Artur Santoro. Photography by Roger Macedo. Courtesy of Red Bull Media House.
There’s a resistance brewing in the bass-shaken walls of Salvador. It’s here, in the capital city of Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia, that a party collective called Batekoo has risen up within the LGBTQ+ community. Armed with a creed of sweat, sex, and collective empowerment, Batekoo has emerged as a symbol of freedom in the face of Brazil’s slide towards fascism. But their story doesn’t begin with the rise of a new president, who somehow out-Trumped his American counterpart.
Years before a 63-year-old former military captain named Jair Bolsonaro became the “Trump of the Tropics” and was sworn in as president of Brazil last week, Batekoo mobilised party goers to stand against systemic racism. It was only 130 years ago that Brazil became the last country in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery, and, in the time since, the socioeconomic divide between Euro-centric and African-descended Brazilians has remained an open wound. From black people making significantly less money than white people to the flagrant structural and societal racism, these issues have stretched from the highest structures of Brazilian society all the way down to the parties that young Brazilians go to for a night of escapism.
It’s here, on the dimly lit dance floors of clubs across Salvador — where discrimination against its 80 percent black population runs rampant — that the idea for Batekoo was born from the minds of co-founders Wesley Miranda and Maurício Sacramento. “In the past, most parties, regardless of location and theme, only placed people with European standards in their event page pictures and releases. There was no representation of dissident or black bodies,” Sacramento tells SLEEK over email of life before Batekoo. For the two, creating a party for black people by black people wasn’t just a clap-back against the light-skinned, thin-bodied ideal of Brazilian beauty, it was a cultural revolution long overdue.
Juju “Jujuzl” Andrade and Mauricio Sacramento. Photography by Rebeca Figueiredo. Courtesy of Red Bull Media House.
Almost overnight, Batekoo rewrote the narrative for nightlife by creating a space for people of all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities to dance until dawn down to the very last detail. Drink prices and entrance fees were lowered to account for economic limitations, anti-black security staff were replaced, and black DJs and organisers were brought in as the collective became a disruptive force, prompting a newfound embrace of blackness. It’s a seismic shift that Wesley was particularly proud of as the subject of Batekoo’s influence was broached. “Either by actually believing in historical reparation and inclusion or by the ‘hype’ of following this trend of compulsory representativeness, the LGBTQ community has increasingly attempted to embrace the black cause.”
As Batekoo grew and cemented its status as one of the city’s biggest party collectives, it soon surpassed the outer limits of Salvador and made the journey south to São Paulo. Here, in the cultural capital of Latin America, Batekoo joined other pro-black collectives like the visual art group, Coletividade Namibia, in creating a “black revolution” within the city’s nightlife scene. For a new generation of LGBTQ Brazilians, it became more than just a party. The sweat-soaked dance floors and pulsing beats became the backdrop they needed to explore and embrace their identities.
Photo courtesy of Matheus Thierry.
For DJ Kiara Felippe, who began to attend the parties as she was transitioning, it impacted her self-esteem and became a place of recognition for her blackness — a place where “cultural references about fashion, aesthetics and experience” were everywhere. “Batekoo gave me autonomy to be myself completely,” recalls dancer Juju “Jujuzl” Andrade, who began attending as an escape from the fat-phobia she faced from her community. “I found myself with the aid of that space free of any judgment. Batekoo introduced me to freedom,” admits Andrade. It was here that Artur Santoro, the party’s São Paulo-based producer, found an outlet to bend and break the fragile confines of masculinity that he’d long outgrown. Often dressed in a singlet and sporting a shock of purple hair, he’s become one of the movement’s most transfixing figures on and off the dance floor.
What had begun as a clap-back against nightlife’s anti-black racism has become a bass-heavy bastion for blackness, freedom, and sexual expression. It has become a safe haven free from a wave of violence that claimed the lives of 445 LGBT Brazilians in 2017, and last year, saw the murder of 38 year-old black, lesbian councilwoman Marielle Franco — a killing that sent thousands to the streets in protest. Batekoo had already become as much a cultural movement as a party collective but, with the election of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency two months ago, the stakes have never been higher within the LGBTQ+ community.
As the country lurches forward into a new reality where their president is a man who has proudly proclaimed that he’d rather have a dead son than a gay one and that women who are raped somehow deserved it, the organisers of Batekoo are preparing for whatever comes next. “We will not fail to celebrate our existence and our bodies,” promises Miranda, “but it will be a very complicated political season.” Rights may be curtailed or watched by the new administration but, with this unease, the collective’s passionate vigilance has positioned them as the booty-shaking freedom fighters their community needs right now. It is as Santoro says: “There are many uncertainties in the air, but we are creating new worlds, new possibilities of being, valuing black cultures; the certainty we have is that we will not take steps back, only ahead.”
See an episode of Inspire the Night on BATEKOO here: