The Power to Name and Other Dilemmas Presented by Brazilian Funk Subgenres

Liv Sovik

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

Brian D’Aquino

Goldsmiths University of London (United Kingdom)

<https://dx.doi.org/10.12801/1947-5403.2022.14.01.10>

Introduction

Playing recorded music through a purposedly assembled or custom-built
mobile sound system, often in the open air, is a consolidated practice
and a distinctive feature of popular culture in many countries across
the Global South and beyond. Launched in 2021, Sonic Street Technologies
(SST) is a European Research Council-funded research project aiming to
document, map out and compare these subaltern and street-based uses of
sound technologies.

Jamaican sound systems, Colombian picos, Brazilian
radiolas and Mexican sonidos are examples of highly
sophisticated SST. They are designed to enhance the sonic features of
one or more specific music genre and cater for a certain crowd. The
large music-fueled street gatherings are often at the beating heart of
local and diasporic communities who creatively resist exploitation and
marginalization through music and dance. Because of their demographics,
they are often seen as suspect by the authorities. Despite persistent
middle class disdain and police repression, SST are the engine for
several decades of popular experimentation with music, sound, and
technology. They not only succeed in providing affordable entertainment,
but kick-start the informal economy and nurture skills and talents among
disadvantaged sectors of society.

In researching the knowledge and ways-of-knowing (Henriques
2011) of sonic street technologies, the project aims to investigate some
of the ways technology can be repurposed to suit specific social
needs—sometimes rather different from those intended by the original
designers or manufacturers. As part of the research team, we are
committed to working in close cooperation with practitioners and local
researchers in a non-extractive fashion. Sharing our findings, seeking
out and supporting local strengths, and using our institutional base to
build recognition from outside the scene are some of the strategies we
employ to add value to the SST scenes as well as the research entities
already active in the field.

Mapping Sonic Street Technologies

One of the project’s main goals and commitments is to produce an
online map of functioning sound systems and other SST around the world.
Launched in October 2022 and currently in progress, the Sonic Map aims to
consolidate the idea of SST as a grassroots technological continuum able
to account for a rich and varied field. To populate the map, a survey
form aimed at SST owners and practitioners has been drafted. The form
asks for information about each particular sound system (or
sonido, or radiola, etc.): the technology
employed, the music played, the crew demographics, and so on. Delivering
the questionnaire to the appropriate stakeholders is a job in itself. To
do this we rely on a tentacular network of researchers, promoters and
music connoisseurs active in the different scenes.

Designing the questionnaire has been quite a laborious process. We
wanted to respect the culture’s natural inclination towards secrecy and
protect sensitive data, ask for detail without being intrusive, all of
which posed difficult problems. Even more complicated has been making
sure that the survey form can work across different environments and
cultures, and especially that the data collected will make sense and
allow comparison on a global scale. To do so, the survey had to achieve
a certain degree of standardization. This required a process of
linguistic and cultural translation that inevitably involves the
power/knowledge nexus of any research project, but especially those
dealing with popular music and culture. 

The section of the questionnaire related to music genres was one of
the most challenging to draft. The focus of our research is on the
technology rather than the music and the project builds on the idea that
sound engineers from different scenes might have more in common than DJs
or selectors, precisely because technology provides a common ground
between very different music cultures. But from an insider’s perspective
music is undoubtedly the force that brings a community together, the
reason behind technological experimentation, and ultimately what people
identify with. In short: without the love of music there would be no
sound systems playing on the street. So, the survey design could not
take the music lightly.

The Problems of Calling Musics by their Names

Drafting a classification of music genres that can be recognised
within different SST scenes around the globe shows up the theoretical
and political implications of the survey tool. As researchers, we
conceived the Sonic Map as one way to try to facilitate dialogue between
sound practitioners and music lovers that we tend to consider distant
relatives—while those involved may never have heard of their “extended
family” and we do not always have precise knowledge about what they call
the music they play or listen to. As we take decisions on the categories
to be used in the survey, we find ourselves with having to use names, a
knowledge/power game that requires not only acknowledgement of sources
and other appropriate strategies of self-mitigation.

