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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

__

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.

photo_37077310_1

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 »

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 »

Mnml do Morro

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

Brasil still on my mind — stripped down & sped up.

First, there was some percussive ferocity lingering in my inbox, c/o Daniel D’Errico. He plays in Boston’s BatukAxé, a drum group led by Bahian Marcus Santos. Up above, they’re playing at the “Welcoming New Bostonians” event, holding it down for the constant stream of Brazucas coming to the Bean. (Daniel is the odd one out in the yellow shirt.)

BatukAxé (Marcus Santos’ Bateria) by gregzinho

Then wayne&wax tipped me off to Discobelle’s most recent Mixin’ It Up by DJ Downtown of Helsinki (what is it with the Finns?! tropical living vicariously through funk carioca?) The opening track is a stripped down version of “Rap das Armas“, the ever controversial and ever misinterpreted telling-it-like-it-is funk track. This version sounds like the one re-recorded for Tropa de Elite, which I shamefully never blogged about, although you can read up on all the fuss from last year over at the now defunct BOPE Blog.

Posted in bateria, beantown, blogosphere, favelas, funk, globalization, immigration | No Comments »

Baile Rave

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008


If it’s not one of us, it’s another. Following in the fine Finnish tradition of his countryman DJ Rideon, there’s another funk carioca blogger (and 2Bros volunteer!) on the loose in Teemuk of Otra Luna, which focuses on “art, design, music and culture from the southern side of the world.” His “super classics of funk carioca” series has dug deep this month, with big features on William e Duda and Deize Tigrona.

The latter has apparently gone mundial, collaborating with Lisbon’s DJ Manaia for some cross-lusophone batidas.

“Eu sou sobrevivente de uma rave.” (I’m the survivor of a rave.)

A tried-n-true funk MC singing over the raviest of rave synths can only make me laugh as I recall Sany DJ’s complaint that his pós-baile funk is derided as “rave” at bailes funk.

What I don’t understand about this track is why the vocals are so poorly recorded. They sound worse, in fact, than her smash hit “Injeção” (with a dance routine no less — happy, Lone Wolf?) The raw sound of funk is constantly praised as one of its most endearing features, although that’s really a canard w/r/t funk of the last decade or so, with the big commercial sound systems using top notch recording studios. Did DJ Manaia intentionally rough up the vocal mix to make it sound grittier, more like funk to his Portuguese or wider Euro audience? Either way, it just plain sounds bad against those hyper-polished synths. Maybe Deize is simply hoping her vocals survive this rave.

Posted in blogosphere, euro, funk, globalization | 3 Comments »

Returns

Monday, November 17th, 2008

O Cabidão caught an overnight flight to Rio on Saturday, rather gladly saying farewell to the U.S. and returning to “a minha terra, o meu Brasil!” Too cold, volume too low, clubs too small (and my basement not the nicest place to live either, granted). After three weeks as the ad-hoc tour manager of the first non-Marlboro DJ to play for American audiences, I now have a more realistic perspective on the viability of bridging the divide between global ghettotechnicians and their northern fans, at least in the case of funk carioca, really completing the circle from wide-eyed onlooker to direct intervener.

I don’t want to declare the tour a failure. There were plenty of highlights: Global Frequency, MoFo Radio, Invasores do Baixo, Mudd Up!, TTL in-store, Batida do Funk. And the tour really brought out the best of some fine folks like wayne&wax, Lone Wolf, DJ Ghostdad, and DJ Comrade, all of whom put their time/money/effort/talent into collaborating. Kosta of Bananas even used his west coast contacts to score a show in Seattle on three days notice.

Still, a tour remains an economic proposition, and one that fell fairly flat. It seems that playing the Brazuca circuit (Hyannis, Newark, Bridgeport, Boston, etc.) pays for the plane ticket and is a prerequisite to being able to afford other shows for the knowing gringos. Unfortunately, this means Brazuca crowds will also be driving who gets brought up. Most are not carioca, but from other, poorer states in Brazil, and get their funkeiro fandom from the web, where heartthrobs like Mulher Melancia (the Watermelon Lady) are the top draw. Cabide, in fact, was a relative unknown, so he didn’t bring out the Brazilians en masse in New England.

While this tour was a half-and-half proposition, in the future I expect funk DJs and MCs to mostly play for the brasileiros and then, if possible, an interested party like myself, the Boston Bouncers, Xão Productions, or Masala (who had expressed interest, but we had some visa issues) will cobble something together.

