Meno del Picchia

Biography

Meno Del Picchia, also known as Paulo Menotti Del Picchia, is an anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, and musician, with a body of work that bridges art and scientific research. He is a postdoctoral researcher in ethnomusicology at the Music Department of the Institute of Arts at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), with the project “Heavy Beat and Key Cut – Funk, Trap, and the Construction of Masculinities”, funded by FAPESP (grant number 2023/10671-1), under the supervision of Professor Suzel Ana Reily.

He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of São Paulo (USP), with the dissertation entitled “The Fog and the Flow – Funk in the Electric Bodies of the Periphery”, defended in 2021. In this work, he conducted an in-depth musical ethnography of São Paulo’s funk scene, exploring spaces such as the Funk League, recording studios, and street parties known as funk flows.

From 2016 to 2023, he was a graduate-level professor at Faculdade Santa Marcelina in the Postgraduate Program in Popular Song, where he supervised final projects. He is currently a member of PAM (Research in the Anthropology of Music) and GRAVI (Visual Anthropology Research Group), both based in the Department of Social Anthropology at USP. He is also a member of LEMS (Music and Sound Studies Laboratory) at UNICAMP.

Meno is also an active instrumentalist and composer. He has released six solo albums: Meno Del Picchia (2008) and Macaco Sem Pelo (2013) – both selected by the Bragança Paulista Cultural Program – Barriga de 7 Janta (2016), winner of the PROAC 2015 award – Pele de Água (2020) – Pompeial LoFi (2023) – and Maré Cheia (2024). In addition, he has recorded and performed with major Brazilian music icons such as Elza Soares, Otto, and Badi Assad.

In April 2025, Meno arrived in Lisbon to begin a one-year research residency under the supervision of Professor Salwa Castelo-Branco, as a visiting researcher at INET-md. The residency is funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), grant number 2024/16757-8, and is affiliated with the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences at NOVA University Lisbon. It will conclude in March 2026.

The project involves two main dimensions:

1. The internationalization of Brazilian ethnomusicology, expanding scientific dialogue with a network of European researchers through the presentation of Meno’s previous research;
2. Fieldwork in Lisbon, following the musical production of artists from peripheral neighborhoods engaged in the batida do gueto, kuduro, and afrohouse scenes.