Casa Verde’s theme, Fafá de Belém asked for a costume without shine and sequins: ‘You can’t look like a diva’

About to complete 50 years of career, Fafá de Belém was honored by Império da Casa Verde, which paraded this Saturday (10) with the theme “Fafá, the Mystical Cabocla in Rites of the Forest”.

“I’ve already paraded a lot in Rio and I was featured in Belém do Pará. But being the theme of a school in São Paulo about to celebrate 50 years of career is very strong”, said the singer, emotionally, as she prepared to enter the avenue.

“It’s not my story that’s being told, it’s the story of my people’s culture”, she said proudly. “I was born in the north of the country, in the heart of the Amazon. I’m just another girl, like so many others, from my homeland.”

The characterization of the singer, who ends the school parade in the last car, includes sober makeup, without shine or glitter, with indigenous paint and a long, straight, white wig, which she called a “mantle of hair”. “Our women are like that: big hair and a red mouth is what’s not missing”, she jokes.

The sobriety of the makeup and the lack of glitter was requested by the singer herself from the carnival attendees at Império da Casa Verde. “I close the school without much shine, without sequins and without sequins, because I want to end it as a woman came into the world”, she says, who also didn’t want her costume to compete with the float: an eight meter tall indigenous man edge from which it enters the avenue.

“All this is too strong for me to be the star, I can’t look like a diva”, she continues, laughing.

The revelers accompanying Fafá in the last car are dressed in gowns embroidered by artisans from Marajó Island. The singer’s costume, a purple and red cloak, is inspired by operas, one of the symbols of the city of Belém.

Another symbol that Fafá did not leave out was the patron saint of his land, Our Lady of Nazaré, represented in the form of a muiraquitã in a piece of jewelry made to order by a local artist.

Fafá adds that the school’s theme helps to bring representation to social and environmental issues in the North region. “The Amazon is under-seen, under-analyzed. I hope that with the COP coming here, people will look at us with grace, respect and sincerity”, she says. “We must fight for a better chance of life for riverside, indigenous and quilombola peoples.”

In her debut as an honoree at the São Paulo Carnival, Fafá entered the avenue eager for the title. “God willing, all the orixás and the people of the forest”, says she, who dressed as Yemanjá at the Salvador Carnival, in Daniela Mercury’s trio. “It was the first time I got on a trio electric,” she exclaims. “This is a year full of firsts.”