The “Batida do Funk” party by Xão at S.O.B.’s was, admittedly, my favorite of the tour. To trot out an old cliche, in the melting pot of New York we were able to find the mixture of gringos in the know, global music aficionados, and plain old Brazilians to make the show a real crossover audience. The addition of Brazilian dancers and a baile funk slideshow by Vincent Rosenblatt of Agência Olhares made for an odd refraction.


Dancers juxtaposed with the image of dancers. A baile funk americano (Cabide repeatedly referred to shows as “bailes”) juxtaposed with a baile funk carioca. We were both interviewed for the upcoming film Beyond Ipanema, about Brazilian music in the U.S., whose directors were in the audience. I was unable to tell who was Brazilian and who was American. It’s difficult math when a club that serves $10 caipirinhas can’t pay the DJ as much as a favela in Rio can, but that’s the strange inversion for you. Who mediates, who performs, who speaks (Cabide was mute without English and I was left to translate for film, radio, conversation). He opened for Diplo on the penultimate show of the Mad Decent tour, playing the first set even before some indie band from Brooklyn came on. The headliner later worked in a tamborzão, but he was temporally separated as much as possible from the real performer. Worried about being upstaged the next night, cutting the volume, sucking the life out of the music. Metaphor and fact. Who controls and who performs. The tours are over, but the film will linger.

Posted in beantown, bmore, brazil, funk, gigs, globalization, nyc, philly | 1 Comment »

Cabide DJ Landing Stateside

Sunday, October 19th, 2008


Pancadão do Morro was just the first step in establishing better international connections between funkeiros brasileiros and americanos. Now, we’ve got one of the best DJs from the record on U.S. tour. Funk originator Cabide DJ, who I blogged about way back in ‘06, touched down the day before yesterday and made it through customs & immigration with no problems (graças a deus).

Cabide is not the first DJ or MC from Rio to come up. In fact, the Brazilian expat organizing the tour had MC Biju (who did “Aviãozinho,” which appears on Favela on Blast) and Mulher Melancia (an ex-dancer of MC Créu who launched her own career on the strength of a bestselling Playboy Brazil appearance) playing shows here just last month. The catch is that they only play for the Brazilian immigrant community, covering the east coast Brazuca circuit of Boston, Framingham, Hyannis, Danbury, Bridgeport, and Newark.

Fortunately, I got wind of this tour ahead of time, and I’m proud to announce that the forbidding world of international travel worked out and for the first time — excluding DJ Marlboro, who has always been in a league of his own anyway — a funk artist is going to perform for crossover crowds, and ideally beginning to bridge that gap between global ghettotechnicians and their not-so-ghettoized fans in the global norte.

There’s the man at work in Rio. Now let’s see what he an do to the East Coast, where he already played Club Lido in Revere on Friday night, Made in Brazil in Queens last night, and Tuxedo Junction in Danbury, CT tonight. Check XLR8R for a tour-opening boost as well as an mp3 exclusivo.

He follows with Global Frequencies on WMBR this Tuesday, Mofo Radio on Wednesday at WZBC, and then an Invasores do Baixo massive on Thursday with an excellent cast of local characters.


Full tour schedule below, but I’ll be making regular updates with flyers for the shows that I organized.

10/17 Boston, MA - Club Lido
10/18 Queens, NY - Made in Brazil
10/19 Danbury, CT - Tuxedo Junction
10/23 Boston, MA - “Bass Invaders” at Milky Way w/ DJ Ghostdad, Nick Yoder, DJ Gregzinho, Philomena, wayne&wax, DJ Flack
10/25 Hyannis, MA - Pufferbellies
10/26 Boston, MA - Taboo
10/30 Philadelphia, PA - Medusa w/ DJ Gregzinho, Chip and Becky Soundsystem
11/03 Philadelphia, PA - “Jang House” at The Barbary
11/06 Baltimore, MD - “Bananas” at Bedrock w/ Donkey Bits
11/08 New York, NY - “Batida do Funk” at S.O.B.’s w/ DJ Comrade, MC Zuzuka Poderosa, Supervixen
11/13 Baltimore, MD - Sonar w/Diplo, Boy 8-Bit, Blaqstarr

Posted in FHZ, brazuca, funk, gigs, globalization, immigration, rio | 3 Comments »

Brasil: Um País de Todos?

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007


This clever multiculturalist logo sneaks into the corner of just about every sign announcing federal support for a project. That the federal government would even need to make a public declaration of Brazil as a country for all is an indication of doubts that such a claim is really true. The longstanding belief that Brazil is a racial democracy has come under fire in recent years, as in the stratification of wealth that curiously corresponds to racial lines.

