where the music comes. The great thing is to be living again exactly the same way we lived before but with our eyes open, conscious about it. It’s a beautiful. It’s like riding a great wave, if you’re a surfer, and when you’re a kid you just enjoy that wave. But when you’re a bit older, you’re looking at it, conscious, like, “Oh, God. This is the wave.” So it’s amazing. We’re very grateful to the kids and where life has put us.