Miami Nights

I successfully survived the Jewish invasion, although my entire house smells like  brisket, and 89% of the people at my house were nowhere near Jewish, aside from  owning a Lenny Kravitz album or something. Yea, exactly. That's how not Jewish they were.  And that's also pretty much how Jewish I am anyway. So moving on to something so completely not Jewish it might as well be Madonna  (yea, remember that phase?)

Today, we're on baile funk. Technically, baile funk is not used to refer to the genre itself, but the parties at which it’s played. Baile in Portuguese literally means “ball”, as in “dance party” and the music itself is simply referred to as “Funk” by locals. But since Americans like to English-ize everything (you like that?), the term has become used to describe the music itself, pretty much everywhere outside of Brazil. But seeing as how we already have our own funk, although it’s nothing like this, that's fine by me. It's sort of like calling a genre "electro party". It's also referred to as Funk Carioca (“Funk from Rio”) by the Brazilian mainstream media, and Favela Funk, in reference to the slums in which the bailes take place.

In the 1970’s, Brazilian record buyers frequently came to the United States to purchase American funk records and bring them back to Brazil. As they continued to frequent the same suppliers, the American trends changed, eventually evolving into new genres like hip-hop, Miami bass and booty, but the Brazilian term “funk” stuck in local usage. Meaning they refer to almost all black American music as "funk". They call our music by  the wrong name, we call theirs by the wrong name, and we're even. Let's all just get along. Miami was one of the most popular destinations to get new records, which is why baile funk is so strongly influenced by Miami-specific trends, taking beats from Miami bass and booty, and synth lines from freestyle. In the same vein as American hip-hop, favela funk relies heavily on samples and instrumentals of other songs. Sometimes well known American pop, dance, or Miami bass songs are rearranged or sampled to create “new” funk tracks. And most of the tracks’ lyrics refer to the slums, the cops, and explicit sex, very similar to our commercialized hip hop.

In the same way hip hop is extremely popular but also feared in the United States, funk is viewed by the middle and upper classes as overly aggressive and violent. Groups like Bonde Do Role have somewhat sugar coated Brazilian funk and made it a more socially acceptable package for adventurous radio stations and hipster parties across America. Even if you don’t understand a word of Portuguese, the heavy beats and aggressive Brazilian rap style stays in your head.

Friend of the site and human jukebox DJ Danny Daze has been kind enough to help me supply you with the baile funk starter kit, so that you may listen and learn. Check him out at Vice Fridays(that's upstairs inside Cameo, for those of you who live under a rock during hot weather) and Saturdays at O Asian Grill.

and just bee-cause: