Leks and Popozudas: How Hip-Hop Influences Black Subjectivities at the Carioca Funk

Abstract: The main purpose is to examine how the changing patterns of American hip-hop culture influence the carioca funk. I argue that the international influence of the changing patterns of hip-hop culture in America affected the engagement of bodies, dance, clothing and music in the representation of the “funkeiro”. It did so by over-sexualizing bodies and dances, valuing specific goods and behaviors in the light of its strengthened focus in consumption and incorporating more technology in the production of songs. However, carioca funk culture did not simply reproduce those elements: it preserved elements of Brazilian popular culture in the desire constructed on the black Latin masculine and feminine bodies and the use of elements of samba, pagode and other rhythms of Brazilian culture in dance and music.

Keywords: carioca funk; hip-hop; Brazilian culture; Brazilian music

The Illuminist subject had a totally centered and unified identity and capacities of reason, conscience and action. With the growing complexity of the modern world, the sociological subject knew that his inner part was not autonomous or self-sufficient, but was formed in interactions with other people. They mediated the values, sense and symbols of the worlds where he lived. This subject was formed and transformed by the continuous dialogue with other cultural worlds and the identities those worlds afforded. Identity, thus, filled in the space between the personal and the public worlds and stabilized the subject and the cultural worlds where he lived. However, this idea of identity is changing in the contemporary world. The post-modern subject became fragmented, composed by multiple identities that were sometimes contradictory. The process of defining cultural identities is more complicated and complex, in a way that subjects do not have stable, essential or permanent identities, which are continuously fragmented and ruptured. The discontinuities and dislocations in a globalized world developed through different divisions, and multiple identities were articulated under certain circumstances (Hall, 1997, p.10-23). It is possible to observe this process when some cultural expressions such as the carioca funk are examined. As I argue in this article, American hip hop culture influenced dance, clothing and music in the carioca funk, especially by over-sexualizing them, valuing goods and behaviors with the emphasis on consumption and incorporating more technology in the making of the songs. Nevertheless, elements of Brazilian popular culture were maintained and combined, such as the desire constructed on the black Latin masculine and feminine bodies and the use of rhythms of Brazilian culture.

In Latin America, the creation of new identities occurred in a particular way. In the words of Canclini (1997, p.24), we are dealing with a continent where modern advances in terms of solid industrialization or sociopolitical organization based in formal or material rationality have not been experienced by everyone in every society. The intercultural hybridization is stimulated by globalization and the interaction among local, national and transnational webs, where culture and power articulate and form multiple identities. Canclini (1997) argues that the aesthetics of artistic expression is conceived as a result of this hybridization, with the maintenance of pre-modern local characteristics of Latin American societies simultaneously with the introduction of new technologies in the urban scenario, for example. Though the process of late modernization may have lowered the role of the tradition, it has not eliminated this role totally. Arts, communication and history merged in the contemporary world with new technologies, and this fusion can be seen in multiple aspects of contemporary Latin American culture. The media and mass cultural industry had an important role in transmitting massive messages and weakening micro-social urban structures, but also affording cultural intersections among different aesthetics in the composition of new forms of art, including music. Nevertheless, those cultural transformations in the symbolic production and circulation are articulated not only by mass communication. The development of urban ideologies constitutes transformations with the interlocking of multiple forces and crises. In this process, as Canclini (1997, p.18-19) indicates, socio-cultural crossings between tradition and modernity, the national and the international, the local and the global, develop instead of the substitution of the tradition and the local by a dominating force. The transformation of symbolic markets brings different temporalities and aesthetics together, in a way that post-modernity is not a specific moment in time or a tendency that would replace the pre-modern or the modern world, but a perspective to understand how multiple logics coexist and question the links the modern world developed with traditions it wanted to preserve or eliminate in order to constitute itself the way it is (Canclini, 1997, p.28). According to Ipsen (2004), in the process of hybridization, the various codes available from various resources are picked up, recombined and processed. Integration, the diffusion of codes in favor of the new whole, is what is at the core of hybridity. In order to show how society suffered that process, it is important to give some specific examples as to how hybridization is transforming Latin America. The interfaces with different societies are many and go beyond the arts, such as personal exchange via migration, trade and developmental aid. In the process of interfacing, communities will perceive new concepts as foreign first. As Ipsen (2004) argues, as soon as old and new concepts are established simultaneously, heterogeneity is in effect. In the course of time, the community will become accustomed to the new concepts. It may adopt these and hence undergo a change towards hybridization. The members of the community will perceive their hybrid as being homogeneous or “pure”. It can be seen in the definition of Latin American contemporary economics, which combined elements of Anglo-Saxon neoliberal economics (free markets and trade, reduction of protectionist practices) and elements of state management, typical of traditional Latin American developmental models.

