Searching for Marisa Monte, Part 4
There was an interesting article in Slate earlier this week (The World Is Phat: Reggaeton, grime, baile funk, and the globalization of hip-hop) that caught my eye because it mentioned some stuff about baile funk (pronounced bye-lee), which is home-grown, garage-made funk from the favelas of the big cities in Brazil, especially Rio. I have been starting to follow some musical trends in Brazil, as part of my fascination with Marisa Monte, and one of the things that is pretty fascinating to me right now is the way that hip-hop and rap are being negotiated into everyday Brazilian consciousness at all levels of the culture.
Without going into a huge digression on Brazilian music, which would only likely show how much I don't know, one of the interesting trends since the early sixties has been the ways that Brazilian musicians incorporate elements of popular American music into the Brazilian mix (and it is a huge and varied swamp of influences to begin with). One of the earliest fruits of this attempt to mix it all together was Tropicalia in the 1960s, which created a standard of the way to integrate non-Brazilian music into Brazilian practice and create something that is very new and still, very very Brazilian.
One of the curious things to me is the way that national identity is tied up in the musical forms, especially once foreign influences are incorporated into existing practices. There is this gray area where something that is not-Brazilian becomes Brazilian, and that interests me. I posted a couple of weeks back about Os Tribalistas, whose music was on that cusp of Brazilian/not-Brazilian and created some controversy as a result, particularly because our three heroes (Arnaldo, Carlinhos e Zé) made a very conscious bid at associating their work with that of the earlier Tropicalia (if only by rejecting its political stance).
This is too much detail, isn't it?
Look at it this way -- Brazilian music spends at lot of time talking to itself about itself and about other music from around the world, particularly the giant American corporate musical behemoth. This is tied to several streams of Brazilian culture, as far as I can tell - one is the amazingly deep and brilliant role that music and dance have played and still play in creating Brazil-ness. Another is the impact that consumer culture has had on the highly-stratified, mostly-urban society in Brazil (wealth is so unequally distributed it makes the baby Jesus weep - I'll pummel you with those deatils another time). A third stream is the way that the Portuguese language seems to isolate the music from so much of the rest of the world, at least in terms of accessibility of the meaning of the lyrics. I have really gotten a clear look recently about the way the voice simply becomes another instrument when the language it is singing in makes no sense to me at all (or only little bits of sense). On top of that, as I learn the language, I see that Portuguese is a wonderfully punny language, full of interesting sound-alikes, and with many shortcuts that allow meaning to be communicated in little bursts and bright images. This makes it perfect for rap in ways that English never has been (at least in my opinion).
So rap and hip-hop are part of this recent musical conversation in Brazil. As in the US (the musical history I am most familiar with), there are mainstream hip-hop artists (arguably completely recuperated into the whole machine of culture manufacturing) and then there are guerilla artists.
The mainstream hip-hop guy I have been sort of paying attention to is called Marcelo D2 (Duh-doyz, not Dee-too) because he is the highest profile rapper-type and he has gone (as far as I can make out from articles in Portuguese) from being more of an alt-guy member of Planet Hemp (translation) to becoming pretty much THE Brazilian Rapper. One of the things that interests me about this (since I dont have much interest in rap to start with) is the way his solo career has been at least partly about his role as a rapper in the land of samba. It's also interesting to note that he has become spectacularly commercial, too, and has recently launched his own line of rapper clothing.
To be continued, once I sort out a few more thoughts. There is more about baile funk coming, plus the inevitable appearance of Marisa Monte.
Without going into a huge digression on Brazilian music, which would only likely show how much I don't know, one of the interesting trends since the early sixties has been the ways that Brazilian musicians incorporate elements of popular American music into the Brazilian mix (and it is a huge and varied swamp of influences to begin with). One of the earliest fruits of this attempt to mix it all together was Tropicalia in the 1960s, which created a standard of the way to integrate non-Brazilian music into Brazilian practice and create something that is very new and still, very very Brazilian.
One of the curious things to me is the way that national identity is tied up in the musical forms, especially once foreign influences are incorporated into existing practices. There is this gray area where something that is not-Brazilian becomes Brazilian, and that interests me. I posted a couple of weeks back about Os Tribalistas, whose music was on that cusp of Brazilian/not-Brazilian and created some controversy as a result, particularly because our three heroes (Arnaldo, Carlinhos e Zé) made a very conscious bid at associating their work with that of the earlier Tropicalia (if only by rejecting its political stance).
This is too much detail, isn't it?
Look at it this way -- Brazilian music spends at lot of time talking to itself about itself and about other music from around the world, particularly the giant American corporate musical behemoth. This is tied to several streams of Brazilian culture, as far as I can tell - one is the amazingly deep and brilliant role that music and dance have played and still play in creating Brazil-ness. Another is the impact that consumer culture has had on the highly-stratified, mostly-urban society in Brazil (wealth is so unequally distributed it makes the baby Jesus weep - I'll pummel you with those deatils another time). A third stream is the way that the Portuguese language seems to isolate the music from so much of the rest of the world, at least in terms of accessibility of the meaning of the lyrics. I have really gotten a clear look recently about the way the voice simply becomes another instrument when the language it is singing in makes no sense to me at all (or only little bits of sense). On top of that, as I learn the language, I see that Portuguese is a wonderfully punny language, full of interesting sound-alikes, and with many shortcuts that allow meaning to be communicated in little bursts and bright images. This makes it perfect for rap in ways that English never has been (at least in my opinion).
So rap and hip-hop are part of this recent musical conversation in Brazil. As in the US (the musical history I am most familiar with), there are mainstream hip-hop artists (arguably completely recuperated into the whole machine of culture manufacturing) and then there are guerilla artists.
The mainstream hip-hop guy I have been sort of paying attention to is called Marcelo D2 (Duh-doyz, not Dee-too) because he is the highest profile rapper-type and he has gone (as far as I can make out from articles in Portuguese) from being more of an alt-guy member of Planet Hemp (translation) to becoming pretty much THE Brazilian Rapper. One of the things that interests me about this (since I dont have much interest in rap to start with) is the way his solo career has been at least partly about his role as a rapper in the land of samba. It's also interesting to note that he has become spectacularly commercial, too, and has recently launched his own line of rapper clothing.
To be continued, once I sort out a few more thoughts. There is more about baile funk coming, plus the inevitable appearance of Marisa Monte.