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Agropeople, Agrocore (or simply the Agro, when reffered to as a collective entity) is a Brazilian term that refers to people who have ties to the agribusiness sector, usually either wealthy landowners or well-off specialized workers such as agronomists and technicians. The term, it's variations and it's themes are constantly used in songs, which are often played in both rural and urban settings, and appeal to the desire for wealth and hedonistic pleasures. Despite being unseparably related to agriculture and husbanding, the ethos most commonly observed in agropeople is defined by a taste for and celebration of urban culture and it's pleasures and excesses, i.e: reckless spending in night clubs, going out to pick women in public agglomerations that usually don't exist in non-urban settings, parading gigantic pickup trucks with loud sound systems, sometimes having piercings and tattoos, amongst other things usually not associated with agriculture.
The men and women who dress and behave the type are sometimes called agrogirls/agroboys. The origin of the aesthetic is usually credited to the mixture of Brazilian country culture and Brazilian 2000s urban culture. The aesthetic became popular during the rise of the Sertanejo and Forró genres, especially amongst university students due to many people born in the countryside moving to urban areas for education and work opportunities. These people were usually the sons and daughters of well-heeled property owners, who lived in the countryside but left for the city for education and work, altough nowadays they're usually wealthy heirs that live in the countryside but have the means to enjoy the hedonistic pleasures of urban life,
History[]
The earliest, pre-embryonic form of Agrocore is the music genre Sertanejo, which appeared in the late 19th century São Paulo and was a popular, folkish type of music, centered around themes of rural life such as work, family and the struggles with nature. Around 1940, as Brazil experienced a rural exodus and industrialization, the former country folk brought their music to the growing cities, and the genre got more popular. Also, the songs started to be played and influenced by mass media, and in consequence the themes started shifting to things that are more universally relatable, such as romance, life stories and folk wisdom. Around 1980, this process reached a turning point, with duets like Chitãozinho e Xororó and Leandro e Leonardo becoming popular and establishing the Sertanejo Romântico (Romantic sertanejo) subgenre as the new mainstream form of sertanejo music.
In the 2000s and up to the present, the genre experienced a slow and steady shift towards a more hedonistic type of music, with artists like Gusttavo Lima and Pedro Paulo e Alex becoming immensely popular and consolidating the Sertanejo Universitário style as the dominant form of mainstream sertanejo, Given that Brazil has now a more developed urban landscape, themes like going to clubs, heavy drinking binges, sexual promiscuity and complicated romance became increasingly more explored, and themes like the simplicity of rural life were mostly abandoned.
The latest development of the genre started in the 2010s, with romantic ideas still present, but with a comeback of the idealization of rural life. Musicians such as Adson e Alana and Léo e Raphael became popular and establishing the Agronejo genre, which re-inventedthe idea of rural life, now celebrating it as a life of wealth, land exploration and dilligent work. The tropes regarding the poor, simple-minded peasant were completely abandoned and the rich landowner, his heirs and, to an extent, the well-off workers of the agribusiness sector, became the new ideal agropeople. This cultural shift represents an effort of the sector in integrating with the mainstream media apparatus to consolidate it's influence over brazilian society. Unlike the original form of sertanejo, this new aesthetic is mostly fabricated from top-up with the intent of propagating a politico-ideological narrative which favours the agribusiness sector. [1]
Lifestyle and ethos[]
Unlike the OGs of the past, Agropeople are, many times, born rich, since land in Brazil is very expensive. Normal brazilian capitalist agriculture requires large swaths of land to be profitable, so acquiring the lands solely through hard work is hard, so the ones who get rich are usually specialized workers who work for large companies as agronomists, salesmen and, sometimes, researchers. These people represent maybe the only forms of social mobility in the agricultural sector. Nevertheless, the hard work motiff is still present, and is coupled with an idealization of partying, alcohol consumption, ostentation of wealth, in a way that resembles the party hard, play hard trope.
Agropeople, therefore, (also due to technological modernisation) sometimes lack skills that were traditionally considered to be necessary for rural life, such as butchering animals, riding a horse, milking cows and handling oxen. The ideals for clothing also changed, so as to include things that were usually in the rural worker wardrobe, such as plain shirts, leather boots and cowboy hats, but more elaborated in it's complexity and more expensive. Some country tropes such as horse riding are still present, but there appears to be a greater valuation of expensive pickup trucks/SUVs such as Dodge Rams, F-150, SW4s and so on.