Cultural productions such as carioca funk are phenomena that can be framed in practices of knowledge and communication; therefore, to interpret these phenomena is to understand the complex relations between them and their observers and previous experiences, values and traditions (Bleiker, 2009, p.2-13). According to Sansone (1998, p.219-221), the carioca funk culture is a good example of how local young people reinterpret icons associated to global styles, such as hip-hop, in different structural contexts of consumption. The relations among music, culture and identity are not static. Afro-American music develops not only as reminiscent from African musical culture, but is also related to European and American pop culture and reinterprets instruments, dance moves, singing styles and lyrics. As Dayrell (2002) argues, the diffusion of funk, soul and hip-hop in Brazil started in the 1970s through the so called “black balls” in the periphery of the greatest urban centers, where thousands of young people – mostly black and poor – used to get together in the weekends to sing and dance to the likes of James Brown and Marvin Gaye. The beats and the electronic devices have been present since the beginning of this more democratic music style, because it required neither the knowledge of complex musical techniques and abilities to which young people in the periphery did not have much access nor higher costs with organization of the places for public events (Dayrell, 2002).

I conceive that aesthetic manifestations such as music, clothing, dancing and lyrics are in constant dialogue and are inserted in the context of their production to make the understanding of their meanings possible. The carioca funk is not understood as an independent phenomenon, but is defined by its position in a relational system with other elements of the social context, such as other musical cultures in Rio de Janeiro and in Brazil (Mizrahi, 2007). The main purpose of the article is to examine how the changing patterns of American hip-hop culture influence the carioca funk. I argue that the international influence of the changing patterns of American hip-hop culture affected the engagement of bodies, dance, clothing and music in the representation of the “funkeiro”. It did by over-sexualizing bodies and dances, valuing specific goods and behaviors in the light of its strengthened focus in consumption and incorporating more technology in the production of songs. However, I argue that carioca funk culture did not simply reproduce those elements: it preserved elements of Brazilian popular culture in the desire constructed on the black Latin masculine and feminine bodies and the use of elements of samba, pagode and other rhythms of Brazilian culture in dance and music. First, I will examine the changing patterns of hip-hop culture and its emergence in new territories such as Rio de Janeiro. Then I will debate how black subjectivities – understood as the heterogeneity of representations and cultural productions of black people which can constitute the hybrids – are articulated at the carioca funk. Finally, I will investigate the reinvention of carioca funk and how it was influenced by the changes in hip-hop culture.

The changing patterns of hip-hop

In the United States, hip-hop has encompassed music, dance, verbal lyricism and fashion and undergone profound transformations since then, having turned into a multimillionaire universal industry until today. Many singers, producers, songwriters, dancers and fashion designers of hip-hop culture lost the critical perspective present in the beginning of the cultural movement and developed a new type of production where capitalist consumption is seen as a way of social inclusion and eroticism became more explicit in lyrics and dance moves, as well as in the style of clothes. The proposal of many hip-hop artists nowadays seems not to be to challenge the system, but to adapt and survive the existing “rules of the game” and showing success in a system where they used to be marginalized. The growing commercial viability of hip-hop, according to Ralph (2009, p.143-144), is based primarily on the deployment of the personal history of triumph of redeemed hip-hop singers adapted to the marketplace needs, which secures sales from the audience that shares similar challenges that those singers had in the past – poverty or a life in criminality, for example – and not necessarily the close ties they have to the wealthy elites. At the same time, hip-hop’s growing emphasis on sexual desire make many of its male artists figure women as objects for sexual satisfaction and write songs about the satisfaction of explicit sexual desire and, not rarely, encouraging sexual abuse or violence against women (Ralph, 2009, p.143-144).

It is important to highlight some specific changes hip hop suffered through time. According to Wilson (2011), in the 1980s and early 1990s, hip hop brought an obvious contribution to American culture and society as a whole when it accurately diagnosed an era of lopsided leadership and shortsighted public policies, as it is possible to identify in the Furious Five's "The Message" in 1982 or Tupac Shakur's "Changes" in 1992. Through complex storytelling, it stimulated its audience to think critically on joblessness, underfunded public schools, lack of health care, gang violence and drug infestations. However, in the process of enlargement of hip-hop’s commercial viability in the late 1990s and the 2000s, an ethical dilemma steeped in the widespread public perception that hip-hop was nothing more than a celebration of violence, misogyny and excessive materialism. It can be argued that the physical and social violence at the heart of so much hip-hop storytelling was even therapeutic, because it could be characterized as a process of emotional and social management by which young people manage the reality of violence by telling their story. Nevertheless, the overabundance of songs about killing and torture, such as Lil Wayne’s “Ain’t that a bitch” – "Aim the shotgun at ya frame and bust boy/Brain and guts leak in the drain and such pour/ Plain yuk at a fuck boy" –, can encourage and support violence and undercut the communities' antiviolent efforts (Wilson, 2011). Regarding sex, the excess of sensual images of women in videos participate in stereotypical images, which on the surface seem celebratory, but objectify women. Misogyny can be identified in videos such as Kanye West’s “Monster”, which depicts scantily clad dead women hanging from ceilings and shows West holding a woman's severed head and rearranging the bodies of two dead models in a bed. Although it lost much of its critical potential, as Perry (2008, p.635-636) indicates, hip-hop has preserved the ability to convey the blackness of aesthetic forms and emotive power.

Black subjectivities at the carioca funk

When hip-hop influences emerge in new territories such as Rio de Janeiro, it is possible to identify the development of a complex sociocultural process. Miami Bass had a very strong influence in the first years of the carioca funk. It is a sub-genre of hip-hop that became very popular in the 1980s and is derived from the electro-funk sound, pioneered by Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force.  Its main elements are the use of the Roland TR-808, the raised dance tempos and the more sexually explicit lyrical content. With its de-territorialization, Miami Bass was extracted from its original sociocultural and political context and then was re-territorialized into a new society – in this case, the “favelas” (shanty towns) in Rio de Janeiro. A multiplicity of cultural interactions took place right after that in a mediation phase. The influences of American hip-hop interacted with local Brazilian and carioca musical forms such as samba, pagode, samba rock and Brazilian pop-rock through media and cultural industry – records, CDs, videoclips –, and new cultural forms were produced. Cultural hybrids were created, such as carioca funk, which included local sound characteristics – especially samba –, native ways of speaking and slang words and references to local people, institutions and places (Androutsopoulos & Scholz, 2003, p.467-468), such as cities, boroughs and favelas of the state of Rio de Janeiro in Claudinho & Buchecha’s “Nosso Sonho” (“Our Dream”):

