(Letra e Música: A. Koberle e E. Benevides)
Que nada é peixe, rapá.
Que nada é peixe.
Você me disse que tava fazendo nada
Que nada é peixe, rapá.
Que nada é peixe.
Me enrosquei cuma cavala
Me mordeu que nem traíra
Jurou que eu era o seu jaú
E ela, o meu pirarucu.
Piraputanga desgraçada
Ela era um peixe sem escama
Peguei ela noite passada
Com um tubarão na minha cama.
Que nada é peixe.
Confrontei essa moréia
Com meu bom ferrão de arraia
Ela falou que o jurupoca
Tava mais prá lambari
Sua corvina libidinosa
Não me venha com essa prosa
Fica quieta senão tu apanha
Que tu não passa de uma piranha.
Que nada é peixe.
(***see footnotes)
(Lyrics and music: A. Koberle and E. Benevides)
What swims is a fish, man.
What swims is a fish.
You told me you weren't doing anything
What swims is a fish.
I got tangled with a cavala
She bit me like a traíra
She swore I was her jaú
And she, my pirarucu.
That damned piraputanga
She was a fish with no scales
Cause I caught her last night
With a shark in my bed.
What swims is a fish.
I confronted this morey eel
With my trusty sting ray stinger
But she said that the jurupoca
Looked more like a lambari
You libidinous corvina
Don't give this crap
Shut up or you're gonna get it
Cause you're nothing but a piranha.
What swims is a fish.
The Portuguese title of this song (Que Nada é Peixe) is a common Brazilian idiomatic expression using the fact that the word nada has two meanings: as a noun it means nothing, as a verb it means swims. So, say you suspect someone is up to no good and you ask them
"What are you up to?"
"Nothin'," they'll probably say, which in Portuguese would be Nada.
"Yeah, right," you might reply in English. In Brazil, we'd say "Nada? Que nada é peixe" meaning "Yeah, right. You're full of it."
So we had the idea to write a song based on this exchange, using the names of Brazilian fish, many of which are used in Brazilian vernacular to describe certain types of people. Some other fish names suggest other Portuguese words that may be applied to the situation at hand:
Cavala: a type of small tuna, used to describe a buxom woman
Traíra: a fierce fish with sharp teeth, suggesting the verb trair, to betray.
Jaú: a large docile fish
Pirarucu: the largest fresh water fish in the world, the word cú meaning ass.
Piraputanga: a useless little fish whose name may be rearranged to say puta pirada meaning crazy whore.
Jurupoca: a fish with an impressive name
Lambari: a tiny little silver fish
Corvina: a fish with a female sounding name
Piranha: pirana; in vernacular Portuguese, a slut.