"In these words I express my world / where at times I lose and confuse myself / my sadness is expressed in my gaze / my truth, in these leaves flying away." — Anderson Herzer in A Queda para o Alto
Text and interview by Alexandre Mortagua
Photography by Hick Duarte
Pioneering is solitary. Being the first to inhabit uncharted territory is a task that opens tides to all kinds of monsters. In I Am the Monster Who Speaks to You, writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado opens his text and his presence at the School of Psychoanalysts of France by destroying the old world: "I am the monster you created with your discourses and clinical practices. I am the monster who rises from the divan and speaks, not as a patient, but as a citizen, as your monstrous equal." Confronting psychoanalysis' Victor Frankensteins, Preciado silences the doctors who confined him to the cage of "gender dysphoria" and "mental illness" and, as he says himself, "takes the word." Rejecting the position of object, Preciado asserts himself as a subject in a groundbreaking discussion in those halls, made possible only by his body and the pioneering nature of his testimony. What does it mean to tell one’s own story?
Far from academia and France, in São Paulo in 1982, Anderson Herzer told his own story in A Queda para o Alto (The Fall Upwards). This autobiographical work of poetry and prose by Anderson “Bigode” Herzer was the first literary work by a trans person published in Brazil. The life of the writer and poet is a mosaic of symbols representing the experiences of many marginalized youth and children in Brazil: a murdered father, a mother lost in early childhood, an exhausted talent, and a series of violences and abuses—institutional, structural, and cultural.
"I saw the slow corruption,
I saw the corrupter's gaze,
I saw a life in destruction
I saw the murder of love."
(Excerpt from the poem A Gota de Sangue, Anderson Herzer, A Queda para o Alto, 1982)
Institutionalized by his own uncles at the Fundação do Bem-Estar do Menor (the now-defunct FEBEM) at the age of 14, Anderson discovered his identity within the overcrowded, inhumane practices of this institution designed to shelter, monitor, and punish youth with deviant behavior. He found himself by embracing and living his transgender experience among the supposed delinquents and agents of the foundation. Despite committing no crime, Anderson remained under FEBEM’s custody until he was 17, when he was introduced to Congressman Eduardo Suplicy, who became his advocate for freedom. Suplicy approached a juvenile judge and signed for Anderson's release. All it took was a powerful white man—imagine that.
As the first man in a section designated for women, the binary rigidity of the institution isolated Anderson, exposing the solitude of his pioneering existence. He was belittled as a "man without balls," cascading him further into violence. Yet in his isolation, Anderson carved out an autonomous universe through his writing, transforming his feelings into poetry and recounting his institutionalized days. In the prologue Depoimento (Testimony), Anderson introduces readers to his life, beginning his act of self-narration and claiming his experiences and emotions. While still forced to use his “dead name,” Anderson lost his boyfriend, nicknamed Bigode, to a motorcycle accident at the age of 13. In becoming and publicly claiming who he was, Anderson adopted "Big" in honor of the man he loved.
Depoimento serves as a map, guiding readers through the twists, turns, and alleys Anderson opens to recount himself. Alone in his pioneering act of speaking and being heard, having his words published and creating a presence, Anderson fills the pages of A Queda para o Alto with brutal spotlight and shares his inner world, speaking of his dreams, affections, and relationships. What does it mean to tell one’s story? For Anderson, it means being the only one who can declare what is being said.
In his silent-yet-word-filled account, Anderson continues with Poemas (Poems), the second part of the book, describing his particular autofiction about, again, his dreams, affections, and romantic relationships.
"I fell, I persisted / I tried by all means to be strong / I fought against time, cried in silence / Called your name to the wind / I am the child of the drop, born in misery / My father, a lost soul / My mother, the shrew / I grew up watching tears / Slept among trees / I cried blood drops / I am sin, I am the moth."(Poem A Gota de Sangue, opening A Queda para o Alto)
In the book’s preface, written by Eduardo Suplicy, one reads that “FEBEM never explained it, but Herzer underwent a transformation.” The congressman refers to Anderson’s transition—the simple insistence of being oneself, which is no small thing. In a passage marked by its time, Suplicy refers to Anderson with his dead name and pronouns, following the protocols of erasure for those who defy binary norms. In the following pages, Anderson describes his transition without once calling himself "transsexual." This is the burden of being the first.
Photography by Hick Duarte
Through the same streets Anderson wandered during his years of freedom, Laura-Carne Osso, Entropia, Sarine, and their collective, Teto Preto, pushed the boundaries of physical and mental spaces in narrating a community. As described in O Show do Eu by Paula Sibilia, the perception of the self and the expression of subjectivities have transformed throughout the 20th century. Teto Preto and their community of artists adapt their productions, methods, and practices to keep celebrating post-pandemic, decentralizing the self into the multiplicity within themselves—a collective, collaborative self that loves, fights, and challenges. Disorganized and disorganizing, it is in São Paulo, with its many selves within their gods, that the creation of Fala begins.