When the foreign elements take form of local features, the indigenized cultural result is integrated into the aesthetics of the host society, is appropriated as a native way of communication and is not conceived as foreign anymore. This is neither a rejection nor an imitation of the foreign model – in this case, American hip-hop –, but a creative re-imagination of it interacting with local elements (Androutsopoulos & Scholz, 2003, p.467-468). In this sense, the multiple versions of “black music” such as the carioca funk cannot be seen separately from the process of globalization of Western urban culture and public ways of experiencing entertainment, especially because Rio de Janeiro has a central position in irradiating those styles for other places in Brazil. It is in the middle of the international flux of black cultures because of its size, the proximity to other political and economic centers in Brazil and the direct contact with musical production and commercialization centers in the United States and Europe. In the “black Atlantic” (Sansone, 1998, p.237), juvenile subcultures and styles do not develop in a single and common way and not only reproduce the type of music produced in the United States or Europe. The dialogue with the foreign culture does not imply automatic absorption of its original meaning. In spite of the globalization of juvenile culture and the consumption of popular music, a series of local aspects determined by the specific cultural history, musical traditions – such as samba, pagode and Brazilian pop-rock – and structural context remain in the carioca funk and intertwine with American juvenile culture, specially the black culture of hip-hop developed in New York and Los Angeles. Furthermore, the notion of “black music” also reflects the local system of racial relations, demography and musical tradition (Sansone, 1998, p.219-221, 235). That is why the meaning of “black culture” presented in the carioca funk culture is not a synonym for the Anglophone “black culture”. DJ Marlboro was one of the creators of carioca funk in the late 1970s. He came from a poor family of Rio de Janeiro’s borough of Meier and played in distant shanty towns in the beginning of his career. He started blending elements of Miami Bass and the sounds of Rio de Janeiro in the creation of carioca funk. He sees the rhythm as a changing fusion of hip-hop, electro and Brazilian popular music and the culture developed around it as a way to aggregate people and express features of Brazilian culture combined with aspects of different societies:

.The funk balls in Rio de Janeiro represent centers of public life in the favelas and other poor areas of the city, because they constitute an opportunity for young people from the favelas and people from the middle and upper classes and also from other favelas to meet, though the contact between those classes can vary depending on age, level of instruction and even physical beauty. The funk balls also represent a place where black bodies and looks are not penalized, even though they are not ghettos for a diacritic black identity. The non-inhibition of black identity expresses itself through experiments with the looks, the use of the body and the consumption of music and clothes. The idea of consumption transcends this perspective, because it is also seen by the communities in many favelas in Rio de Janeiro as a way to achieve citizenship, because they cannot satisfy dreams or expectations created by political democracy (Sansone, 1998, p.222-224, 229-230). The consumption and wealth achieved by American hip-hop stars and expressed in the way they dress and the content of their lyrics influence those people, who start to see the possibility of more consumption as way “to become somebody”. When the individuals involved in carioca funk culture – not only the audience, but the artists themselves – in Rio de Janeiro reinterpret behaviors and ways of life based in the consumption, they develop a perspective of inclusion in a society where they have always felt marginalized and the idea of overcoming exclusion by the recognition of their talent and success. Carioca funk singer Tati Quebra-Barraco, for example, said that she wanted to insert silicone buttocks implants, have plastic surgery in her neck and implant golden straight hair “just to look like Beyoncé”, an American R&B / hip-hop star. She also said: “I came from the favela, I grew up with rats eating my feet. Today, the patricinhas [consumerist girls from the richest boroughs of Rio de Janeiro] now shake their bodies with my music”. The opportunity to become a “funk star” or a “funk dancer” – like the so-called “fruit female dancers”, such as Mulher Melancia (Watermelon Woman) and Mulher Jaca (Jackfruit Woman) – raises the possibilities of entering the entertainment business and brings conditions to overcome poverty, avoid criminality as a way to make a living and provide a better life for the family. Instead of a celebration of self-exclusion or marginality, carioca funk culture can express the will to participate – but not necessarily change the political bases of social exclusion and marginalization – and, though it has a lot in common with and is influenced by American hip-hop, it is not limited by American perceptions of blackness. Instead, in line with what Perry (2008, p.638-644) suggests, carioca funk brings innovations in language and style and in the voicing of bodily performances of new black subjectivities that produce and are produced by the sociopolitical and cultural context of Brazil and the world. According to the central argument developed in this article, the international influence of the changing patterns of hip-hop culture in the American world affected this engagement by over-sexualizing bodies and dances, valuing specific goods and behaviors in the light of its strengthened focus in consumption and incorporating more technology in the production of songs. However, carioca funk culture did not simply reproduce those elements: it preserved elements of Brazilian popular culture in the desire constructed on the black Latin masculine and feminine bodies and the use of elements of samba, pagode and other rhythms of Brazilian culture2.

