Genre research project 3/1357: Vanguarda Paulista

Patife Band - Corredor Polonês

The Vanguarda Paulista or Paulistana (São Paulo state and city Vanguard, respectively) was a Brazilian cultural movement that lasted from 1979 to 1985 in the city which demonym was used by the musical critics to give name to the new arising genre. It united artists of distinct musical styles that had no access to the established major labels due to their experimental, vanguardist bias - a barrier to a successful go-to-market plan specially in the Brazil of the 1980's, a period locally known as the ¨Lost Decade¨ due to the economic problems faced by the country by then.

That context obliged artists like Arrigo Barnabé and Grupo Rumo to finance their own records which thanks to their first listeners' word of mouth marketing started a trend of consumption of alternative albums focused on new experimentations in MPB among university students. Followed by other names like Itamar Assumpção, Premeditando o Breque and Língua de Trapo who used to present themselves at the Lira Paulistana theater, the movement gained visibility and favorable critics from the specialized media. Nevertheless, the movement never achieved the commercial success as expected by the labels, which led it to its gradual dismantlement.

Nowadays part of the artists who took part of the Vanguarda Paulista movement is still active, though with no unity under a cultural movement as the existent in the begining of the 1980's and the new generations of musicians influenced by the compositions of the original genre are now usually labeled as new (paulista) vanguardists.