Meireles
Sebastião da Silva Meireles
Born January 30, 1942 | Belém do Pará
Selector | Flamengo
Active 1960s - 1980s
BIOGRAPHY
Sebastião Meireles (b. 1942) grew up in Belém in the neighborhood of Guamá. Many of his neighbors had modest sound systems with which they serenaded their street, but it wasn’t until the late 1950s that Meireles got his first hands-on experience playing one:
On Silva Castro Street, there were a number of sound systems, known as sonoros in those days, that played with sound projectors. A friend of mine had a sound system called Sonoros Brasília, and at one point he invited me to play an alvorada musical for someone’s birthday. We went in the woods and cut down an açaí tree. At night, we stuck the trunk in front of his house, hoisted a sound projector into it with a rope and pulley. And at 5 a.m., we started playing music, and people would give us happy birthday messages to read.
A residential street in the Guamá neighborhood | 1930s | SOURCE: UW Milwaukee Platt Collection
Meireles later moved to Pedreira, another working class neighborhood on the other side of town, where he became active in one of the many neighborhood social clubs:
I liked dancing. I danced all the time. Pedreira had a number of social clubs — Independência do Brasil, Bandeirantes, and 18 de Dezembro, the one I ended up joining. After playing soccer there for a while, I was invited to become President, and I started organizing dances. I brought in sonoros like Monte Cristo, Rubro Negro, Flamengo, Diamante Negro. And since I already had that sonoros blood in my veins, I used to help out by running a cable here, straightening a speaker there. Before long, Zezinho, the owner of Flamengo, invited me to assist him, and that’s where my story with Flamengo started.
A controlista readies the next record | 1967 | PHOTO COURTESY CARLOS AGUIAR FILHO
Throughout the 1970s, the name “Meireles” became synonymous with Flamengo. As the sound system’s controlista or selector, he was responsible for choosing the right music for each audience and occasion. And as he explained, there was sometimes a steep learning curve:
Flamengo had a reputation as a sound system for social dances and family-friendly events. I spent ten years playing social dances, where we played a lot of romantic ballads by [Brazilian rock icon] Roberto Carlos and so on.
Later on I did play for gafieira dances too, like the ones that happened at dancehalls like Estrela do Norte, Bangu, Moderna Impala, where they played hot dance music like merengue and lambada. But I wasn’t really part of that world. In fact, during the 1980s, I was arrested at Estrela do Norte for playing that one samba “Reunião de bacana,” where the lyrics say, “If you yell ‘Stop, thief!’ everyone vanishes.” At the time, there was a prohibition from police headquarters against that song. When a police officer demanded I destroy the record, I gave them hell, and they decided to arrest me. They drove around all night with me in the back of the car.
Today Meireles is retired, but he continues to work as caretaker for a social club every other weekend. His son Alex is also a respected DJ. They’re both members of the “Association of Old School Sound Systems and DJs,” a group of sound system professionals who meet periodically to maintain the tradition of playing good music on vinyl.
Meireles referees a DJ battle at a meeting of the "Association of Old School Sound Systems and DJs" I 2022 | PHOTO: DARIEN LAMEN
