Archive for the ‘viewtube’ Category

Kuduro Continué

Monday, August 24th, 2009

I was pleased to see that Guillaume took my bait in the last post about kuduro gone-a-global.  He answered some key questions, enough worth putting the comment upfront:

So Kuduro has definitly crossed over in France as “dance of the summer” and it’s been a process in the making for the last 2 years. Check this entry for a link to a facebook video that shows white hair old people square dancing on Dança do Tchiriri: http://masalacism.blogspot.com/2009/07/i-kept-saying-that-kuduro-crossed-over.html

All right, now Kuduro’s fashion in France is actually not coming from Angolan, but Cap Verdien people. They are leading the scene in France and are providing most of the hype on the movement. After that, there’s a weird (same old) ideology of distinction of “we are the true ones, we are the originators, you guys just do shit” kind of vibe floating around from Angolan towards Cap Verdien. Galiano would not say that publicly but I know he kinda took this ideology as his own. I can’t go in details here, but they are the one pushing the sound now and the last few years.

Also Radioclit has absolutly NOTHING to do with this. Seriously, zero. Same with Buraka. This is grassroot success based on the fact that the Cap Verdien community in Paris and it’s suburbs is a big enough to make other communities follow. It’s also because it’s a dance as much as it’s a music and therefore it’s very fashionable in the club for 17 years old. Nothing to do with blogging or international hipsterism.

Finally, Coupé mix with Kuduro is already there. Check out: Normal Nada - Decale kuduro or also Dj Vielo’s Decale Cap Vert. This is just the beginning. All of this is based on the fact that white people dance clubs and carribean/african clubs are still very seperated in France. Or at least, there’s a strong network of carribean/african clubs throughout France. And like every where else, there playing the latest trend, which happens to be Kuduro now in France. And for the last few years, I’ve seen the name popping on the regular on the big fluo posters of the local african club in my medium/small size hometown of Orleans. Which never happened before.

Looking fwd to the rest of this discussion

Most importantly he confirms that kuduro is broadly popular, propelled by support among France’s vast multicultural immigrant scene (Cape Verdean especially).  I had suspected as much from the plethora of YouTube videos, but sometimes that on-the-ground observation cinches it.  I think this kind of grassroots feel — people actually dancing to it, clubs playing it, the beat thumping out of car stereos — is more exciting and more interesting than if it were exclusive to le blogosphère.  Especially when it affords interaction with other styles, like coupé décalé — see again Guillaume’s suggested artists.

But where he links back to his post, and the video of old white folks clumsily dancing the tchiriri, is where things get très interesting.  That’s beyond the marginalized masses in the banlieue — that’s percolating to the museum of dance music, wedding hits.  It in turn reminds me of wayne&wax’s thoughts on chacarron (aka mumbling reggaeton) (old blogspot w&w at that).  He compared it to the macarena, and in later posts thought it would be the ideal reggaeton entrée to the masses: something families can sing along to between innings at baseball games, etc.

Could tchiriri be headed for similar meme status?  If YouTube is any kind of bellweather, I still don’t see any dancing babies or WoW tchiriri.  That, at least, remains one arena in which funk has a viral spread kuduro lacks.

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Posted in funk, globalization, immigration, kuduro, reggaeton, viewtube | 1 Comment »

Luanda-Paris / Angola-France / Kuduro-World

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

I’m becoming more curious about the unabated French love for Kuduro as a fresh Frédéric Galliano promo video lands in my inbox.  Last month he launched the second release as Kuduro Sound System.  Meanwhile, he’s prepping tracks for a Força Angola! record on Flamin Hotz to follow up last fall’s Força Kuduro! EP.

In light of a comment I dropped on Unfashionably Late’s global ghettotech conversation starter, I’ve also been curious about what adaptations have to take place for a nuwhirld sound to become popular up north.  The lead single on FG’s release might provide a clue –

Elle chante en français!  The easiest way to overcome the linguistic barrier is to smash it to pieces.  Dama S. is definitely Angolan — although whether or not and how long she’s lived in France is unclear to me — but sings so the audience can understand every word, and perhaps even earn some extra cachet with her accent (keeps it exotic, no?).  The chorus remains straightforward — “Danse with me, kuduro / Dance like this, kuduro / Move with me, kuduro / Grind with me, kuduro / Kuduro, kuduro, kuduro, now!” — and the images, other than the sunglasses exchange, mostly present snapshots of authentic kuduro in action.  It’s a deft act of translation, retaining enough of the source material but providing a linguistic entrée for a new audience.

