Mnml do Morro

Brasil still on my mind -- stripped down & sped up.

First, there was some percussive ferocity lingering in my inbox, c/o Daniel D'Errico. He plays in Boston's BatukAxé, a drum group led by Bahian Marcus Santos. Up above, they're playing at the "Welcoming New Bostonians" event, holding it down for the constant stream of Brazucas coming to the Bean. (Daniel is the odd one out in the yellow shirt.)

BatukAxé (Marcus Santos' Bateria) by gregzinho

Then wayne&wax tipped me off to Discobelle's most recent Mixin' It Up by DJ Downtown of Helsinki (what is it with the Finns?! tropical living vicariously through funk carioca?) The opening track is a stripped down version of "Rap das Armas", the ever controversial and ever misinterpreted telling-it-like-it-is funk track. This version sounds like the one re-recorded for Tropa de Elite, which I shamefully never blogged about, although you can read up on all the fuss from last year over at the now defunct BOPE Blog.

Cabide DJ Landing Stateside

Pancadão do Morro was just the first step in establishing better international connections between funkeiros brasileiros and americanos. Now, we've got one of the best DJs from the record on U.S. tour. Funk originator Cabide DJ, who I blogged about way back in '06, touched down the day before yesterday and made it through customs & immigration with no problems (graças a deus).

Cabide is not the first DJ or MC from Rio to come up. In fact, the Brazilian expat organizing the tour had MC Biju (who did "Aviãozinho," which appears on Favela on Blast) and Mulher Melancia (an ex-dancer of MC Créu who launched her own career on the strength of a bestselling Playboy Brazil appearance) playing shows here just last month. The catch is that they only play for the Brazilian immigrant community, covering the east coast Brazuca circuit of Boston, Framingham, Hyannis, Danbury, Bridgeport, and Newark.

Fortunately, I got wind of this tour ahead of time, and I'm proud to announce that the forbidding world of international travel worked out and for the first time -- excluding DJ Marlboro, who has always been in a league of his own anyway -- a funk artist is going to perform for crossover crowds, and ideally beginning to bridge that gap between global ghettotechnicians and their not-so-ghettoized fans in the global norte.



There's the man at work in Rio. Now let's see what he an do to the East Coast, where he already played Club Lido in Revere on Friday night, Made in Brazil in Queens last night, and Tuxedo Junction in Danbury, CT tonight. Check XLR8R for a tour-opening boost as well as an mp3 exclusivo.

He follows with Global Frequencies on WMBR this Tuesday, Mofo Radio on Wednesday at WZBC, and then an Invasores do Baixo massive on Thursday with an excellent cast of local characters.


Full tour schedule below, but I'll be making regular updates with flyers for the shows that I organized.

10/17 Boston, MA - Club Lido
10/18 Queens, NY - Made in Brazil
10/19 Danbury, CT - Tuxedo Junction
10/23 Boston, MA - "Bass Invaders" at Milky Way w/ DJ Ghostdad, Nick Yoder, DJ Gregzinho, Philomena, wayne&wax, DJ Flack
10/25 Hyannis, MA - Pufferbellies
10/26 Boston, MA - Taboo
10/30 Philadelphia, PA - Medusa w/ DJ Gregzinho, Chip and Becky Soundsystem
11/03 Philadelphia, PA - "Jang House" at The Barbary
11/06 Baltimore, MD - "Bananas" at Bedrock w/ Donkey Bits
11/08 New York, NY - "Batida do Funk" at S.O.B.'s w/ DJ Comrade, MC Zuzuka Poderosa, Supervixen
11/13 Baltimore, MD - Sonar w/Diplo, Boy 8-Bit, Blaqstarr

Brasil: Um País de Todos?

This clever multiculturalist logo sneaks into the corner of just about every sign announcing federal support for a project. That the federal government would even need to make a public declaration of Brazil as a country for all is an indication of doubts that such a claim is really true. The longstanding belief that Brazil is a racial democracy has come under fire in recent years, as in the stratification of wealth that curiously corresponds to racial lines.

Still, I dropped by a few museums in São Paulo that, to their credit, were much more hospitable to the idea of a harmoniously multicultural Brazil.

First was the Museu da Lingua Portuguesa, a fairly new museum situated in the rafters of the belle époque Estação de Luz train station. Very high-tech and interactive, it purported to trace the history of the (Brazilian) Portuguese language while illustrating its various influences over the centuries. The time line history was particularly interesting, addressing developments in African language–especially Bantu–and American indigenous culture/language parallel with the development of Portuguese from Latin.

Thus, for example, such interesting cross-currents as Arabic affecting both Portuguese and African languages at the same time:


Or other tidbits, like cachaça, the national liquor, having Bantu origins:


Then, at 1500, they all converge:


The Portuguese meet the Tupi (Brazil's largest indigenous tribe and the one that left the largest mark on Brazilian cultural), African slaves are brought over, and the feijoada of languages stews for the next 500 years.


Unfortunately, little to no mention of what kind of linguistic repression occurred, what kind of penalty might be meted out for speaking your native language as a slave. There is a flash forward to a historically corrective present, though.


"In 1988, the Brazilian Constitution guaranteed to the Indians and the rural communities descended from slaves (remnants of quilombos [maroon communities of runaway slaves]) the right to the lands they have been occupying. It guaranteed as well legal protection to indigenous beliefs, languages, and
traditions.

The estimates of the time cited the existence of 220 indigenous tribes and around a thousand communities that were remnants of quilombos. The prolonged isolation of the majority of these peoples permitted the survival of more than 180 different indigenous languages and, in the black communities, the permanency of a Portuguese full of archaisms, in addition to African inheritances from the times of the senzalas [slave quarters on a plantaiton] and quilombos."

Language of African descent, or at least one word in particular, also caught the ear of Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, whose lyrics for tropicália classic "Batmacumba" (macumba = candomblé ritual offering) are designed as a recitation in poema concreta style:

Gilberto Gil & Caetano Veloso - Batmacumba
___


Further on the east side of town, I also stopped by the Hospedaria de Imigrantes, or Immigrants' Hostel, which has been beautifully restored and turned into a museum & archive (for those looking for info about their family). It was more or less the Ellis Island of São Paulo. It's where hundreds of thousands of immigrants spent there first few weeks in Sampa before being assigned work on a coffee plantation somewhere in the interior.


Studying this period of Brazil's history was what first gave me the notion that Brazil and the U.S. have much more in common that either might originally think. Similar size, remarkable geographical diversity, history of plantation slavery. And neither is afraid of making really cheap ethnic stereotypes in a seemingly innocuous exhibit. I'm sure most Japanese women wore ceremonial kimono on their trip over to Brazil . . .