Wealth flexing is a common theme in Agronejo songs. This is consonant with the status of monoculture (mainly soy, corn and cotton) and animal husbandry as some of the biggest sources of revenue for the country, which makes agropeople socioeconomic elite. Phrases like "how many Ferraris are there in that grass field?" and "fuck it if the bill is expensive" (Léo & Raphael: os menino da pecuária) are reflective of that status.
Cultural significance[]
The growth of agrocore implies very significant changes in Brazil's political and economical landscape. This is due to the fact that it arms the agribusiness sector with a strong soft power, and makes Agro politicians seem more relatable, and correlates with a sizable growth in the influence of the agro-industrial sector over brazilian society and politics. The ideological message of agrocore is something like "we bring in the money", "we do the hard work that keeps this country fuctional", or "Agro is what brings the money to the country".
In a political spectrum, the Agro is usually in the right-wing or far-right, usually representing a worldview that espouses neoliberalm, privatization and weakening of the structure of the State, although sometimes it resonates with more centrist ideas of development. It is represented in the chamber of deputies (Brazil's national legislative body) by what's called bancada do boi or bancada ruralista (Ox Bench), which is a group of right-wing politicians that usually lobby for more lenient environmental laws, less restrictions regarding the use of agrochemicals and more permissive labour laws. They usually ally with religious and military/police benches, forming what's called the BBB bench.[2]
The growth of the aesthetic can be understoon in the light of the idea of the Culture Industry, developed by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, which demonstrates how mass media entities, mostly the ones that dominate the audiovisual market, are able to transform folk culture or popular culture into a product that suits their ideological narrative and becomes a tool for socio-political domination. This process is visible in the case of agrocore in the disparities between the original sertanejo music and the current agronejo. Originally, the persona of the sertanejo was that of a simple-minded rural worker, belonging to a class of mostly destitute peasants, whose dreams were of a life without hunger, drought and death. In contrast, the lyrical persona in agronejo is very wealthy, has every material need satisfied and seems to mostly dream of acquiring more wealth and enjoying ephemeral pleasures that the poor peasant would consider to be excesses. The remaining poor peasantry and the poor urban working classes fail to see this process, however, and end up consuming of agronejo music due to media pressure. The masses are, thus, unconsciously influenced to view the agro-industrial complex favourably, even when it opposes the interests of the majority of them.
Apparatus[]
- Cowboy hats (especially made from straw)
- Tight jeans (sometimes ripped)
- Cross necklaces
- Polo shirts
- Button-ups (often plaid)
- Belts
- Leather boots
- Vest (often with nothing underneath)
- Tank tops
- Deep "V" neckline (usually for women, but not exclusive)
- Big earrings (for women)
Materials and Fabric Patterns[]
- Leather
- Denim
- Plaid
- Bandana
- Gold
- Straw
- Lace (mostly black and only on women)
Hair[]
- Blond highlights
- Light brown
- Dark brown
Either very long and straight (usually for women but also seen on men) or very short and shaved on the sides (usually seen on men, but not exclusively).
Vehicles[]
- Big, enormously big SUVs;
- Horses, for the ones more fond of traditions;
- Smaller pickups, such as the older models of Saveiro and Strada, more commonly used by less wealthy agribusiness workers, such as salesmen and technicians.
Notable Influencers[]
- Marília Mendonça
- Gusttavo Lima
- Wesley Safadão
- Maiara e Maraisa
- Chitãozinho & Xororó
- Michel Teló
- Luan Santana
- Henrique e Juliano
- Alex Ferrari
- Gustavo Tubarão
- Jacques Vanier
- Ana Castela
Spotify Playlists[]
- Agropeople Mix (Spotify Niche Mix)
Pinterest Boards[]
Gallery[]
- ↑ https://artreview.com/how-agronejo-music-became-an-arm-of-the-brazilian-far-right/
- ↑ BBB stands for boi (oxen), bíblia (bible) and bala (bullet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBB_Bench#:~:text=These%20encompass%20the%20Bullet%20Bench,bancada%20evangélica%2C%20often%20referred%20to