A first aspect to be considered in these decisions is the
geographical and temporal limits of cultural and linguistic codes. Music
is a fluid entity in constant mutation and migration, and a genre may
change name over time, be marketed under different labels in different
countries, or be identified according to its different—culturally
perceived—features. A good example of this is the nuances of Jamaican
dancehall music terminology. By working with researcher and
practitioners in the field we found out that the term “bashment”, very
common, especially in the US and the UK, to describe the “harder” style
of 2000s dancehall is barely acknowledged in Jamaica at all, while the
term “ragamuffin”, widely used outside of Jamaica to refer to late 1980s
and early 1990s dancehall, today may sound derogatory to a Jamaican
connoisseur.

Another issue has to do with the classifications employed by the
global music industry and the way they are appropriated, translated and
challenged out on the streets. Grammy-influenced macro labels such as
“Latin” or “World” music are often contested and make very little sense
in the Global South, where the music is actually produced and initially
consumed and called by other names. On the other hand, ultra-specific,
short-lived categories can be understood as mere marketing and rejected
out of hand. This was the case a few years ago with Rihanna’s “Work”,
based on a well-known dancehall sample but labelled as “tropical house”,
causing outrage in Jamaica (see Campbell 2016). Even categories
apparently more “neutral” such as “electronic” or “rap” can be shaky. A
lot of the music of the African diaspora currently flooding both the
streets and the charts worldwide could easily fall into either category.
But it is called Afrobeats instead, a name created in the UK and for
some time also quite contested (see Akinsete 2019). Meanwhile, the
algorithm-driven classification of music by “mood” and the proliferation
of national, regional or city-based subgenres used by streaming
platforms will increasingly complicate the problem of classification by
genre in the future.

Finally, common to all such major categories of music is the
necessary “ear” that distinguishes, say, between norteña,
peñonera and sonidera as different styles of cumbia
that are played in Mexico, distinctions that may be obvious to the ear,
but are difficult to describe in words, much less generally
recognized—which is important for the purposes of the Sonic Map. This is
especially problematic for a questionnaire aimed at SST practitioners
who do not usually produce the music but rather play it, or re-produce
it, sometimes decades after and thousands of miles away from the time
and place in which the music was originally created. How, then, to make
a survey questionnaire that, on the one hand, is sufficiently granular
to allow comparison between different SST, and at the same time does
not increase the number of subgenres to the point that there are so many
separate grains that they cannot be gathered together? In short: which
strategies to employ to make sure that the sonic map both reflects the
local communities of practitioners and music lovers and is useful as a
globalized reading of many local scenes by them and by academic
researchers, which are also the project’s target audience?

Classifying the Subgenres of Brazilian Funk


The project experimented with thinking about all of these tensions
when it came to the group of musical styles classified as “Brazilian
funk”, internationally known too as “funk favela”, and referred to as
“funk carioca” in Brazil, or simply “funk”. Brazilian funk is a
genre-bending phenomenon from the beginning. One of its first academic
chroniclers, anthropologist Hermano Vianna (1988), traces its
development from the Black music balls that started in the early to mid
1970s (partly at the initiative of Black cultural associations), playing
all kinds of US American music and slowly narrowing to emphasise soul.
This phase ended when the idea of five thousand stylish Black young
people getting together in the Canecão concert venue, in the heart of
the predominantly white and middle class southern zone of Rio de
Janeiro, spooked the authorities. In 1976, organizers and musicians were
accused of subversive activities, while the Canecão preferred to hold
the MPB (música popular brasileira) concerts for which it
became known for forty years. Vianna uses “baile funk” to refer
to the balls at the Canecão, as well as those that arose in the slum
neighbourhoods and favelas of Rio de Janeiro and around the country.



He also recounts how soul gave way to rap, which began to share the
stage with funk by the mid 1980s. The distinction between funk and rap
is a delicate one. Funk carioca is less influenced by US funk than by
the Miami bass variant of rap, from which it adopted electronic beats
and sexually explicit lyrics. While rap artists like Edi Rock and Mano
Brown of Racionais MCs reaffirm their common cultural origins and social
nexus, rap has mostly moved elsewhere. Balls are now not only
known as baile funk, as in the 1980s, but effectively
play funk rhythms measured in BPMs and identified by name (like Voltmix,
Tamborzão, Beatbox).[1] Meanwhile funk lyrics continue to
challenge bourgeois mores in other ways than “excessive” sex.