Some Google.fr searching reveals a small but growing kuduro niche, with FG as the recurrent #1 kuduro hustler en France.  There are at least a dozen kuduro titles available on Amazon.fr, some of which I previously looked at.  I also came across this message board thread, whose exchange goes roughly something like this –

tisba972: i’m looking for the title of a song (ragga, soca, a little antillean carnival) without many lyrics and keeps repeating itself harder and harder.  I’ve heard that there’s a dance routine to this song at the west indian parties in bordeaux.

tiatia: the sound you are looking for is kuduro, and the song is the dança do tchilili [sic]

Nyabel: Lol kuduro is cape verdean, not antillean =) like buraka sound system for example

Sam-Fred: Hey, kuduro is angolan !!!  It was invented in 1997 by Tony Amado in Luanda.  It’s the only country that produces kuduro worthy of the name.  Nothing to do with Cape Verde or anywhere else.  For the right info, you can check out: http://kuduro-sound-system.blogspot.com and here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/kuduro.sound.syst­em?ref=ts And the track that’s gonna blow up this summer is surely a song with the Angolan singer Dama S. & Kuduro Sound System “Danse avec moi Kuduro” ["Sam-Fred" sounds very much like Monsieur Galliano himself]

SamFred: And Buraka Sound System is portuguese not angolan and not really Kuduro

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Confusion in the lusosphere aside, I also stumbled across a version “Dança do Tchiriri,” last year’s #1 kuduro smash en France, that shows just how far the dance&music (the two inextricably linked) has spread beyond the streets of Luanda.

Senegal, Morocco, Mauritania, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Porto, Miami, Martinique, Guadeloupe, [French?] Guyana, Cape Verde, Marseille, Bordeaux — it’s a roll call of diasporic and post-colonial echoes: francophone enclaves in Africa and the Americas, major European immigrant hubs, and an emerging luso-network (Brazil curiously left out).  It becomes abundantly clear from a video like this one that kuduro has resonated far beyond Luanda not just with bloggers and nu whirl connoisseurs, but the analogues of Angola: other African capitals, the cities where African immigrants congregate, the semi-colonies of African descent.

This is definitely kuduro far beyond the marketing capabilities of one Frenchman — no disrespect to Frédéric, to the contrary it’s encouraging to see it spread so far & wide.  Lisbon is becoming an increasingly important node as lusophone music takes the stage, but Paris remains an essential hub for Africa and the Caribbean.

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Another contender for “hit d’été 2009” (despite the above claiming it’s summer 2008) is “Mwangolé” (Umbundu for Angola) by Les Princes du Kuduro.  Their MySpace claims a Paris/Luanda connection on the location and the about reads, “Puto Milagre & Manu Le Boss sont 2 jeunes issues des ghettos angolais Venus pour représenter les vraies origines du kuduro, les princes du kuduro comptent imposer leur style musical à la France et au monde… (Puto Milagre & Manu Le Boss are 2 youths from the Angolan ghetto who have come to represent the true origins of kuduro, the kuduro princes are bringing their musical styles to France and the world).”

Les Princes du Kuduro - Mwangole

Unlike the French-tinged “Danse avec moi Kuduro!” — where the language and lyrics de-emphasize the country of origin — it’s straight Angolan pride as the title suggests (see also the Angolan flag in the back of their car) in uncompromising Portuguese and a driving beat a bit harder than the kuduro I’m used to hearing.  Who in turn is the intended audience?  I know FG plays mostly in Paris proper.  But Les Princes du Kuduro seem to be targeting more toward the banlieue, the kind of audience that would be in the Paris scene of the global dance video.  In short, this strain of kuduro is aiming for the success of coupé-décalé, which of course is bolstered by the huge Ivorian population in France.  But how big is the Angolan diaspora?  A cursory search doesn’t reveal many details.  And this is not a conceptual link, mind you.  Not if Kuduro Coupé Décalé Stars Compilation has anything to say about it.

I know Guillaume was recently on his native soil.  Perhaps he’s got a read on the situation sur la terre / sobre a terra.