It is important to notice that the “funkeiros” have been stigmatized since the end of the 1980s by what Arruda et al. (2010) call “an old fear of carioca elites in relation to favelas and their inhabitants”. As the carioca funk culture did not fit the system of classification and ordination of the culture of those elites, it was labeled as a threat. Because of that, it was conceived as dirty, dysfunctional and connected to criminal organizations and urban violence. Because of its sinuous ways and hard access, favelas have become ideal places for the establishment of drug trafficking since the end of 1970s, and carioca funk and “funkeiros” were easily identified as members of those poor communities in their production and consumption. Their image was associated with marginal groups that represented threats to the society (Arruda et al., 2010). Nevertheless, Dayrell (2002) indicates that, in the peripheries, it is possible to identify a cultural effervescence by young people that is not necessarily identified with violence and marginality, but, instead, with the image of cultural producers of one of the most consumed cultural goods: music. In those areas, the individuals exchange experiences and have fun and, furthermore, the centrality of consumption and cultural production indicate the creation of new spaces, temporalities and forms of socialization in which cultural groups occupy a central role. Those young people appropriate values, norms and roles and mediate among different available fonts, opening other spaces where consumption developed in the media organizes the interaction with external realities. They have access to multiple cultural references in heterogeneous sets and webs of meaning that are articulated in everyday action. Although those cultural changes consolidate a consumption society and widen the market for material and symbolic goods and there is a visible development of more possibilities, social modernization does not develop at the same pace, and there are limitations to the access to those possibilities, especially the means to effectively participate in the market (Dayrell, 2002).

The reinvention of carioca funk

The perpetuation of those limitations consolidates negative images of marginality associated to carioca funk and its history of discrimination, even in territorial lines: many inhabitants of the Southern zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro are still uncomfortable with the presence of “suburbanos” (suburban people) and “funkeiros” in their territory. Those groups of marginalized people are connected to violent and chaotic actions, which widens the gap between them and the dominant groups in carioca society. With the exclusion of funk balls from the richest parts of the city in the 1970s, the drug trafficking lords dominated favelas such as Rocinha where they protected and promoted funk balls for the people who lived in those places. Carioca funk was criminalized for many sectors of Brazilian society, but it is constantly de-territorialized and re-territorialized. Although still associated with “favelados” and drug dealers nowadays, carioca funk was introduced in middle and upper class spaces – media, gyms and elite nightclubs in Rio de Janeiro’s Southern and Western zone – with the early erotization and the educational poverty expressed in the use of the language. When Rio de Janeiro’s periphery was introduced in the massive cultural diffusion, “funkeiros” were conceived as undesirable and are still seen as low-level, eroticized anomalies in the society, but their musical production is introduced in the elites’ territory with the porosity of urban borders (Arruda et al., 2010). Nevertheless, this introduction is due not only to the porosity of those borders, but to changes in the carioca funk itself. Some adaptations that were implemented in American hip-hop culture were absorbed by carioca funk, such as samples and mash-ups with pop-rock and dance songs and the insertion of more electronic and techno beats in the music, a renewed emphasis on an expensive way of life – clothes from expensive labels, cars, jewels and mansions – and the more explicit sexualization and erotization of female and male bodies. Those transformations were important in the American market for hip-hop to become the musical mainstream and, in the logic of enlarging markets and making more money, have more appeal not only for lower classes and develop perspectives of ways to achieve better life conditions for its fans, but also for the upper classes, with the use of sounds and iconic elements that are more compatible with their tastes.

