Virada Cultural, 26-27 April 2008

The term Virada Cultural can be loosely translated as Cultural Turn Around, an event where one is supposed to turn the day around and stay awake all night. It is said, over here, that it is a sort of São Paulo's version of the famous Nuits Blanches in Paris, but this is something else.


Jorge Ben Jor, País Tropical

People, by the hundreds of thousends, went out to the city centre and decided that it was São Paulo that should be turned around instead. Turning every street into a disco, every step into a dance, every corner into a kiss, they turned São Paulo into the best disco I ever laid foot on.

A Brazilian said to me something about Italians that I wholeheartedly agree with. But let me be the one turning things around this time and let me say it about the Brazilians:
If one measures how civilized a people is by its love of music and its dread of war, then Brazil is the beacon of civilization.