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Posted in Africa, FHZ, diaspora, euro, francophonie, globalization, immigration, lusofonia, viewtube | 5 Comments »

Funk Yourself

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

When I was in Rio last month, Sany Pitbull was extremely excited about a hush-hush high level collaboration with Red Bull and the Rede Globo (Brazil’s media empire).  Well, it’s happening — “Funk-Se” or funk yourself, is ongoing this week in the Cidade Maravilhosa (check the site even if you don’t know Portuguese — chock full of streaming music, videos, photos, etc.).  Sany describes it as a watershed moment for funk, especially on the heels of the law in Rio’s state legislature declaring funk a legitimate form of cultural expression.

sany

As he wrote in his announcement e-mail:

Um sonho que eu tive junto com a minha grandiosa e saudosa amiga Adriana Pittigliani está se tornando realidade, o sonho de ver o movimento funk ser realmente respeitado como merece…. Não está sendo fácil transformar esse sonho em realidade( e ninguém falou que ía ser facil,mesmo), mas com a ajuda de uns aliados estamos conseguindo chegar lá.

O motivo desse email é um só, te mostrar parte do que estamos fazendo, é só o inicio, temos muito mais à fazer… Muito trabalho ainda vem por ai.. Chega desse papo de musica de favela, musica de pobre… o Funk é muito mais do que isso… Muito maior do que parece ser…
Basta apenas se organizar pra ser tornar o maior ritmo musical desse país..e seremos sim, quem não acredita vai ver…

Está para acontecer um evento histórico, embrionário ainda, pequeno talvez em  relação à magnitude do ritmo, mas ja é um inicio e olha que não estamos começando fracos não, só aliados de responsa compraram a briga ( do bem e pelo bem ).

40 anos de funk
40 anos de historia
40 anos mexendo com a cabeça,alma e quadris de tanta gente mundo à fora
40 anos se transformando e se preparando pra ser a musica dos próximos 40 anos(no mínimo).

Redbull Funk-se , do vinil à Mpc …

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A dream that I had together with my dearly departed friend Adriana Pittigliani is becoming a reality, the dream of seeing the funk scene get the respect it deserves… it hasn’t been easy to turn this dream into a reality (and nobody ever said it would be), but with the help of many allies we are finally succeeding.

The motive of this e-mail is simple, to show you what we have been up to, it’s only the beginning, we have much more to do… Much more work to come.. The arrival of this conversation about favela music, about the music of the poor… Funk is much more than this… Much bigger than it seems to be…

A historic event is about to take place, still in its infancy, perhaps tiny in comparison to the magnitude of the funk beat, but it’s already a beginning and look at how we don’t start off weak, only our most trusted allies will join us in the fight (of and for what’s good).

40 anos of funk
40 anos of history
40 anos of moving the head, soul, and booty of so many people
40 anos of transforming itself and preparing itself to be the music of the next 40 years (at the minimum).

Redbull Funk-se, from vinyl to MPC …

Sany Pitbull: funk prophet?  Could be.  The schedule is packed, with a daily panel discussion, film showing, Sany Pitbull MPC workshop for kids at a technology magnet school (!), and nightly party.  Notably it indeed stretches back 40 years, bringing in the likes of Gerson King Combo, one of the originators of Brazilian soul and overall “black music” as they call it.  The press coverage is unsurprisingly favorable, and speaks to the media’s willingness to give positive coverage toward mainstream, legal, organized funk, with corporate backing no less.  (Poking around the “related articles” reveals one from last year about a baile crackdown sparked by a grenade explosion that injured 12 at an August 2008 favela baile).

gerson

One of the events I am most disappointed to be missing is the MPC battle!  Cabide DJ x Phabyo DJ x DJ Pokemon x DJ Mancha.  I’m a little intrigued at some of the rules though –

Serão passíveis de eliminação os seguintes casos:

Agressão física contra um dos participantes; ofender o apresentador ou o Dj.
O DJ que falar de facção criminosa (apologia).
Não fazer referência a time de futebol
Não executar músicas com temas e vozes infantis.

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The following will lead to automatic disqualificaton:

Physical aggression against one of the participants; offending the host or another DJ.
DJ mentioning a criminal faction (apology for crime).
Do not refer to any soccer team.
Do not play music about children or with children’s voices.

