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JD#56 RECIFE: VENICE WITHOUT GONDOLAS

The River Capiberibe, in Recife, is venerated by musicians, poets and writers
Words: Bill Hinchberger
Pictures: Bruno von Söhsten

For a destination often sold to tourists as a sun-and-sand beach town, Recife boasts a pretty rich collection of verse by native extolling the virtues of (and sometimes the faults with) its rivers and bridges.

“Rios, Pontes e Overdrives” (Rivers, Bridges and Overdrives) was the signature track of the late manguebeat kingpin Chico Science and his roots-rock fusion band Nação Zumbi a decade ago. In a song simply called “A Ponte” (The Bridge) which the crisscross as riverside gondolas. the Olinda. better Boa the but he co-wrote with Lula Queiroga, singer/ songwriter Lenine gives new meaning to concrete poetry: The bridge isn’t made of concrete; it isn’t made of iron/It isn’t cement/ The bridge is where my thoughts lead.

The repertoire of the veteran roots band Quinteto Violado includes a tune that hails one of the city’s rivers: It drowns the days of the calendar/Shipwrecks men in their salaries/ Runs full through empty hands/ The Capibaribe River.

Most famously, JoĂŁo Cabral de Melo Neto sends his poor migrant hero from the rural scrublands along the Capibaribe and into Recife in his classic narrative poem Life and Death of Severino, published in 1954. tropical venice | Capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, Recife lies where the Capibaribe meets the Beberibe River just in time for the two to flow hand-in-hand into the sea. The historic centre is literally an island unto itself, and it is one of three that comprisethe downtown area. Some 39 bridges crisscross a city that has been referred to as a tropical Venice.

Yet many visitors barely notice the riverside Recife. There are certainly no gondolas. Many tourists find lodgings on the hillside in Recife’s historic twin city Olinda. In the state capital itself all of the better hotels are located in the beachside Boa Viagem district – conveniently close to the airport and the main shopping mall, but with not a navigable stream in sight.

So when I discovered that Recife offered its version of the riverboat rides I’d taken along the Seine in Paris and the Thames in London, I jumped at the chance to learn about Recife’s 'waterside'. I took the night tour, thus transforming Recife into my own City of Lights for an evening.

Like everything in Recife, symbolically, at least, the tour really begins at Marco Zero (mark zero – the point from which distances to everywhere are measured). Recife means “reef,” and the shoreline is and indeed skirted by natural barriers. Across from Marco Zero a dike was built on the reef to provide extra protection for the old port area.

Atop the dike stands a starkly phallic sculpture. The author is yet another poetic native son, Francisco Brennand. His edifice soars 60 feet into the sky. But the artful tower itself is a relative anti-climax. The good part is “the making of.” The sculpture sparked one of Recife’s spiciest political scandals. Town officials could hardly have expected anything less when they granted a commission to an internationally renowned homeboy famous for erotic sculptures. But when Brennand turned in his design, it was indeed phallic, and yet nobody would own up to being the joy-killing prude. A local journalist revealed the culprit to be the mayor’s wife. To defend the first lady’s honour, the mayor invaded the paper’s newsroom and threatened the reporter at gunpoint. Soon it all blew over. City Hall had changed its mind. “The mayor has balls; the city will have its erection,” quipped Tobias Hecht in his “ethnographic novel” After Life.