Today, Brazilian funk is perhaps the most influential contemporary
music genre in the country, vital in the favelas but sung and danced to
at middle class parties, and producing a seemingly endless stream of
subgenres. The problem for the questionnaire and the map was apparently
technical: how to name these many subgenres of Brazilian funk in a way
that was sufficiently fine-grained to be used in future research? What
happens if five years from now someone wants to know “what was really
played” in a specific scene? How does one translate very local and
intimate understanding of music in terms that can speak to completely
different geographical, cultural and social environments?



As the questionnaire evolved, Brian D’Aquino drew up an initial list
of nine subcategories of Brazilian funk including brega (or kitsch) funk, which
started in Recife and is oriented to dance.





A Spotify Video on the Emergence of Brega Funk in Recife, in the
Northeast of Brazil (Spotify Brazil 2019)


Funk carioca, from Rio de Janeiro,
relatively well known abroad and indebted to Miami bass.





A selection of Funk Carioca and
“Funkified” International Tunes (PL Sheik 2022)


Selection of the Most Played on TikTok 2022 and in Rio de Janeiro
(MNR YG 2022)

Tati Quebra Barraco, an early
female funk star, famously received funding from the Ministry of Culture
to participate in a feminist festival in Germany in 2004. Her hit
“Sou Feia Mas Tô Na Moda” [I’m ugly but trendy] became the title
of a documentary by Denise Garcia on
women funk stars, launched in 2005.


Sou Feia Mas tô na Moda (Junior
Lopes 2022)


Then there is funk melody, with a light electronic beat
and a pop sound; funk paulista, from Sao Paulo; funk ostentação, which is sometimes
compared to gangsta rap and (see below) may be the same as funk
paulista.





A Selection of Funk Ostentação Tracks (VS Fest Music 2022)




“Funk o$tentação” – Renato Barreiros and Konrad Dantas, Producer
KondZilla (2022)


Proibidão, which focuses on
the violent side of favelas, exalting—at least apparently—drug
traffickers and organized crime. Here is a sample, unfortunately very
dependent on understanding the words.





Selection Proibidões of the Best From 2022 (Victor Músicas 2021)


Rasteirinha, funk played at
less than 100 bpm, with samba, reggaeton and other influences; rave
funk, more electronic; and pagofunk, which combines funk
with pagode, the music played
at “backyard” samba parties.





Selection of Pagofunk Tracks Most Played in 2022 (includes some
tracks that are not pagofunk) (Onda Dos Bailes 2022)


Checking these categories to make sure they cover the Brazilian funk
scene meant consulting scholar-connoisseurs of funk who might answer
such a query on a national scale. A first question by Liv Sovik on the
listserv of the Brazilian Association of Ethnomusicology (ABET) yielded
a reply from Michel Brasil, a scholar of rap from Belo Horizonte. He
suggested, along with melody, ostentação and proibidão, already included in the
nine suggested categories, those of consciente, montagem, and aquecimento (warm-up), while
deferring to funk researcher Carlos Palombini, of the Universidade
Federal de Minas Gerais.



While waiting for further responses, Liv also consulted Leonardo
Moraes Batista, of the Quilombo do Pensamento Negro at Universidade
Federal do Rio de Janeiro, who backed up eight of the nine initial
categories, though he said that funk
paulista and ostentação
are the same thing and added funk
pop (think: Anitta), trap funk and funk putaria (literally, indecent
funk). In sum, he fused two of the proposed categories, endorsed six of
the remaining ones, excluded rave funk and added pop, trap and putaria as subgenres of Brazilian
funk. Here are samples of the funk pop and trap
subgenres.





