Vetor Interviews: Catto

In her new record, Caminhos Selvagens, the singer becomes a platinum version of herself, rescuing her partygirl origins on eight tracks covered in her own rocker chick influences

Text and interview by Pedro Paulo Furlan

Fotografia por Ivi Maiga Bugrimenko

São Paulo, 6PM. When I sit down to talk to Catto, there's only a couple hours till the release of her newest studio album, "Caminhos Selvagens”. The first original music record of hers in eight years, this project, in the artist's own words, "has no commitment with cisgender society, no commitment with heterossexuality, with mainstream culture”.

With over 15 years in the game, Catto acts like it, without any nervousness with the release knocking on her door. Fully certain of all her decisions and the rebel persona she embodies all throughout "Caminhos Selvagens”, Catto presents the project with full notion of her influences and the sound she's delivering.

"She's your friend with the winged eyeliner, that's batshit crazy and is fully messing around”, Catto explains about the character she embodies in her new record - that is, for sure, part of herself.

Photography by Ivi Maiga Bugrimenko

Now, almost two months after the release, the singer got what she wanted - with multiple shows and a lot of critical acclaim, "Caminhos Selvagens” has proved itself to be one of the most fundamental records of Catto's career, besides offering something fully new to the brazilian music scene, being influenced by The Smiths, PJ Harvey and Courtney Love.

“Celebrate as an act of rebellion and resistance”

After releasing her first record in 2009, "SAGA", Catto was held as one of MPB's main rising stars, bringing up her classic brazilian music influences on her sleeve. The artist, that walked in those circles, with tours, TV interviews and festival appearances, tells me that that moment in her life was a "life experiment”- but, she felt compelled to go back to her origins: "reinvent myself, kiss everyone and paint the town red". 

“After the pandemic, I was feeling crazy for a dancefloor”, she says, adding that the "Caminhos Selvagens” persona started to be slowly built up with her return to nightlife, even though the record had been in production since 2018.

Photography by Ivi Maiga Bugrimenko

Crediting, as the main influence for this return, the drag queen and nightlife star Alma Negrot, that also took care of the visuals for this Catto record, the singer-songwriter tells me that she "rescued in me the teenager Catto”. In this move, the artist also became DJ at Alicate, a party in São Paulo - all those experiences make the album what it is.

"The nightclub is always where we'll feel accepted, it's the place we use to experiment, it's where we wear our first heels, put on our first lipstick, it's where we, in many instances, built our true identity as a queer person”.

As a trans woman, Catto says that, to her, "we celebrate as an act of rebellion and resistance”, pointing out that one of her favorite parts of being a part of community is exactly that: having access to this transformative and accepting space that is the night. “My work is intimately connected to that, even if I don't make dance music. It's just the universe I live in”, she says.

Photography by Ivi Maiga Bugrimenko

In "Caminhos Selvagens", Catto sings about passionate love, deep breakups, partygirl nights and self-exploring, all with a rock soundtrack that created it's own universe all around the listener. With that unique sound, that pulls from brazilian country music to PJ Harvey, the artist tells her own story, also exploring the narrative of a lot of other queer people that have lived through craziness, hangovers, after an after party.

“I feel way more like a daughter than a mother, you know?”

“Being a part of our community helped me find my true family”, says Catto. After her transition, that happened in public, already a public figure and artist, the singer says that it was being amongst other trans people and trans artists that she found the enlightenment that she longed for.

“Being able to be together of the girls on the dancefloor, us talking, looking at boys, laughing, kiking, going out for a beer, one takes a puff of each others cigarettes, I love, love, love - I'm so happy to be a queer person, and not just that, a queer monster”.

Photography by Ivi Maiga Bugrimenko

It was based on this enlightenment that "Caminhos Selvagens” was born, in which she assumes the persona of herself, in her most complete, intense and sentimental form - with braveness to open up all the parts of herself. When I ask what motivated her to present in that way, Catto answers, making an homage to her trans sisters again: “I have the opportunity to exchange with and universe that makes me openly bold. I feel way more like a daughter than a mother, you know?”.

In this new record's visuals, Catto, always a brunette, becomes blonde, platinum, a batshit crazy barbie doll, as she says so herself. With the beauty, pictures and videos, Catto shows herself as this creature that lives in the night, bringing sentimentality and vulnerability to a figure treated as a joke by the cisgender society.

“Being bold comes from the environment I live in”, she explains: “Touring, I'm always on the side of the road, smoking, and I think that I could be any other girl, doing sex work, because that's how the world sees me, even if I'm a singer. That doesn't matter, the cisgender world doesn't see us as we want - so I don't have any commitment to it”. 

“Caminhos Selvagens put me face to face with my ugliness”

“When a woman is suffering, the first thing she does is go blonde, when a woman wants to finish on top and scream for revenge”, Catto answers when I ask her why she had to be blonde - but, in reality, this is a two part answer.

Besides the physical world part, “Caminhos Selvagens” also represents spirituality to Catto, that always brings with herself her beliefs as a witch. “I always work with this idea of Venus, being a Libra, but there's this Lúcifer Venus that is a part of ‘Caminhos Selvagens’, the scarlet morning star, bursting into flames”, she explains.

“To me, she is the lost essence of the person that is drowning deep within yourself, in your own abyss, that you have to grab by the hand and bring them to the light so that, just then, you can become a star. It's a mythic rescue mission”.

Accepting her true essence was a complicated process for Catto, she tells me there were days where she'd go record, but cried so much, she just couldn't. “‘Caminhos Selvagens' put me face to face with my ugliness”, she says, adding that it was through this process that she learned to overcome her own barriers, being able to - little by little - complete this project that made her get used to "testing myself all the time”.

“Like it or not, this is me, I'm singularity”

Photography by Ivi Maiga Bugrimenko

Two months after releasing this record, Catto finds herself in a new moment in her career - in the middle of a tour and with more and more people getting to know her as a whole. In tracks like "Madrigal” and "Para Yuri Todos os Meus Beijos", Catto surpasses herself in terms of vocal and lyrical talent, presenting this powerful creature.

“We're authentic because we're singular. ‘Caminhos Selvagens’ is a record that I created looking for that singularity, you know?”, she says, reflecting about the space that her queer experiences take up in this album: “You like it? Good. You don't? Fuck it, done, I am not requesting to be who I am”.

“I think I feel this because I have, all around me, people that embrace me without any judgement  and that cheer for my happiness”, she points out, telling me that the album represents, to her, the person that all these friends around her already know, but she's now presenting to the public for the very first time.

Embracing her dissidence, Catto offers "Caminhos Selvagens” as a homage to her and others like her. Neck deep in drama and rock n'roll, the artist tells a story of nightlife and the queer community, embracing her vulnerabilities, imperfections and the power that comes with it all - and encouraging others to do the same.

"I'm really proud to be a brazilian trans woman, I'm very proud to have everyone with me. I love being a little ant in this huge anthill - when I'm on the dancefloor, I'm only one of the people thirsty to find the divine ecstasy that is to be in community".