City of Funk: Baile Carioca Style

This is Diplo. A.K.A Wesley Pent of M.I.A. fame, who normally spins dubtracks to bring ya into da riddim. He will be performing at Neumo's tomorrow night and it is sure to be a great show. Rumor has it that he is going to be performing with a live Brazilian band. Not just any type of band, a funk band; and not just any kind of funk, but Cariocas Funk (funk from Rio de Janeiro). This is a brazilian inspired funk which was noticeably featured in a lodge fave: City of God. The development of this has come into what is now known in english as Baile Funk. Literally, this means Funk Ball, but more aptly Funk Party. Unfortunately, apart from James Brown and Curtis Mayfield beats the new millenium has brought in some Miami Bass hits.

Pitchfork Media interviewed Diplo about Caricoas Funk and gave a little feedback on the party and social culture of Rio. Diplo goes, "...I went there and learned a lot about it. I have more respect for it, and I see it on the verge of becoming something really big. It makes me a little worried because on this I loved about it was that it was undiluted and really raw. The more exposure it gets, the more its's gonna become a little more (diluted). ~~ The parties are raw. Kids make money by just going party to party and performing all night. There's like 500 parties a week. Rio's what, 13 million, and it seem like half of them live in a favela. On top of that, that's what you do, that's all you have." Sad but true, I love my underground beats and rare beef, as soon as executives take wind of this the death knell may end up being a sample on a Justin Timberlake album. There are still some aspects to Baile parties that will never catch on in America that Tyler Durden would be proud of.

The parties are fight clubs on the side: "They're in basketball gyms, but I can't imagine anyone playing basketball in them. They're for parties. I think five years ago there were a lot of articles written about it because of the fights and the guns and things, but every party I've been to was really fun. The [kids] might get frisked or checked before they get in, but the parties are generally really safe and its just kids having fun. It's real sexual, though, the dancing.
Everything about it is super-intense. If you have to travel like 30 minutes to a favela on the outskirts of the city, on the way back you'll be stopped by like three or four police roadblocks with machine guns and they'll make you get out of your car. Just to get into a favela, you've gotta turn your headlights off and the lights in your car on-- you wanna make sure that the people in the favela know that you're somebody cool and not an undercover cop or in a rival gang so they don't snipe you right off the bat. I thought it was a normal custom and then after a couple of times I was like what, this is crazy-- I realized I'm lucky that I haven't been shot."

The further combination of funk and fight has been integrated into the social culture in more organized ways: Funk balls have been notorious for their blatant sexuality and violence. The funqueiros ("funkers", or patrons of the clubs) sometimes become violent, and deaths are not uncommon. Certain clubs have been described as having blood-smeared walls and having trampled persons lying on the floor. Some DJs have been known to incite the crowd to fight with their selection of music. During the late 1990s, a phenomenon called the "corridor", where two rival gangs would line up on opposite sides and fight in the corridor of space between them. Funkers will drag a rival to the other side, or some will willingly cross over to the other side, and they will fight bareknuckles. The recent decline of violence at funk balls has allowed them to become better accepted. I don't think breakdancing is safe in Brazil.

So, if a simple white kid from Pennsylvania can get in the groove, i bet that most of the lodge can too. Besides, who wants to rumble with drunk butchies coming out of the Wild Rose at 2 a.m.; I sure don't. Check out the show if you can or sample up on some M.I.A/DIPLO stuff.