Beat Diaspora: Beats, Buses, Bricks

In the three years that my involvement with funk artists has gone from wide-eyed neophyte to inquisitive researcher to deal-cutting tour manager, I’ve seen many relationships turn sour on account of money.  Having to negotiate with folks I once considered friends is an extremely disheartening exercise, and at times I wish I had never gotten involved with Flamin Hotz.

But our fair trade funk was as much to make the exchange more equitable on my account (as recipient of thesis-related knowledge, unparalleled experiences, and mp3s galore) as it was on their account (the pirated Sou Funk EP).  I persisted and threw my hands up at whichever contacts I lost as a result.

However, while the CD isn’t yet sold out (buy! it! now!), we decided to pay the royalties in full upfront as a good faith gesture, under terms which Maga Bo described as “bleeding heart.”  It is not a model we can repeat – and I refuse to work on another compilation again, as dealing with a dozen plus artists is like herding cats – but it still a job well done.

[Sany Pitbull]

Although I had a pretty thick wad of reais making for an uncomfortable bulge in my pocket on the way down (and some serious praying that I did not get mugged before making it to my lodgings), the amount of money that we are actually giving each artist is not a lot once it’s broken down over 22 tracks, some of which are shared between two artists at that.

Moreover, I should state that the majority of the artists on the CD are not favelados.  Our goal was never to make a favela-only record, although some indeed are from there and many have roots there.  But it’s a sliding scale situation.  The royalties to Sany Pitbull or Mr Catra are pocket change – they make what the whole record earned them in one show.  But to MC Sargento in Fazenda dos Mineiros way out across the bay in São Gonçalo, or to MC Binho who busts his ass as a collective van cobrador (the person who makes change for your fare and calls the stops out the window to hustle passengers), it is rent, groceries, and hopefully a bit more.

[MC Deisi of Bonde das Louras]

Nevertheless, across the board in the artists I managed to link up with during my scattershot days in Rio, the sense of appreciation has been palpable.  Appreciation that we delivered.  The stories remain countless about artists getting ripped off both by Brazilians and foreigners, selling away their music for a song (pun intended).  Our story is simple: 100% of the rights to the artists, upfront payments, and royalties.  I’ve had to talk a lot of talk over the last few years, now it has been my considerable pleasure to walk the walk and fork over some cash, however modest.

[DJ Phabyo de Castelo]

That said, it’s quickly proven untenable for my less frequent and shorter trips to Rio to turn into a marathon meet-up session as I catch buses this way and that trying to juggle multiple appointments on the notoriously unreliable Brazilian scheduling system.  Flamin Hotz wants to go digital for real, and a lot of artists are into it.  The sad truth is that the ones who could benefit most have the least access to the Internet, a phone line, or other means of staying in touch from afar.  There are some who I know will stay in touch even without the crucial face-to-face – something I can tell from a fact as simple as having a gmail address, like Phabyo de Castelo or Sany Pitbull.  Short of another extended stay (which I am thinking about more and more, admittedly), it’s going to be those in turn who will be able to send us the high-quality mp3s and WAVs that we can sell.  While the technological bridges have been overstated – not too many studios are quite the same hole-in-the-wall-taped-up-microphone-background-noise-galore that some early articles on funk described – there is still stratification between the more successful/wealthier/tech-savvy/internationally connected and those who are not.  I openly admit it and I only hope that producers like Sany and Phabyo and Juninho Carioca and Edgar and Sandrinho will work with MCs from favelas who still bring that heart to the mic so that we in turn can release them.

In the meantime, I’ve been plied with mixtapes and CD-Rs the last few weeks, so here are a few treats to share.

Remix of Sany’s Amazônia (on the CD) –

As we begin preparing this new phase in the north-south musical exchange, it’s worth noting that a certain equilibrium between the global and the local has finally, to my estimation, tipped to the global.  I found it absolutely remarkable that Sandrinho still lived and had his studio in Borel or that Sany still played the baile da comunidade in Cantagalo, while both were regularly touring in Europe.  Any given weekday Sany might be in Stockholm or Zurich or Berlin, but if schedule permitted he’d be in the quadra high up above Copacabana and Ipanema for a Friday night of pounding sound on the Pitbull sound system.  Sandrinho would come back from Favela Chic in Paris, the cosmpolitan construct only a TAM flight away from the real bricks of Borel.  I remember seeing that very plane ticket stub in front of his computer one day in July 2007.

Now Sandrinho has moved to an apartment in a non-descript part of downtown, hardly the luxurious enclaves of Ipanema, and indeed when I saw him he was on his way out the door to go see his mom in Borel.  Sany in turn was displeased with the changes in Cantagalo, where a new dono has brought the boca into the quadra, selling drugs openly on the dancefloor and encouraging soldados to bring their guns inside.  He fears that bringing the tráfico front and center, when before it was at least at arms’ length, slightly out of side, will jeopardize his career if any interested media/promoter/record producer types come to see him perform there.  He is still looking for a regular baile da comunidade to play it, but it reminds me of what Adriana said about his frustration at not having a venue for his newer music.

As funk abroad becomes a more lucrative endeavor, I only hope that the emerging faces do their best to keep a foot in both worlds, however untenable that is proving to be.