Still, I dropped by a few museums in São Paulo that, to their credit, were much more hospitable to the idea of a harmoniously multicultural Brazil.

First was the Museu da Lingua Portuguesa, a fairly new museum situated in the rafters of the belle époque Estação de Luz train station. Very high-tech and interactive, it purported to trace the history of the (Brazilian) Portuguese language while illustrating its various influences over the centuries. The time line history was particularly interesting, addressing developments in African language–especially Bantu–and American indigenous culture/language parallel with the development of Portuguese from Latin.

Thus, for example, such interesting cross-currents as Arabic affecting both Portuguese and African languages at the same time:


Or other tidbits, like cachaça, the national liquor, having Bantu origins:


Then, at 1500, they all converge:


The Portuguese meet the Tupi (Brazil’s largest indigenous tribe and the one that left the largest mark on Brazilian cultural), African slaves are brought over, and the feijoada of languages stews for the next 500 years.


Unfortunately, little to no mention of what kind of linguistic repression occurred, what kind of penalty might be meted out for speaking your native language as a slave. There is a flash forward to a historically corrective present, though.


“In 1988, the Brazilian Constitution guaranteed to the Indians and the rural communities descended from slaves (remnants of quilombos [maroon communities of runaway slaves]) the right to the lands they have been occupying. It guaranteed as well legal protection to indigenous beliefs, languages, and
traditions.

The estimates of the time cited the existence of 220 indigenous tribes and around a thousand communities that were remnants of quilombos. The prolonged isolation of the majority of these peoples permitted the survival of more than 180 different indigenous languages and, in the black communities, the permanency of a Portuguese full of archaisms, in addition to African inheritances from the times of the senzalas [slave quarters on a plantaiton] and quilombos.”

Language of African descent, or at least one word in particular, also caught the ear of Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, whose lyrics for tropicália classic “Batmacumba” (macumba = candomblé ritual offering) are designed as a recitation in poema concreta style:

Gilberto Gil & Caetano Veloso - Batmacumba
___


Further on the east side of town, I also stopped by the Hospedaria de Imigrantes, or Immigrants’ Hostel, which has been beautifully restored and turned into a museum & archive (for those looking for info about their family). It was more or less the Ellis Island of São Paulo. It’s where hundreds of thousands of immigrants spent there first few weeks in Sampa before being assigned work on a coffee plantation somewhere in the interior.


Studying this period of Brazil’s history was what first gave me the notion that Brazil and the U.S. have much more in common that either might originally think. Similar size, remarkable geographical diversity, history of plantation slavery. And neither is afraid of making really cheap ethnic stereotypes in a seemingly innocuous exhibit. I’m sure most Japanese women wore ceremonial kimono on their trip over to Brazil . . .


Posted in globalization, immigration, language, sampa, tropicália | 6 Comments »

Outernational Geotronix

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007


Magazine cover specialists and Geo Bee sponsors, now world music mavens. World music, of course, being a tricky one to properly pin down. But I see more X-Plastaz and less Graceland, plus a digital distribution scheme that will hopefully keep it off the Starbucks shelves. With a pop-up Java app and $0.99 downloads, it’s got an iTunes-esque death-to-the-music-industry imprimateur all over it.

I wonder, though, if the remix treatment to every song shines off too much tarnish when the result is “a super smooth house track” (DJ Afro’s edit of Los Amigos Invisibles “Yo No Se”). Although there probably wasn’t much tarnish to begin with if the album it came off of was produced by Dmitri From Paris. I’ve got nothing against French house — why on earth would I have gone clubbing in Paris last fall otherwise? — but such slinky sounds don’t settle well alongside the righteous chicano indignation of “El Ballad de Jose Campos“.

“World music” coming up short again as an empty category when it’s overwhelmingly vast? Could be. Or maybe just misnomered: what’s “worldly” (as opposed to “national”, I suppose) about Spanish-language music when reggaeton dominates the airwaves?

An attempt, but I’m unconvinced a successful one, at imploding the top-down*/bottom-up** paradigm in “world music” circulation that professor wayne&wax told me he toyed with in class.

*i.e. Graceland and PG
**i.e. this, this, this, and maybe even yours truly.

Posted in globalization, outernational, remix | No Comments »

Bo knows / Cabide after the jump

Sunday, December 17th, 2006

Catching up on some long-neglected RSS feeds and came across an insightful Maga Bo post. He uses mp3, YouTube, and his own observations on the Volt Mix to Tamborzão progression of rhythms (or more accurately riddims, given how they freely they float around) in funk.

