Between funk and Bach: a musical vaccine for Brazil

The outlook could hardly be more bleak when someone discovered the happy coincidence that a

funk

remix

has turned

into a campaign in favor of the coronavirus vaccine in Brazil.

Killed by suffocation in hospitals, paid injections that do not arrive, networks infested with fake news and the man at the helm, President Jair Bolsonaro, as denial as the first day, without a mask and with the declared intention not to be vaccinated.

This is how the pandemic was when the Brazil that loves to innovate, that vindicates science and art in the face of obscurantism and ignorance has scored a great goal with

Bum Bum Tam Tam

(ass tam tam, in Portuguese).

There must be few Brazilians left who have not heard that catchy song that encourages vaccination.

How it became an unofficial hymn is such a mess that it should be recounted by chapters.

First, the happy coincidence:

Bum Bum Tam Tam

is the title and catchy chorus of one of the biggest Brazilian hits on YouTube.

And it sounds like Butantan, a public health institute, the largest vaccine manufacturer in Latin America.

Therein lies the key to this phenomenon that has united science and popular culture to raise awareness to the rhythm of dance to the last of the disbelieving Brazilians.

Second, the protagonists.

In an unexpected alliance, the scientists of the Butantan Institute embrace the

funkeiro

and rapper MC Fioti, who created the original music after finding a fragment of a certain JS Bach, whom he did not know, on the Internet:

Partita's

transverse flute

in A minor.

January 2021. Vaccination has just started in Brazil.

It doesn't take long for the master of ceremonies to adapt the rhymes.

“The vaccine will cure our virus, it will save many people,” the boy sings to the rhythm of a funk born in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro who struggles to get rid of the stigma of being a criminal thing.

The

Vacuna Bum Bum Tam Tam

remix is ​​born

.

Succeed.

Defenders of the Brazilian public health system - one of the largest in the world - enthusiastically push the song.

Science popularizers applaud like crazy.

Not in the most incredible of their dreams did they imagine such a promotional campaign.

Zé Gotinha —the droplet that has embodied immunization campaigns since the eighties— stars in a torrent of memes.

Dance to the funk beat, shaking your butt.

Third, without video there is no

hit.

With enormous agility, the centennial Butantan Institute picks up the glove.

It is the dreamed of opportunity to assert itself after months of siege by President Bolsonaro against the Butantan vaccine because it is sponsored by a political adversary and because it is Chinese.

Immediately the Institute opens its doors to the artist, its laboratories and its roof terrace, where MC Fioti sings along with dozens of scientists who dance following sanitary protocols.

Funk with mask and safety distance.

Eight million people watched the video in eight days.

They are already almost 10 million.

Fourth, fertile ground.

Retweets and

likes

number in the hundreds;

YouTube views, by the millions.

A trend intensified by the pandemic.

With the first quarantine, Brazil with a good Internet connection moved en masse to a YouTube in effervescence.

Fifth, conception.

Everything indicates that the first to connect Butantan with the smash hit funk was the Bahia Symphony Orchestra.

On January 8, he posted on Instagram a video of a pre-school concert in which Bach's transverse flute and a violin accompany an MC who recites the verses of the original

Bum Bum Tam Tam

.

"Come with the vaccine, Butantan," it was titled.

From etiquette, # TrustScience.

A conjunction of talents did the rest.

—Eps

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