There is clearly an effort to manage the kind of funk on display at such a high-profile event: no proibidao, nothing that could involve minors (there goes all the tunes about “gatinhas”), and I guess no riling up the crowd with a cheap paean to Flamengo.

battle

My money’s on Cabide, natch, as he’s No. 1 sampler do Brasil e do mundo now.  Besides, that’s his MPC they’re fighting over in that pic.  Either way, there’s a 50-50 shot a Flamin Hotz artist will be the “king of the MPC.”

Meanwhile, the Cine Funk Clube will be screening Favela on Blast tomorrow night to round off a week that’s included “Sou Feia Mas To Na Moda” (I’m Ugly But Trendy), one of the earliest post-2000 funk docs and some other more obscure (or I guess more Brazilian) ones that I’ve never heard of.

I’ve got saudade, sure.  As Sany said, “You’re leaving June 11?  No no, make it July 11!  Stay for Funk-Se!”  But duty calls back here in the Estados Unidos.  Still, some likeminded folks & I have put together a mini Funk-Se at the Chicken Loft.  We’ll have old Brazilian wax, an MPC, Cabide’s DVD internacional, Favela on Blast, caipirinha, cerveja, boldinho, and comida galore.  Tonight, Cambridge is the next best place to Rio. (more…)

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Posted in brazil, festival, funk, viewtube | No Comments »

Post-St Jean

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Yeah, it was worth it. Un grand merci to Guillaume & Ghislain!

Bridge Burner 2009 from Anne-Marie Bergeron on Vimeo.

Edit: Beyond being a great party, Guillaume gave me some perspective on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (aka the National Holiday of Quebec) and Bridge Burner’s role in it.  As Wikipedia summarizes, the celebrations in Quebec date to the 19th century, the Pope declared John the Baptist the patron saint of French Canadians in 1908, and by 1977 it became an official state holiday with public funding as an event to celebrate Québécois identity and francophone language/culture.

The big free party at Parc Maisonneuve is subsequently a lovefest of Quebec pop/rock, of Quebec French, of state-sponsored national identity (because, y’know, Quebec is a nation inside Canada, but nation in the “cultural-sociological sense,” so sez the PM).  None of which is necessarily a bad thing, but might be a little boring, and certainly a turn off to the huge Anglo population in Montreal, many of whom propel the city’s music/art hip quotient.  So Bridge Burner, while proudly flying the fleur de lys with the greatest French Canadian DJ (Ghislain Poirier) on stage and an MC, Face-T, singing loud&proud in français québécois, is more bilingual on a day that is ruthlessly French.  Not that there aren’t a few naysayers — in the Facebook event page, the oldest comments (long since booted to the bottom) include one complaining that the title is “Bridge Burner” and not something French.

But national identity can and should take many formers, and as much of a French language partisan as I am, if the goal of June 24 — beyond celebrating my birthday — is to celebrate Montréal and Québéc, then throwing a party for the bilingual faction that makes up a crucial cultural undercurrent is certainly no swipe at the mission of la fête nationale.

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Posted in francophonie, viewtube | 2 Comments »

No Habs No

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

nhlcz9

My affections for francophone hockey are well documented.  Before the centennial Canadiens go down tonight in a sweep to the Bruins (currently 4-1 Boston with 5:42 left), I’ll have to lift a little MTL puckosphere from Masala.  Translation is fair play, n’est-pas?

Exhibit A: “Le #1 international hit from Quebec!! Bigger than the Macarena!” aka “Le Tabarnak,” one of those are-they-praying-or-swearing curses.

Riffing on Le Tabarnak, JP reports:

“Following the success of Authentik Payzan’s Tabarnak, a new dance craze has invaded Québec as the Stanley Cup playoffs begin.

‘Like Brunet, this tune is by turns effective, pleasant, and disarmingly simple,’ says the press release.

You can hear Comtesse’s track on the MySpace page of Jeune Chilly Chill, who collaborated on the piece.  Comtesse, a still unknown group, plans on launching its first single, “Stop Being Your Bitch,” at the beginning of the summer.

Apparently, the actual dance moves are still in the works.  We can’t wait to see them . . .”

