Interview Diogo Strausz — A carioca on a solo music adventure
“For me, true pieces of art don’t alienate us (…) but open a conversation and expand our perception of the world, they make us feel like life is bigger.”
A dance music composer and multi-instrumentalist, Diogo Strausz is a one-of-a-kind carioca musician and a contagious source of positive energy who has navigated the world and music through eclectic collaborations and various creative adventures and is now composing music solo. His single Flight of Sagittarius, created in Paris and recorded in Brazil, is a groovy blend of sounds that makes your spirit travel and your body irresistibly want to dance. The single is part of an EP of the same name releasing in March 2022 on the French record label Goutte d’Or that will include Diogo’s original tracks as well as a version of a track and remixes, including one by the one and only Yuksek.
Lockdown time has been a turning point for Diogo Strausz who decided to take the leap towards a new musical adventure and create music in solo mode, nourished by his experiences as a member of the band Balako and a music producer for Voyou, Alice Caymmi and Castello Branco. His unique and solar music is the direct reflection of his broad musical influences, from Marcos Valle’s old school boogie to Ennio Morricone’s grandiose compositions and electronic music masters like Ricardo Villalobos and Laurent Garnier. Diogo has embraced dance music as his preferred way of sharing positive energy and let his soul express itself to the outside world, in a never-ending desire to be understood and to move the audience.
Following the release of his single Flight of Sagittarius in December 2021, we talked with Diogo about music, creative collaboration, going solo, travels and cultural barriers, the artist life, the representation of “world music” and the importance of art as a way to expand people’s perception of the world. We had a great time and are super happy to share it, hope you’ll enjoy!
At the end of the interview, I invited Diogo to play a game called “What if” where we questioned and redefined the world, designing it all over again by thinking “What if this situation was different?”. Let’s go!
You can listen to Flight of Sagittarius and follow Diogo Strausz and décil interviews on instagram
How are you today?
I’m feeling great. I woke up, took a hot shower and really enjoyed it, so it’s a sign that it’s a good day.
Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Diogo Strausz, I’m a carioca but I live in Sao Paulo. I just turned 32 years old in December, which makes me a Sagittarius. I’ve been doing music my whole life. My father also comes from music, so since I was very young, there was a music atmosphere everywhere around me. I think that music is about breaking barriers through invisible and vibrant forces, it’s about energy.
Let’s go back in time, how did music enter your life?
My father taught me how to play guitar when I was seven years old. When I was a teenager, my best friends and I created a music band that lived for ten years. For all of us, it was our first contact with professional music: booking a gig, negotiating something, travelling, speaking with different people from different backgrounds, connecting with an audience. We all learned how to express ourselves and how to collaborate in a creative adventure. At that time, we were super inspired by the French Touch bands, especially Justice, that made us pay attention to dance music for the first time.
When I was 17 years old, I started producing music on my own. A couple of years later, I produced two albums, one for Castello Branco’s solo record “Serviço” and another for a singer from Rio called Alice Caymmi. After these two records, I became part of people’s radar, I received propositions of collaborations. So, I started investing in equipment and made a little residence studio in an abandoned house in Rio for a year. In 2016, I moved to Rio and since then, my studio has been moving everywhere! I co-produce the album Les Bruits de la Ville of Voyou and went on tour with him as a stage musician playing congas, which I learned to play for the tour!
During the pandemic, I reassessed my artistic work. After working for some artists, I wanted to have the courage to speak out loud, show my own perspectives and create my own music. This is why I called my first E.P Emancipação (released on Razor-N-Tape). I also released Flight of the Sagittarius, a single from my new solo EP that is going to be released in March on Goutte d’Or.
You have been producing music for other artists and doing your own music, is there a situation that you prefer?
I really like both, I feel more complete and myself when I do my own music. I only get involved in musical projects if I feel that there is a personal connection. One thing I decided for my life is that I don’t want to do fast-fashion music.
You talk about the energy that music creates, including with your audience. Dancing is the rawest energy of all. What do you think about the energy that music creates?