Tamborzão Mix 2005

From Batidas Instrumentais Ineditas Vol. 5, a compilation of instrumentals for aspiring funk producers, that I copped at the Uruguiana market in Rio. The tamborzão (tambor = drum, ão = intesifer, so “big drum”) will sound immediately familiar to anyone who’s heard a fairly recent funk track. As Bo points out, “It’s a big dry sound that works really well on a massive sound system in a mostly open air space. It’s a mix that has lots of room for vocals and other elements. I would say it’s as big and ubiquitous as sleng teng was in its heyday.” As of summer 2006, DJs would ride the tamborzão beat through a whole set for easy mixing, and there certainly wasn’t a lack of tracks to choose from if one stuck to it.

My man Cabide DJ (his site’s down at the moment, but I’ll tell him to fix it), who I interviewed over the summer, told me the the tamborzão was invented by Luciano DJ on a Roland-808. But as I’ve mentioned briefly, the dominant beat used to come from Miami bass, natch.

Cabide with record in hand.

Zoom-in to the goods: 808 Volt Mix, DJ Battery Brain


What’s that in the corner? Something to make the Philly heads flip. $4.99 went a long way. Too bad they’re closing up shop.
___

Sany DJ holds up his copy in the YouTube vid (sorry, português only), but just to show that other old-school DJs had their hands on it too. Cabide said a friend picked it up for him in Miami. Miami –> Philly –> Miami –> Rio –> Philly over 18 years. Not a bad run.

The tamborzão mini-doc is also a hot demonstration of the live MPC DJ style that I found very prevalent in Rio. More from Cabide. First, as he says, “This here was the first sound used on a sampler in Rio, by MC G, with the Volt Mix beat.”

Now some of his more contemporary stuff with a tamborzão flavor:

Cabide also claims to be the first DJ in Rio to use the Rocky Theme. He told me he bought a CD put out by O Globo (media corp) called “Sons do Cinéma” (Cinema Sounds). I tried to explain to him how the Rocky Theme has become synonymous with funk to Americans and Europeans, although getting into a detailed explanation of M.I.A. and pop stardom didn’t really translate well. He was pleased that it had some popularity, suffice to say.

Something else dovetails nicely with all this discussion of rhythms and origins. I asked him how Rio DJs discovered Miami bass — did folks go to Miami because they had heard about it, or when expat cariocas returned from abroad it came with them? He was stumped and called his friend MC Paul. While Paul didn’t answer my more specific question, he sidestepped it to a broader point [audio in portuguese, translated & edited for clarity below]:

MC Paul on the origins of funk

“The beat of funk evolved in Africa. Africans began the beat, the drum beat, boom boom. Os americanos [in Portuguese, americanos refers to both North and South Americans collectively] brought this beat over and people made funk out of it. James Brown, hip-hop singers, they use the map of Africa because the beat comes from there, understand?”

That puts it in a much deeper perspective — you can call anything from James Brown to 2 Live Crew “American” without being wrong, but you can likewise point to a historical arc that goes all the way back to Africa. It brought certain sounds to the USA and to Brasil, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they link up and recombine themselves a few centuries down the road.

All in all, it was a productive interview — who knew I’d stumble over the Rocky Theme originator? Cabide’s a really nice guy and a testament to the friendliness of Rio’s music scene: I had bought his CD at Uruguiana market, liked some of the tracks, and wanted to know more. There was a phone number listed on the back so I called him, explained what I was doing, and we set a date a few days later where I could come out to his studio and do an interview. He’s 31 years old and has been DJing since 1987 — he was adamant that Marlboro doesn’t deserve credit as the sole originator of the Miami bass-tinged sound. Several DJs, himself included, were doing the same thing back in the late ’80s.

I don’t have a good excuse for having sat on all this for so long, but here are a few more pics from that day:

You know he’s old school when he can crate dig.

Another classic Miami bass artist who had a strong influence on funk.

Cash Box was one of the earliest Rio soundsystems — they even cut vinyl!

On the back: You can tell it’s the pre-Portuguese vox days.

His studio was like an archaeology dig of music gear: from a Roland R-8 drum machine

to a Roland MC-50 sequencer

then moving to the present with his prized MV-8000 MPC

a less ancient keyboard

and his CD-J rig (he had turntables in a corner, if I recall).

Plus of course the computer set-up

from which he ran Sony ACID.

All in a soundproofed room, I might add.

I thought the bright pink house was a nice touch — it’s actually a sort of complex with several houses surrounding a courtyard. There’s space for that out in São Gonçalo, a suburb of Rio on the other side of the Baia de Guanabara (and over an enormous freaking bridge).

And last but not least the wheels: a VW that’s prized only second to his DJ gear.

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