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