Arto Lindsay, part 1
Arto Lindsay is a singer-songwriter who divides his time between Rio de Janeiro and New York City, and one of the most influential figures in the New York Downtown scene that emerged in the early 1980s. A member of the “No Wave” band DNA and of the avant-pop group Ambitious Lovers, Lindsay went on to become an almost romantic crooner of samba, on albums like Mundo Civilizado – even as he continues to make deliberately disruptive noises on his guitar, an instrument he’s deliberately never learned to play. This combination of pop intuition and brash experimentalism has made him a darling of the art world. In our conversation, Lindsay spoke to me about his youth in Brazil as the son of progressive American missionaries; about living under the military dictatorship and about his early years in New York City and his friendship with Jean-Michel Basquiat. He also explained why religion, like music, is all about sex, and why he still refuses to take music lessons.