Doctors by life experience

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Some time ago, Mano Brown received an honorary title from the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia. Subsequently, Emicida was honored by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Three men, three trajectories, three profound impacts on Brazilian culture. And all three – each at a stage of my life – were the basis of my formation as a black man, living in the favelas, politicized and organic.

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Brother Brown was my first teacher. Without ever seeing me, he taught me how to organize hatred, revolt, the feeling of injustice. Transforming pain into consciousness, anger into direction, chaos into language. His words were emotional and political culture for thousands of people. He gave us a ruler, a compass and north.

Emicide is the continuity of my generation. He carries in his words the heritage of the street, but with an extraordinary capacity to broaden debates, to tense the country and to occupy spaces where we could not imagine being before. He produces conscious and sophisticated rap, develops innovative economic models, builds bridges. He is one of Brazil’s great public intellectuals, even if the country has difficulty admitting it.

Athayde comes before us all. It opened paths that we are still learning to follow. He participated in the battles that energized Brazilian rap, he participated in the fiercest moment of hip hop, when the culture needed firm hands. He founded Central Única das Favelas, created the world’s first favela holding company and received international recognition when he was awarded by the World Economic Forum in Davos as an impact entrepreneur. He didn’t just open the door. He built the house, raised the slab and called the neighborhood.

These three men, whom I call brothers and parents, have always been doctors of life. They were already organic intellectuals long before graduation. They were already a reference for the favela well before the academy. Universities are only formalizing what the streets proclaimed decades ago.

This energy, the strength of this lineage, is condensed in Emicida’s new work: “Emicida Racional VL3”. There, he accesses something rare: a literature that is born from the harshness of the ravines, but dialogues with the beauty of the palaces; a sophisticated and poetic grammar; an intelligence that weaves stories, pains and victories. A work that brings together three generations of black thought, favela, philosophy and creation.

I was listening to the album. With each verse, I felt the pieces falling into place. It was impossible not to remember how each of these men shaped the different stages of my life, how each link in this chain supports the moment we live in today, in an age of rivalry, algorithms and accelerating dehumanization. They give us back humanity, depth, beauty and horizon.

In the middle of a country that insists on forgetting itself, they represent a Brazil that Brazil does not know. A Brazil that has always existed, but has remained invisible. A powerful, beautiful and proud Brazil, despite the tragedies and beyond.

This is why I say today with pride: I have doctors in my family. Not because they were given the title, but because they always have been. They are the ones who make Brazil vibrate and shape the country’s imagination.