“Teto, in a way, is also this beacon, right? A point of resistance. It’s like our sentinel, something we use to fight back, you know?”
Through regrouping and continually reorganizing, Teto Preto chooses to be a mirror of their time, reflecting back on their troupe, their desires, revolts, anger, and longing. From the “machine gun in a state of grace” that opened their debut album (recorded during the protests against the 2016 World Cup) to the “life that awaits me breathes violence,” which kicks off their new trans-cannibalistic manifesto Fala, the words they use to narrate themselves and their community describe what the outside world throws at them and how they respond. Inside, the band remains unyielding, absorbing survival tactics to persist within the capitalist music industry, with its purchased hits and suppression of LGBTQIA+ artists. While figures like Pabllo Vittar and Irmãs de Pau continue to face platform restrictions, mainstream artists like Grelo dominate the charts.
Photography by Hick Duarte
“Do you have an investor? No? Then your music won’t blow up. It can have really amazing, organic elements like Teto has, you know? Like Ana Frango Elétrico, Maria Beraldo, Jup [do Bairro].”
In Fala, with Saskia’s powerful, groove-filled vocals, Teto Preto explores the pseudo-democracy experienced by dissident bodies, dancing through a capitalist reality that reduces the number of hours in the day for a certain audience. The “target (that) is always another mirror” arose from a jam session, the method the band uses to create music by blending instruments, computer beats, and cuíca.
“Looking at it from the outside, Teto has followed a path of moving slightly away from jazz into something more aggressive, more punk—which is kind of where we come from, the three of us, right? And I think the coolest thing about this new formation is that we all come from this place of performing live.”
In this universal, intangible force called music, Saskia and Teto Preto take a democratic approach to rage, vomiting what they were forced to swallow. “Hatred is democratic, and I accept it.” Bullets, cattle, Bible.
“I really identify with Saskia. Like, damn, she’s the 20-year-old me, you know? I’m like, calm down, babe. Wait, hold on.”(Carne Osso on her partner in Fala’s vocals.)
Mari Herzer, a long-time kokobra and great-niece of Anderson Herzer, introduced her Queda para o Alto to Laura around 2021, when she joined Teto Preto. Laura delved into the upward abyss of the patron saint of Fala, drawing immense inspiration from Anderson for the project. Anderson never had the privilege of gathering with his own people in life, but decades later, Teto Preto can rise from the therapist’s couch and speak—not as patients, but as artists, as monstrous equals.
In “Para sempre vou te amar,” Carne Osso delivers a declaration of love to Loic Koutana, former Teto Preto member and body artist. Love, in fact, doesn’t necessarily need transformation—it is purely and simply perceived and assimilated in the materiality of life. “Only what isn’t mine interests me” becomes Teto Preto’s anti-narcissistic São Paulo version of Oswald de Andrade, who a century earlier roamed the same streets frequented by Carne Osso and Anderson Herzer.
"Queda para o Alto" and "Sem Vergonha" exemplify the mastery of sound and self-awareness that Teto Preto carries and expands to its collaborators. The band dives into a forró collaboration with the fantastic Getúlio Abelha, a Mamba Negra regular, to devour, chew, swallow, and regurgitate truths that need repetition. Saxophone, guitar, and spiritual-earthly ancestry call out the “frauds and social climbers” while embracing minds and liberating bodies that collapsed on the asphalt of Avenida 23 de Maio.
The album’s first single and the last track produced by Carne Osso, Sarine, and Entropia, “Te colocar no teu lugar,” is about control—the sweet control one wields. Teto Preto’s sexuality manifests in body and mind, in a game of domination that, wet, messy, and brimming with desire, lays out a plan of escape and control. With spanking, punches, spit, and thrills, Jup do Bairro takes the mic, dripping gasoline on them and Vaseline on us. The grand cast of the music video, featuring Julia Costa, Okofá, Guilhermina Urze, Valentina Luz, Kontronatura, and Delcu, unfolds a master plan for domination aimed at circumventing “algorithms that screw us over,” as Laura puts it.
“It’s about creating perspectives for LGBTQIAPN+ people and allies. It’s about building new families—it’s literally about life and death, you know?”
Contrary to the capitalist motto that “everyone is replaceable,” at Teto Preto’s party, no one takes anyone else’s place. Members and sounds are assimilated through the connections and relationships formed by the tentacles of this monster, this snake, this flesh, this bone. Irreplaceable, immeasurable, chic as Andressa Urach, voluptuous as Jup do Bairro, and pioneering as Anderson Herzer, Fala is one of last year’s best electronic albums, expanding Teto Preto’s sound and aesthetic.
In tracks that journey through live experimentation and a certain enchantment, "Fala" is an album of real-world tales, some fables reflecting their worldview. Like gathering a legion into a reorganized strategy for domination and resistance, Teto Preto follows the paths laid by bodies like Anderson Herzer and other resilient predecessors—and wreaks havoc.
Will you put me in my place, Teto Preto?