Marisa Monte & Carlinhos Brown - Magamalabares (English Subtitles)

Details

Description

This song features three neologisms invented by Carlinhos Brown, spanning four languages: Portuguese, Italian, Yoruba (from West Africa), and Tupi (an indigenous language of Brazil).

1. Magamalabres = maga (female magician, Portuguese) + malabarista (juggler, Portuguese)

My English translation = "juggling conjuress"

I could have gone with the more well-known "sorceress," but I wanted to mirror Brown's alliteration with the "ma" sound, so I decided on "conjuress" because of that "ju" sound that's also in "juggling". I actually thought I invented "conjuress" for this translation but it turns out it's an actual (though extremely rare) word!

2. Acqua marã = Acqua (water, Italian), marã (pain, Tupi)

My English translation = "waters of agony"

Brown uses the Italian word "acqua" rather than the very similar Portuguese word "água" - I have no idea why!

To translate "marã", I had to scour a .pdf of a typewritten Tupi-Portuguese dictionary from the 1980s that I found online. The word had been incorrectly translated as "revolution" by another translator on the internet, but it actually means "pain" and forms the morphological basis of several other words, including the word for "war" (perhaps what led that other translator to render it as "revolution").

3. Oxáiê = Oxalá (an African Sky-Father deity, Portuguese but adapted from Yoruba) + aí (here, Portuguese)

My English translation = "Sky Father so near"

My translation is speculative; it is unclear what Brown means. My immediate association was with the god Oxalá, commonly referenced in Brazilian music, and when I looked into it, I found someone speculating that it could be Oxalá + aí ("here"), forming an idea like "Oxalá is here beside us."

This deity's origins are in Yoruba mythology, where he is known as Obatala. In Candomblé, a major Afro-Catholic syncretic religion in Brazil, he is known as Oxalá.

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This is just an indescribably beautiful and brilliant song. Brown wrote it for his newly born daughter ("your life/warmly welcomed"), and he intended it to be a message about how it's more important to acquire knowledge from life itself than from books ("down this path/the books are not sincere"). It also features references to another deity of Candomblé: lemanjá, the sea goddess. The offerings of flowers and little toy boats that he mentions are part of a celebration honoring her.
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