With the kick-off of the opening match between Brazil and Croatia taking place in a little over an hour the 2014 Football World Cup has just opened with a short opening ceremony. Unlike the Olympic spectaculars World Cup opening ceremonies only normally last around 30 minutes and are basically just a performance of that year's World Cup song.
The 2014 opening ceremony was no exception and basically just provided a quick introduction to Brazil - the host nation. The first sequence centred on Brazil's vast rainforests which contain a variety of plant and animal life, has a giant river - the Amazon - running through the middle of it and is home to tribes of indigenous Indians.
The second sequence covered Brazil's colonisation by Portugal in 1500 which led to it being heavily involved in the African slave trade. Through different styles of dance the ceremony then demonstrated the effect this had on bringing different influences into Brazil's cultural melting pot. So there was Portuguese Fandango meeting with French Cotillion that was brought in from the US' slave owning south along with the traditionally Brazilian Samba which has its roots in African music along with touches of Latin jazz which has its roots in American jazz which itself has roots in the spiritual music of African slaves in America.
As such the majority of the ceremony seemed to be an insult to the official World Cup Song "We Are One (Ole Ola)." A spectacularly poor choice this song absolutely drips with American arrogance being sung Pitbull (a Cuban American) and Jennifer Lopez (a Puerto Rican American) with only a small contribution by Brazilian singer Claudia Leitte. The song's main problem is that it is sung mainly in Spanish while in Brazil they speak Portuguese rather giving the impression that Americans can't tell the difference. Adding insult to injury the US has been trying to draw comparisons between Jennifer Lopez's rather less then stellar career and personal life and Rihanna since their appearance together at the iHeartRadio awards. Also the US have been using the issue of whether Jennifer Lopez would actually turn up following the recent collapse of yet another short lived romantic relationship to needle the Brazilian hosts over the problems they've had delivering the stadiums and infrastructure in time for the competition.
So I for one am not wholly convinced that the sound problems that meant no-one got to hear the official World Cup song were entirely accidental.
19:20 on 12/6/14 (UK date).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment