“Tem gente com fome” “The people are hungry”

Source: Thiago Piccoli, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

In honor of Solano Trindade’s birthday, I’m revisiting (and expanding) a post from September 2021. This poem was written in 1944 by Solano Trindade (July 24, 1908—Feb. 19, 1974), a militant Communist and black rights activist, who was also a poet, a painter, an actor, and a filmmaker. The poem was censored immediately by the Estado Novo dictatorship. In 1975, the group “Secos & Molhados” (literally “Dry goods and wet goods” but really “Groceries”) was prohibited from releasing a musicalized version by the military dictatorship. The song was finally released in 1979 by the most famous member of that group, Ney Matogrosso, on his album “Seu Tipo” (“Your Type”). (Ney omits the list of stations that the train stops at in the middle of the poem.)

The title and the repeated line literally translate as “There are people going hungry” but the rhythm of the Portuguese, as noted in the poem, seems to imitate the sound of a train. So I have translated it as “The people are hungry” which I feel has the same chugging meter as the original.

Listen to Ney’s recent version
Listen to Ney’s original version

“Tem gente com fome” (poem by Solano Trindade, 1944)
Trem sujo da Leopoldina
correndo correndo
parece dizer
tem gente com fome
tem gente com fome
tem gente com fome

Piiiii

Estação de Caxias
de novo a correr
de novo a dizer
tem gente com fome
tem gente com fome
tem gente com fome

Vigário Geral
Lucas
Cordovil
Brás de Pina
Penha Circular
Estação da Penha
Olaria
Ramos
Bonsucesso
Carlos Chagas
Triagem, Mauá

Trem sujo da Leopoldina
correndo correndo
parece dizer
tem gente com fome
tem gente com fome
tem gente com fome

Tantas caras tristes
querendo chegar
em algum destino
em algum lugar

Só nas estações
quando vai parando
começa a dizer
se tem gente com fome
dá de comer
se tem gente com fome
dá de comer
se tem gente com fome
dá de comer

Mas o freio de ar
todo autoritário
manda o trem calar
Psiuuuuuuuuuu

“The people are hungry” (song translation by S. K. Smith, 2021)
Dirty train from Leopoldina
Running, running, seems to say
The people are hungry
The people are hungry
The people are hungry

Caxias station
Again running
Again saying
The people are hungry
The people are hungry
The people are hungry

Vigário Geral
Lucas
Cordovil
Brás de Pina
Penha Circular
Penha Station
Olaria
Ramos
Bom Sucesso
Carlos Chagas
Triagem, Mauá
Dirty train from Leopoldina
Running, running, seems to say
The people are hungry
The people are hungry
The people are hungry

So many sad faces
Wanting to get to
Some destination
In some place

Only in the stations
When it’s stopping
It starts to say
If the people are hungry
Give them food
If the people are hungry
Give them food
If the people are hungry
Give them food

But the air break, all authoritarian
Tells the train to shut up