Lights, shadows and music by Angela Ro Ro inspire the stories and stories from the book in the series 'Read this song'

Angela Ro Ro (1949 - 2025) inspires the 41 texts collected by Marina Ruivo in the third volume of the series 'Read this song'
Alexandre Moreira / Disclosure
♫ BOOK REVIEW
Title: Angela Ro Ro - Stories, songs, reports & the like
Author: Marina Ruivo (organization)
Quote: ★ ★ ★ ★
♬ " [...] Everything is so full of life that you could say that this person lived a hundred years, and it was only thirty. Ro Ro undresses in such a way that it's scary, it's so real. All the desire, the anger, the scream, the vomit. All that desire to love that is part of his human nature and that few dare reveal."
Singer Bárbara Eugênia's thoughts on Angela Maria Diniz Gonsalves' first album (December 5, 1949 - September 8, 2025) - titled "Angela Ro Ro" and released in 1979 when the artist was 30 years old - gives a clue to the confessional and sometimes visceral tone of the texts gathered in the book "Angela Ro Ro - Tales, songs, reports & such", released this June by the publisher Grouper.
Organized by Marina Ruivo, the book is the third volume of the "Read this song" series, created by Ruivo. After volumes dedicated to the works of composers Beto Guedes and Ednardo in 2023 and 2024, the series focuses on Angela Ro Ro's songbook in the flesh in a book that brings together 41 texts inspired by the crazy life and work of the singer, composer and pianist from Rio, who died in September last year, aged 75.
As the subtitle indicates, the book groups texts of different natures. There are those (the majority) who preferred the fictional format of the story, such as Luciana Lima Silva and Miriam Palma, whose stories "Balada da (des)arrasada" and "Tola" were written with inspiration from the lyrics of the songs "Balada da rasada" and "Tola foi você", respectively - both songs presented by Ro Ro on the first album, from 1979. And there are those who reveal feelings with real-life reports, made from contact with the artist, live or through music.
The preferential focus on Angela Ro Ro's anthological debut album - one of the greatest Brazilian music albums of all time - is the line that aligns most of the 41 texts.
"It's the album of an intense and whole woman who tears her flesh and shows her bones without any fear, even though she's in the dictatorial Brazil of 1979. Much more than talking about love, it talks about courage. It's a woman releasing the word without the slightest desire to please anyone, it's such a great desire to be, it's an existential plea", conceptualizes filmmaker and photographer Mery Lemos in the text "Angela".
Journalist and music critic Pedro Alexandre Sanches masterfully profiles the artist's existence, verb and time in the analytical text "It wasn't easy being Angela Ro Ro", an encouraging obituary published by Sanches four days after Ro Ro's death. Even though it is not new, the text is so good that it deserves a place in the book. The writer Santiago Nazarian offers "Fossa nova", a poem characterized by the author as "A retrocontemporary lyric for Ro Ro". brother Gustavo, an intense admirer of Maria Bethânia, an equally intense singer who soon connected with Angela Ro Ro's music when recording the song "Gota de sangre" in 1979.
Apart from fiction, the account of singer and journalist Márvio dos Anjos about the traumatic experience of having opened a show by Angela Ro Ro at Sesc Pompeia, in 2007 or 2008, is impressive - precisely because it is real. a demon" is the title of the text in which Márvio exposes in the book the darker side of the singer, whose often irascible and irritable temperament was the other side of the coin, even though the greatness of the work ended up hovering over all things, over the lights and the shadows, especially because Angela Ro Ro's heartbreaking songbook was the result of the restlessness of the artist's spirit.
The story of Márvio dos Anjos - victim of Angela's emotional maladjustment on that unforgettable night in every way - is touching due to the author's sincerity and because it was written without rancor, with the calming distance brought by time.
Interestingly, the text by journalist, musician and poet Rodrigo Carneiro about the whirlwind of emotions he felt when attending a show by Angela Ro Ro at the same Sesc Pompeia in 2008 also deserves an honorable mention. In "Our Bionic Woman", a story that precedes Márvio's text in organizing the book, Carneiro recalls the physical and psychological violence suffered by the artist in the 1980s - the decade in which Ro Ro was beaten by police officers for not lowering her head to the authorities - at the same time as he recalls his passion for the first time he heard the singer when, at the age of 12, he heard the bolero "Simples affection" (João Donato and Abel Silva, 1982) in a compilation album bought by his parents.
"Angela Ro Ro took away the peace. She was never used to the need to please", summarizes journalist Carime Elmor almost at the end of the text "That was my night out: going out behind a piano", one of the most interesting in the book. Elmor draws an enlightening biographical profile of Ro Ro based on the account of the night of November 22, 1992 in which the singer invaded the stage at the Cine Theatro Apollo in Barbarcena (MG) and interrupted her piano recital because she wanted to start her own show, scheduled for 9:30 pm and already two hours late.
For the untimely act, which included disparaging the artist who was on stage, Ro Ro was morally lynched by the recital audience (the singer's audience was different and waited outside the theater) and by the local press.
Finally, in prose or in verse, outside or inside fiction, Angela Ro Ro - "the one who felt, said, did everything" - left a trail of lights and shadows, causing tsunamis in the souls that came across the legendary figure of the singer and/or with a songbook so strong that it inspires stories, songs, stories and the like in this book faithful to the intense private universe of the artist.
Cover of the book 'Angela Ro Ro - Stories, songs, stories & such', organized by Marina Ruivo
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Source: G1