“Sampa” by Caetano Veloso (1978)
(“Sampa” is an affectionate nickname for the city of São Paulo.)
Sampa
Something happens in my heart
That only happens when I cross Ipiranga and São João avenues
It’s just that when I got here I understood nothing
Of the hard concrete poetry of your corners
Of the discrete anti-elegance of your women
There was no Rita Lee for me yet
Your most complete translation
Something happens in my heart
That only happens when Ipiranga and São João avenues cross
When I met you head on I didn’t see my face
I called the bad taste I saw bad taste, in bad taste
It’s just that Narcissus thinks everything that isn’t a mirror is ugly
And the mind is scared of what isn’t even old yet
Nothing of what it wasn’t before when we aren’t Os Mutantes
And you were a difficult beginning
I push away what I don’t recognize
And those selling another happy dream of a city
Quickly learn to call you reality
Because you’re the opposite of the opposite of the opposite of the opposite
From the oppressed people in the lines, in the villages, favelas
From the power of the money that rises up and destroys beautiful things
From the ugly smoke that rises, erasing the stars
I see your poets of fields and spaces arise
Your workshops of forests, your gods of rain
Pan-Americas from utopic Africas, samba’s tomb*
Zumbi’s new quilombo more possible
And the new Bahians** stroll through your fog
And new Bahians can enjoy you coolly***
* This is what Vinícius de Moraes, one of the quintessential Rio de Janeiro boosters, called São Paulo.
** The Novos Baianos or “New Bahians” were a Brazilian rock band active in the 1970s, but also Caetano Veloso, born in Bahia, was new to São Paulo when writing this song.
*** Just as he did in “O Leãozinho,” Caetano ends this song with a somewhat ambiguous phrase: “numa boa” - literally “in a good [way/place]” - which could be translated a number of different ways. I have chosen “coolly” in part because of the wordplay about people from a hot part of Brazil finding the south a little cooler and in part because it sounds like a word that might be used in 1978.