In carioca funk, similar changes occurred and were informed by changes that were going on in the United States. One of the results was the deterioration of its social and political criticism. From its first years to the early 1990s, carioca funk has had a very critical perspective regarding social and political problems in Rio de Janeiro and in Brazil. By exposing aspects of everyday life in the favelas and in the city, carioca funk criticized social inequality, racial discrimination, lack of state assistance, corruption and violence in carioca favelas, as it is possible to identify in MCs Cidinho & Doca’s “Rap da Felicidade” (Happiness Rap):

However, this critical perspective that characterized the first years of carioca funk was gradually left aside in the second half of the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s with its excessive sexualization and growing emphasis on consumption, changes that had already been in course in American hip-hop. One example of those changes was the dissemination of “proibidões”, forbidden versions of funk carioca’s songs with explicit sexual content or drug and violence apologies. Furthermore, the greater proximity of carioca funk with changes in international hip-hop in relation to its rhythm and themes made the carioca funk more appealing for middle and upper classes and allowed the intensification of the consumption of this culture, though the “funkeiros” were still seen as the dysfunctional otherness. For example, in the course of those changes, DJ Marlboro even started to play in festivals such as Tim Festival and Nokia Trends, which consolidated his career among Brazilian elites. Some new carioca funk singers started to be famous among middle and upper classes’ young people with a more emphatic sexual orientation. One of the first bands to do so was Bonde do Tigrão (Big Tiger’s Clan), followed by other groups such as Os Havaianos (The Hawaiians) and Bonde dos Prostitutos (Male Prostitutes’ Clan). Some MCs that have been acting since the first decades of carioca funk followed the same steps, such as MC Serginho – and his dancer Lacraia (Millipede) –, MC Marcinho, MC Frank and Mr. Catra. Today, a big hit among different classes is “Passinho do Volante”, by MC Federado e os Leleks (“Lek” or “lelek” is a reduced form of “moleque”, “male kid” in Portuguese. This is how funkeiros usually call each other). Women started to have more participation in carioca funk in the 2000s, but this greater participation did not reduce their objectification in music, lyrics, dance and fashion. A good example of the strengthened preoccupation with money and sex in carioca funk can be seen in the production of the group Gaiola das Popozudas (Cage of Big Buttocks Women), composed of three female dancers and leading vocalist Valesca Popozuda. The women in the group wear very sexy clothes and make dance moves and choreographies that resemble sexual positions. Though many media sectors criticize the group for their supposed vulgarity and pornography, they participate in a lot of radio and TV shows and have fans in lower and upper classes in Rio de Janeiro and all over Brazil. In their lyrics, it is possible to observe the explicit acceptance of the objectification of women as instruments of pleasure and the way they can use this in their own benefit. The songs also bring influences from samba and pagode. The connection between sex, money and the desire of consumption and a rich lifestyle is clear in the song “My Pussy é o Poder” (“My Pussy is the Power”):

Final considerations

More than being simply an expression of American hip-hop, carioca funk brings new ways of affiliation and a mechanism to rework identities with local and global components. It is possible to say that clothes, music, lyrics and dance moves in carioca funk culture do not simply communicate the lives of those individuals, but they also express their values. The engagement of bodies, dance, clothing and music not only represents what a “funkeiro” is, but constitutes a social message related to the character of consumption and the power to provoke, seduce and entertain (Mizrahi, 2007). It is possible to conclude that the changes in the patterns of hip-hop culture in the American world influenced the representation of the “funkeiro”. It over-sexualized bodies and dances, valued goods and behaviors in the light of its strengthened focus in consumption and incorporated more technology in the production of songs. However, carioca funk culture did not simply copy or reproduce elements of American hip-hop: it preserved elements of Brazilian popular culture in the desire constructed on the black Latin masculine and feminine bodies and the use of elements of Brazilian culture in dance and the creation of songs.


Notes

References:

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