Gloria Groove (featuring Iza) – “YoYo” (2019)




MC Hariel, MC Kevin, MC Pedrinho, MC Ryan SP, MC Brinquedo, Salvador,
MC IG – “É o trap, é o funk 1.0” (Ryan Elenco do Funk 2019)


When Carlos Palombini weighed in, he referred to an article in which
he and co-author Dennis Novaes discuss proibidões and quote MCs as saying
are more like common journalism than sensationalism. They introduce the
article as follows:




The proibidão is a subgenre
of carioca funk music, together with consciente, putaria, montagem,
melody and ostentação.
These terms refer mainly to themes: proibidão to “life in crime”, putaria to erotic prowess, melody to romance, ostentação to the praise of
possessions. But they also refer to techniques: montagem to the repetition of vocal
fragments of different origins; and to standpoints: funk consciente adopts explicitly
critical, pedagogical or moralizing perspectives. To the six subgenres,
one could add: gospel funk, named for its theme; comedy funk, neurotic
funk and pop-funk, each named for their ethos (Novaes and Palombini
2019: 287-307).




These categories are complicated because music can crosscut
categories of theme, technique, ethos and standpoint: “When the
fragments come from proibidões, is it montagem or proibidão?” the authors ask. The
subgenres proibidão and consciente can be understood as
expressing different positionalities on involvement with violence;
classification of a given piece of music as one or the other depends in
part on how it is performed and by whom. On the other hand, in the 1990s
wearing given designer brands indicated affiliation to different gangs
in favelas, so what is basically funk
ostentação has the connotations of a proibidão. One might add to Novaes
and Palombini’s list of complications the fact that subgenres emerge,
reach a certain ascendancy but can drift off the scene, remaining
associated to a certain historical moment without creating new
memories.


What Is to Be Done?

Thinking through the subgenres of Brazilian funk made clear the
difficulties of trying to serve the interests of different audiences
while operating on both local and global scales. It also provided a
chance to reflect once more on the meaning of doing “global” research on
popular culture, because a global perspective is most evidently the one
presumed by the music industry—and parts of academia. These actors
clearly tend to see—or, in this case, listen to—the world from the
Global North, while insisting on their perspective being neutral.
Through their eyes and ears the West thus reaffirms itself as the
“universal measure of mankind”, as Iain Chambers (forthcoming) aptly
puts it. Echoing this perspective is a risk inherent to any research
that aims to classify, in order to analyse, street music and culture all
over the world. Nurturing extended research networks that include both
practitioners and researchers can be one way to minimize this risk.

This exploration of Brazilian funk nomenclature thus comes full
circle to the problem that any choice implies for an international
project: reinforcing a single subject position—and the authority of the
researcher over the researched—by choosing a set of subgenres that not
everyone will agree with, or including so many lesser categories that
they become unintelligible. The decision, now informed by the
considerations of different authors and actors, was to come full circle
and use only the broader category of “Brazilian funk” which is
understandable to everyone. Likewise cumbia, champeta and dancehall will
just be listed as broad categories on the surveys, whilst subgenres are
to be further investigated in the qualitative research.

An earlier version of this article was published in the Blog
section of the Sonic Street Technologies website: https://sonic-street-technologies.com.

Author Biographies

Liv Sovik is Researcher and Research Coordinator for Brazil of the
ERC-funded Sonic Street Technologies. She is a professor of the School
of Communication of Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, author of
Aqui ninguém é branco (2009) and Tropicália Rex
(2018), and editor of Stuart Hall’s Da diaspora: Identidades e
mediações culturais (2003). Since her PhD thesis (1994), she has
worked with the Brazilian popular music tradition as a field in which
imaginaries are developed and evidenced.

Brian D’Aquino holds a PhD in International Studies from L’Orientale
University of Naples and is currently a Senior Research Assistant to the
ERC-funded Sonic Street Technologies project at Goldsmiths, University
of London. He is the author of Black
Noise. Tecnologie della Diaspora Sonora (Meltemi, 2021) and a
founding member of the research group Sound System Outernational. He has
been running the Bababoom Hi Fi sound system and released vinyl records
under the Bababoom Hi Fi imprint since 2004.

References

Akinsete, Korete. 2019 “Call Us by Our Name: Stop Using ‘Afrobeats’”.
Op-ed, OkayAfrica digital platform, 2 April. Available at: https://www.okayafrica.com/afrobeats-genre-name-stop-op-ed/
(accessed 12 October 2022).

Cáceres, Guillermo, Lucas Ferrari and Carlos Palombini. 2014. “A era
Lula/Tamborzão: política e sonoridade. Revista do Instituto de
Estudos Brasileiros 58: 157-207.