One of the reasons why I connected so quickly and so much with dance music is because it’s a very open space for many different ideas as long as you keep the majority of people in the same vibe. I’ve seen magical things happening. I saw great musicians and messages being celebrated on the dancefloor, as well as Brazilian culture in its essence, it really moved me. Maybe the people in the audience did not know what musician or instrument they were listening to, but they connected to the music, this is true energy, it’s incredible to witness. I love this, because sometimes people generalize Brazilian music and put it in the “world music” box, which does not make sense.
Talking about the expression “world music” and the celebration of Brazilian music, it’s interesting to see that streaming platforms and the Internet turned a lot of people into music diggers of widely different types of music, whereas the access to new music was much more influenced by the radio before. What do you think about the term “world music” today?
It’s very true. I see “world music” as a musical economic bloc, similar to economic blocs like Mercosur or BRICS. As if, in order to be played on the radio or have access to bigger media all the music produced outside rich countries have to become one big genre. It made sense a couple of years ago in order to occupy new spaces that were not accessible until then. But truth be told, we shouldn’t place Nigerian afrobeat, Brazilian samba, Marroquinean jazz and Peruvian chica in the same box. Each of these music genres have their own history behind them.
Let’s talk about the EP! Can you tell me about your creation process for the EP Flight of Sagittarius?
I started working on the EP in France. It was a rich period of my life in terms of emotions. I was living one of my biggest dream, which was to move in Europe, where I felt that the culture shaped a lot of Brazil’s culture. It was mesmerizing and also very tough, I faced cultural barriers and had a hard time integrating, but these situations made me stronger and great things happened to me in Paris.
I wrote Flight of Sagittarius when I was in line in the police station to renew my visa. It’s a bit of a depressing place and I just wanted to be somewhere else, so I started to create a trumpet melody in my head, then the bass line, my head was in such a better place than my body! I went out of the line for a minute and recorded the melody I had in my head with my voice on my phone. I did not want to lose the idea. Usually, this is how the song comes to my mind, when I am distracted. Then, I sit down in the studio, try to translate those recordings and see how far it can get.
I wanted to get everything recorded in Rio de Janeiro with the musicians I had always worked with. After two years of feeling a little invisible in France, this EP was a lot about missing home and wanting to show people where I come from.
How did you build this EP? Why did you choose to put those tracks together and in this order?
Before recording everything in the studio, the team of Goutte d’Or and I listened to the demos and the combination of the first 3 tracks felt intuitively right for us. I really wanted to also do a version of Deixa a Gira Girar by Os Tincoãs. In Brazil, there is a big wave of religious persecutions against Afro-Brazilian communities, so it was very important for me to give light to this song that has imperative positive lyrics in the chorus, it says “Deixa A Gira Girar” which means “Let the wheel spin”. This wheel is referring to a belief in specific Afro-Brazilian religions being that this wheel is light and energy and this is where they believe the spirits come from, basically. This imperative chorus serves as a message against religious intolerance and discrimination. I really wanted to make a version of that song for the dancefloor, to use this energy that people are sharing while partying to convey a message of tolerance. We decided to have songs that were 100% from me on side A and to group this version and remixes of the record on side B.
Em Busca Do Tempo Perdido makes me think a little bit about the Diva Dance scene from the Fifth Element, I felt this grandiose energy in the music. What do you think about it?
That’s so nice! To be honest, I’ve never watched the Fifth Element, I definitely have to. My inspiration was actually Proust, because the title is the translation for A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. That’s the beauty of it, if you create something and someone else appropriates it and makes it their own, now the song is about the Fifth Element! The song becomes a thing of itself.
How did this collaboration with the French record label Goutte d’Or happen?
A good friend of ours called Guilhem throws a party called La TudoBem in Paris. His party is one of these environments that give the opportunity to DJs from all over the world to play eclectic dance music. Guilhem introduced me to the team at Goutte d’Or, they heard my music and we developed a partnership and a friendship.
What are your music inspirations?
I’m very inspired by some great Brazilian composers like Marcos Valle, Arthur Verocai, Eumir Deodato, Moacir Santos, Letieres Leite. I love how they are always trying to explain Brazil to the rest of the world. They are always bringing in resources and ideas from cultures that influenced us.
