Sampa [English translation]

(the first three lines on the text on line are the name of the song and of the singer/songwriter, it starts at “Alguma coisa”)

Something happens in my heart

Only when it crosses Ipiranga and São João Avenue (two streets in the city)

When I got here I didn't understand anything

Not the concrete poetry of your street corners

Not the discreet inelegance of your girls

I didn't know Rita Lee (a singer from São Paulo)

Your most thorough interpretation

Something happens in my heart

Only when it crosses Ipiranga and São João Avenue

When we were face to face I didn't recognized myself

I called what I saw bad taste, I called bad taste, bad taste

Because Narcissus thinks that what is not a mirror is ugly

And what is not yet old scares the mind

Nothing from before when you are not a mutant (Mutantes was the name of Rita Lee's band)

And you were a difficult beginning

I get away of what I don't know

And those who sell a different dream of a happy city

Soon learn to call you reality

Because your are the other side of the other side of the other side of the side

From the people oppressed in the waiting lines, in the small streets, in shanty towns

From the power of the money rising and destroying beauty

From the ugly smoke that rises and erases the stars

I can see your poets of fields and space

Your forest factories, your rain gods rise

Pan-Americas from utopian Africas, tomb of samba

The newest of Zumbi's quilombo (a village created by escaped slaves)

And the new baianos “promenade” thru your garoa (a kind of rain typical from São Paulo, that doesn't really fall almost like a very wet and windy mist)

And the new baianos can enjoy you leisurely

• Artist:Caetano Veloso