Campbell, Curtis. 2016 “Give Dancehall Its Due – Richie Stephens,
Lisa Hanna”. The Gleaner, 12 February. Available at: https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20160214/give-dancehall-its-due-richie-stephens-lisa-hanna
(accessed 12 October 2022).

Chambers, Iain. Forthcoming. “Learning from the Sea: Migration and
Maritime Archives.” In Fabris, Angela, Göschl, Albert and Schneider,
Steffen, Sea of Literatures: Towards a Theory of Mediterranean
Literature, De Gruyter (pre-print available at http://www.peopleinmotion-costaction.org/2021/02/24/2702/
(accessed 13 October 2022).

Henriques, Julian. 2011. Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems,
Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing. Bloomsbury Publishing
USA.

Novaes, Dennis and Carlos Palombini. 2019. “O labirinto e o caos:
narrativas proibidas e sobrevivências num subgenera do funk carioca”. In
Nó em pingo d’água:
sobrevivência, cultura e linguagem, ed. Adriana Carvalho Lopes,
Adriana Facina and Daniel N. Silva, 287-307. Belo Horizonte:
Mórula/Insular.

Palombini. Carlos. 2009. “Soul brasileiro e funk carioca”.
Opus, Goiânia 15(1): 37-61, June 2009.

Sovik, Liv. 2018. “O rap desorganiza o carnival”. In Tropicália
Rex, 103-27. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad.

Vianna, Hermano. 1988. O mundo funk carioca. Rio de Janeiro:
Zahar.

Filmography

Gloria Groove. “Gloria Groove - YoYo (feat. IZA)”. YouTube, 3:11.
Uploaded on 13 June 2019.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKfMYbbWEJY>
(accessed 19 October 2022).

Junior Lopes. “Tati Quebra Barraco - Sou Feia Mas Tô Na Moda”.
YouTube, 3:05. Uploaded on 21 March 2012.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVNjQ8F-CAA>
(accessed 19 October 2022).

Kondzilla. “Funk Ostentação Antigo”. YouTube, 1:31:38. Uploaded on 4
May 2020.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M3CRYQJMfM>
(accessed 19 October 2022).

MNR YG. “Sequência Das Mais Tocadas No Tiktok 2022 Vs Os Funks Mais
Tocados No Rj [ Funk Carioca ] @Pl-1”. YouTube, 13:04. Uploaded on 17
April 2022.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_ZqplAHSuA>
(accessed 19 October 2022).

Onda Dos Bailes. “Pagofunk 2022 - Seleção Das Mais Tocadas (Tik
Tok)”. YouTube, 59:41. Uploaded on 9 April 2022.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh-eloMKFFY>
(accessed 19 October 2022).

PL Sheik. “15 Minutinhos De Funk Carioca X Musicas Internacionais
Versão Funk Rj 🇧🇷🔥💣 Brazilian Funk”. YouTube, 14:51. Uploaded on 5
February 2022.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBrt4Eb4iEs>
(accessed 19 October 2022).

Ryan Elenco do Funk. “É O Trap, É O Funk 1.0 - MC Hariel, MC Kevin,
MC Pedrinho, MC Ryan SP, MC Brinquedo, Salvador, MC IG”. YouTube, 41:07.
Uploaded on 13 June 2019.
<https://www.youtube.com/embed/X11iXqBwL5c>
(accessed 19 October 2022).

Spotify Brasil. “O Brega Funk Vai Dominar O Mundo”. YouTube, 18:51.
Uploaded on 12 November 2019.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qLr-qILt1k>
(accessed 19 October 2022).

Victor Músicas. “Funk Proibidão Com Grave 2022 - Funk 2022 (Set Funk
Atualizado 2022) Seleção Dos Melhores Funk 2022”. YouTube, 31:00.
Uploaded on 31 July 2021.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6QE2GkpIhs>
(accessed 19 October 2022).

VS Fest Music. “Funk Ostentação Antigo”. YouTube, 1:31:38. Uploaded
on 4 May 2020.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVX-HZKwf08>
(accessed 19 October 2022).

Notes


[1] See Palombini
(2009), Cáceres, Ferrari and Palombini (2014) and the introductory pages
of Sovik (2018).