I also feel inspired by Ennio Morricone, Michel Legrand, Laurent Garnier, Ricardo Villalobos… For me, there is a big conversation between all these vibes. The dance music environment is one of the places where maestro music traditions have survived and found a little piece of land to grow again. Dance music is not necessarily related to huge orchestras but have this kind of romantic essence.
In general, I’m inspired by everything that gives us hope when we are in obscure places, that shows this contrast of the world between light and shadow. For me, true pieces of art don’t alienate us to only feel one single emotion or listen to one single message and one single idea, but they open a conversation and expand our perception of the world, they make us feel like life is bigger. Creative work that tells us “Be that, feel that, believe in that” feels a bit manipulative and underestimates the human intelligence. I like any piece of artwork that changes you in your own way.
So, you love art when it expands your perception of the world. When you create music, how do you do it so that it helps people expand their perception of the world too?
There is always a difference between what you aim to achieve and what you actually achieve. You can prepare however you want, things have a life on their own, they are a bit unpredictable sometimes. Music comes from an inner very deep desire that each creator has. What you desire is very different from what you want. You can’t control desire, but you can eventually get yourself to wanting something, motivate yourself. Desires are forces that move us, we cannot control them and they define and shape who we are.
My greatest desire is to be understood. It frustrates me when people don’t understand me. Maybe this is why when I create things, I may be a control freak sometimes. I need to make sure that what I’m trying to bring out to the world is being represented accurately. If my music moves only a few people around me it’s already good. For me, it’s important that people get something out of listening to my music and out of any kind of art really. It’s unacceptable if somebody listens to my music or gets in touch with art in general and does not take anything out of it. Even if what they get from it is a desire to dance, it’s all fine. But if it’s 0, that kills me.
What are your future projects?
The EP is coming out in March. We’re starting booking concerts and tours. For me, it’s a lot about translating that product that I have built into something that is alive. In order to do that, I have to take my music to the live environment and see what happens. Music is meant to be shared and appropriated. I have been working on remixes for artists that I like, but I cannot tell more about it for now! We are also planning something special for the release of the EP in March.
WHAT IF: I created a game that I invited Diogo to play.
The game is called WHAT IF, it is made of 10 cards with 10 different situations. The goal of the game is to question and redefine the world, design it all over again by thinking “What if this situation was different?”. Diogo can choose the cards he wants to play. Every time he choses a card with a situation written on it, he returns it and finds a question on the other side.
“You mastered” drawing by the amazing Clementine Oberkampf, “You had a Plan B” drawing by Chloé Villanova from Grave Cool Mag
Diogo: I want to click on everything.
WHAT IF you had a plan B?
If you were not an artist, what would you do?
It’s funny, we often have deep conversations about being artists with my wife, who also works in the music industry. A pianist said something like: “If you have the choice of doing anything else, just do it”! I agree with him, because we are laughing now, but I think I’m laughing not to cry. Being an artist is an endless marathon, you are always running. Your work literally comes out of your soul, so it makes you very sensitive about everything. That’s why it took me such a long time to have the courage to do my own music.
At some point, I did carpentry. I felt a big relief because I could just design furniture, build it, and then it’s done, ready and useful. It’s not subjective, there are rules of heights, weights, dimensions. It was like meditation, it emptied my mind. So, to answer your question, if I had the option to do anything else, I would do it!
WHAT IF you spied?
What if you could be a spy and infiltrate a situation, what would it be?
I would like to be a fly and see how people are when they are not thinking about their image, especially people who are very image-driven. We are living such a big image culture. At some point, we might upload our minds into some virtual reality so we can control over everything!
WHAT IF you had to survive
If you had to survive the end of the world of a disaster, would you make it? How?
I would try to keep all my loved ones very close to me, especially the family we are starting with my wife and the friends we consider to be family. If you have your loved ones surrounding you, even if you don’t survive, you’ve lived well.
Interview by Emma Renaudin in December 2021
Follow Diogo’s music on his instagram and Goutte d’Or’s instagram
You can also listen, re-listen and re-listen again and again Diogo’s music AND discover his full EP in March on Spotify
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