Benoît Brunet, for the uninitiated, is an ex-Hab and current RDS color commentator.  Or as a friend put it, “I used to score dozens of goals with Brunet in NHL ‘94 for Super Nintendo.”  (Speaking of SNES sports . . .)

Well bonnes nouvelles, JP, les pas sont arrivés!

Voila, how to do the Benoît Brunet:

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Posted in blogosphere, francophonie, moves, mpfree, viewtube | No Comments »

O Mais Novo DVD

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

Cabide DJ (remember him last fall?) has been busy in the studio not just cranking out MPC hits, but dabbling in some video editing. The fruits of his labors include these teasers for his new DVDs, already on sale by the bootleggers in Rio’s Uruguaiana market.

It occurs to me that I actually did most of the filming for the “DVD internacional” since Cabide was busy working his magic, but indeed that’s yours truly at the very end sporting the Phillies hat and AfroReggae shirt.

I don’t know many of the MCs in his new “DVD nacional,” but I am glad to see he got the LED screen he was on the hunt for in NYC’s Chinatown. And I could be wrong, but I think he’s sporting one of the Obama Ts he picked up here.

Special bonus on the “DVD internacional,” a nicely edited recap of his appearance on WMBR’s Global Frequency with Lone Wolf.

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Posted in brazil, funk, viewtube | 1 Comment »

KGV (Kuduro Avec Grande Vitesse)

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

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I have had an abstract notion for some time that kuduro had really taken off in France.  Of course, I knew that Frédéric Galliano (a Gallic name if there ever was one) has been the nu whirld’s man-in-Luanda for some time now.  He is working with Flamin Hotz on a kuduro comp and alerted us to some recent releases in France.  In turn, I was astounded by the degree of major label success.  If you want to make the contrast with its cross-Atlantic contemporary, kuduro is light years past being a trend-ish platitude, “the next baile funk.”  In France, it’s a veritable KGV that has zoomed to popularity.

The CD/DVD Kuduro Connection came out just a week ago on Sony France (check the DVD on Amazon.fr), with every ounce of marketing muscle such backing entails.  The official website is a nu media site to behold — chiefly, it boasts an online game (!) of keyboard-DDR where you pick one of three danceiros (busty Bonita, one-legged MC Costuleta, or feisty street kid Joao) and bust moves to the “Dança do Tchiriri” (also spelled Tiriri and Xiriri).

Virtual recreations are very revealing in how they choose to reconstruct their source material.  Online marketing firm Virtuadz, who created the “advergame,” present an unsurprisingly generic simplification of kuduro.  Both the “beach” and “street” setting do not suggest Angola or Luanda in any tangible way.  The beach is an interchangeable idylic beach scene — more vacation getaway than urbanized beach — while the street is a conventionally straight, uncrowded, and populated by boxy architecture.  There is a truck of some kind that enters the frame at bottom right, missing an opportunity to insert one of the communal vans that circulate the capital and have incubated the kuduro culture by blasting it out of their stereos in Luanda traffic jams.

Now take a look at the Xiriri music video for some comparison.  Bonita is a typical over-sexed cartoon who barely moves but to emphasize her moneymakers.  She dances lethargically compared to her real-life counterparts and is noticeably whiter than the Angolanas strutting their stuff on camera — as are the women on the cover of the album.  There is an obvious effort to whiten the image of kuduro as it is marketed to a European crowd that is very much multicultural, but for whom white Western beauty standards prevail in advertising.

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It’s almost surprising that the cover images aren’t oversexualized black figures, like we’re so used to seeing from the days of Favela Booty Beats.  But maybe part of mainstreaming is also bleaching out the African overtones, making kuduro into generic tropical music, like in the palm trees & bikini of Kuduru System.  However, I must at least give credit to Kuduro Party where the Angolan motif is stronger — the red lettering, embedded hammer & sickle, and concrete towers suggesting a Luanda cityscape — and the cover female a bit darker toned.

João, meanwhile, is the loveable street kid, with an unflapping smile that reeks of nothing short of virtual minstrelsy as his feet fly.  While Bonita moves slower than the music vid dancers so you can focus on her curves, Joao is on warp speed.  It is exaggerated dancing so that you don’t think about the archetype — poor, hungry — that he represents. (Doesn’t the asphalt get hot, João?  Too bad your creators didn’t provide you any shoes.)  Costileta is the MC, and indeed missing a leg, so at least he has some grounding in reality.

