#mc fioti

MC Fioti’s ‘vaccine anthem’ remix celebrates coronavirus inoculation with music video shot at biomedical research centre

Leandro Aparecido Ferreira laid bricks and flipped burgers for a living until becoming one of Brazil’s most famous funk musicians.

This year, the 26-year-old – whose stage name is MC Fioti – has added a new and unexpected string to his bow: as an unlikely champion of science and vaccinology in a country being pounded by coronavirus.

A remix of Fioti’s biggest hit – celebrating Covid inoculation and boasting a music video shot at one of Brazil’s top biomedical research centres – has become a viral sensation, notching up millions of YouTube views and sparking a nationwide outpouring of emotion.

“I’m still trying to get my head around everything that’s happened but I can see I quit my job in that fast-food restaurant to make history,” the rapper said this week as his “vaccine anthem” made headlines and playlists around the world.

Fioti is unsure who first noticed his sexually charged 2017 hit Bum Bum Tam Tam had the potential to become a celebration of science, although the answer lies largely in wordplay.

The song’s original title – formed by the Portuguese word for a bottom (bumbum) and the sound of a percussion instrument (tam tam) – bears an uncanny similarity to Butantan, the Tupi-Guarani-derived name of the São Paulo research institute now producing millions of doses of the CoronaVac.

That discovery gave the catchy Bach-sampling track a new lease of life and encouraged Fioti to update its lyrics so they praised doctors, not derrieres. “This is the intriguing vaccine, that messes with your mind … and will cure us from the virus and save loads of lives,” he sings in the new version.

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Addition by the mod: given the song samples Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita In A minor for Flute, an orchestra has been playing the new version of this song, and it honestly slaps: