Passinho, the new wave of Youtube fueled funk dancing from Rio, is making its way to New York City. I missed Na Batalha, the musical about the growth of the dance movement amongst Carioca youth, when it premiered in Rio this past June. Don’t make the same mistake as me, as dancers from the show will be in New York next week!! (more…)
This is a guest post by Wolfram Lange, co-founder of Kafundó Records, and blogger at the Soundgoods website. In this post he gives us a little background on Lucio K. His song “Bahea!†appears on the Kafundó Vol. 1 Compilation: (more…)
Usually people put out a mix before their tour to promote upcoming shows… Well, I’m putting one out after — many excuses as to why — most importantly because I wanted to share a part of my set that got some interesting reactions from crowds this past month touring the U.S. (more…)
In this guest post, DA friend Jez Smadja shares with us thoughts & context on Passinho, a hypnotic new dance style that is contouring the complicated culture of the Rio’s baile funk scene, suggesting alternatives to the cartel-ization of funk, sidestepping standard dancefloor machismo, and (hopefully) challenging the gentrification of Rio, one of the most expensive and most touristed cities of Latin America. Enjoy!
Muito obrigado to Alexandra for reaching the brink of near deafness with me and surviving to tell the tale. Yes I saw windows shake. Who says favela architecture is precarious if it can withstand the sonic onslaught every weekend while IPHAN declares a meticulous building that took four years to construct too fragile for subfrequencies? Maybe the real precarity is in the formal city.
Building sound systems is its own architectural gesture too, especially with the elbow room of a big downtown square, a far cry from the tight squeeze of a favela’s improvised public spaces. Turned on its side, Furacão 2000’s speakerboxes look like they would tower above downtown Rio’s citadel to petroleum, the Petrobrás tower lurking behind in all its sinister, cut rectangular prism glory.
In fact, the vertical architecture of downtown actually served as a sonic prism, trapping in the sound waves that just about made themselves visible — from the shaking window to my vibrating Coke can to the blurry vision when I was trapped in the ricochet effect of speakers against building. Sonic Warfare indeed. (more…)