There are serious euros behind Kuduro Connection and they’ve at least succeeded in getting Xiriri, apparently a big club hit in France last year, endlessly stuck in my head, like any good ad should.  Maybe Pancadão do Morro would be sold out by now if we had hired Virtuadz to make a “baile funk virtual” — choose between Sany, Cabide, and Sandrinho DJ and bang the MPC on beat to keep the crowd dancing while the cops and bandidos shoot it out?  Bonus points for proibidão, but make sure you big up the right faction!

Of course I’m old-fashioned — booklets and liner notes and a quaint notion called “context.”  Whether Kuduro Connection will sell well, whether it will lead to a glossed understanding or spur some serious Google research — that all remains to be seen.    But it’s undeniable that something is lost in translation from hard, hot Luanda streets to keyboard-jockey dancing.

Mass marketing is far from a bottoms up (”hard ass” puns notwithstanding — and note the baffling mutual exclusivity in that article, “Forget baile funk” right off the beat) distribution model.  But I don’t want to give the impression that kuduro in France is all in the hands of the music industry — there’s plenty of music industry too.  In their one year reflecton on kuduro, le Masala mentioned that it was kicking in France at the hands (& feet!) of Cape Verdeans.  As the following video declares, here’s another take on kuduro arrives in France.  But this time the only fancy tricks come from creative use of joints, not pixels.


Le Kuduro débarque en France
Uploaded by Bondy_Blog

The video refreshingly keeps the commentary light and the dancing on full blast.  The amateur danceologist in me saw the first group routine and wondered if it was the banlieue immigrant answer to techtonik (without the fascist overtones).  But in the end, it reminds me a lot more of juke, although I think the kuduro dancing runs a little more fluid than juking, which gets caught up on the relentless drum beats.  The footwurk is there, though, and lest we forget juke has gone through its own commercial decontextualizing:

Hopefully a cell phone named “kuduro” is a long ways from appearing in French stores, but Kuduro Connection could very well be the beginning.

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Posted in Africa, Uncategorized, euro, viewtube, virtual | 5 Comments »

Rhymes on the Bus

Monday, February 16th, 2009

A smattering of BusTube hip-hop from the last couple months.

The good (catchy bike rack rap on River City Transit [Louisville], h/t BCP) –

The bad (SEPTA obsession, by his own admission Buswizard isn’t a very good rapper, h/t 51:51) –

The ugly (young black Atlantans snubbing MARTA & the ladies) –

Buses are an essential supplement to their more glamorous cousins — subways, light rails, and trains of all kinds — but suffer from perennial image problems.  As Margaret Thatcher heinously (and apocryphally) said, “A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.”  Not that efforts haven’t been made in the U.S. to spruce them up.  I was most amazed at the prevalence of bus travel in San Francisco, where the Muni does some heavy-duty people moving given the lack of a really extensive city subway system (regional BART notwithstanding).  In addition to accurate LED displays of when the next bus is coming at almost every stop, the tech-savvy SF crowd can go to nextmuni.com and track their route in real time.  My cousins commute via bus every day with a stop outside the door of their apartment building.  They keep tabs on their bus in the morning and walk outside just as it’s arriving.  Bus without the fuss — a miracle.

The River City / Louisville PSA is encouraging, with even mid-sized cities getting in on the bike rack craze, especially in a place with a temperate climate where you can ride a bike most of the year.  The SEPTA rap is some weird geekery, I admit, for a very extensive bus system that, coupled with relatively minimal subway service in a dense metro area, is a pretty essential part of the system.  Sure people drive their cars in Philly, but it’s nothing like Atlanta, where I’m not surprised that the image of aspiration is tell a girl to fuck off by relegating her to the bus.  Let’s hope the BeltLine arrives to change perceptions sooner rather than later for all the fly ladies in Hotlanta.

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Posted in America, hip-hop, transportation, viewtube | No Comments »

Tropa de Cultura

Friday, November 28th, 2008


Even if it’s old news in Brazil, I’m due to provide a refresher on Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad in English). It was directed by José Padilha as the second film in a trio that began with Bus 174, the documentary of a hostage taking on a Rio bus that was captured by national TV to disastrous results. His cinematic vision is to tackle the city’s central pressing issues — violent crime, the drug trade, police corruption and brutality. In Tropa de Elite, he focuses on the BOPE, Rio’s equivalent of a SWAT team, that conducts intense operations in favelas — usually with callous disregard for human life. Shoot first, ask questions later, as it were. Their ostentatiously violent symbol makes that abundantly clear (“It looks like a biker gang in the third reich.”)

I first watched it in Rocinha with some 2Bros folks, where the scene portraying BOPE invasions of the favela were eerily similar to real life. We had a pirated copy that had leaked in August 2007, just a week or two before my departure. It had already spread like wildfire, and by the time of its official release in October, it was seen by a reported 11.5 million Brazilians. Not much the copyright police can do about that.

Most interestingly, it was equally popular among all strata of society, but for opposite reasons. Favelados were on the side of the victimized favelados as well as cavalier gangsters, and a friend of a friend was proud to have been an extra as a bandido. The middle and upper classes were taken by protagonist Capitão Nascimento, whose strongarm, torture tactics elicited applause in movie houses.

In a country whose moneyed interests frequently feel that the drug trade can only be reined in by extra-legal measures, Nascimento’s take no prisoners attitude made him, as this magazine cover argues, a new national hero.

Padilha cannily rejects any claims that his film endorses either side of the debate. I saw him speak at the Harvard Film Archive last spring, where he maintained the position that the film was a portrayal designed to spark dialogue, not a polemic. In short, he’s let the film be a mirror on its viewers’ own prejudices and opinions about the power relations in Rio.

I don’t think a strong-willed director tackling such challenging subjects should get off so easily. Surely there was some authorial intent. For one, the group that comes off the most negatively in the film are the wealthy college students who patronize the drug trade — they provide the funds that keep the whole operation going, much to the detriment of folks who live just a few miles away up in the hills (on a longer scale, Colombia is taking the anti-cocaine message to middle-class Europeans).

Those folks, meanwhile, get their fair due of fun for a brief moment at the beginning of the film, with a stellar baile funk scene that tragically ends in a police-gang shootout. It’s chopped up by the opening credits, as you can see in this trailer, but the shots come the closest I’ve seen on screen to a baile funk, or at least one c. 1997.

I say 1997 because that’s the setting of the film, not too long after Rocinha brothers Júnior and Leonardo popularized one of the classics of funk carioca, “Rap das Armas,” which they sing live in this opening scene. I documented a recent acapella usage and linktubed to a Yo! MTV Raps-esque version during my Rocinha sojourn. The popularity of “Rap das Armas” as the theme song to the film was a real turn of fortunes for Júnior and Leonardo, who I met around the same time in August 2007 just as they were preparing to tour Europe in advance of the film’s release there. After skyrocketing to fame in the early ’90s, they became increasingly impoverished until they were reduced to driving a taxi cab on 12-hour shifts each, so the car was constantly in rotation. Now they’re back in the driver’s seat, so to speak, as funk MCs.

This version is from the official Tropa de Elite soundtrack, which amazingly is on sale stateside, as is the DVD. It cycled around some film festivals in the U.S. this year, but I never saw it make much of a splash in wide release. I was convinced it would become the next City of God, a lush but violent film about Rio, set to further fix foreigners’ minds that the city is a violent nightmare. I guess I was wrong. But if you don’t want to shell out for the official copy, you can see it for yourself with English subtitles.

With such broad appeal, meanwhile, it was only a matter of time before edits/dubs/remixes trickled out of the Brazilian webosphere. In fact, to permit a cross-linguistic pun — Tropa became a trope, its catch phrases and music trotted out in all manner of remix culture fashion. Below is a sampling of the samples –

  • Capitão Nascimento viciously berates his wife as his battles in the field increasingly rattle him. He created a new slang term, “Quem manda nessa porra sou eu” (I’m the one who controls this shit), that caught on rapidly, enough to become remixed as a funk track.

  • Brazilian humor site Kibe Loco has some video remixes cobbling together scenes from the film with tamborzão, crunchy guitar (and in the first, the riff from “Seven Nation Army”), and popular lines from the movie. The stutter-start chopped scenes actually recreate the funk vocal sampling technique with some accuracy.

Posted in cinematic, favelas, free culture, funk, globalization, remix, rio, sample, viewtube, violence, viral | 3 Comments »