Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer/Autumn 2018 | Page 72

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS • VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2 • SUMMER/AUTUMN 2018
BRAZILIAN FUNK CAN MAKE A POLITICAL DIFFERENCE
CORENTIN COHEN
Sciences Po, Paris
Brazilian hip-hop and funk music come from popular classes and neighborhoods
but became mainstream musical styles. While they are still despised by upper classes
and older generations they also became an international genre giving new visibility
and a potentially powerful political tool for part of the population living in shanty
town in one of the most unequal countries in the world. But as opposed to part of samba
artists depicting social life or Brazilian popular music (“Música Popular Brasilieira”,
referred to as MPB) of the 1960s and 1970s who sang and played against the military
regime (1964–1985) the funk artists have not been taking any stance in the political and
social crisis Brazil has been crossing since 2014. After the Lava Jato (Car Wash) judiciary
operation in 2015, the destitution of the president Dilma Roussef in August 2016 and
the revelations of embezzlement of different political parties that only translated into
judging left-wing political figures such as ex-president Lula, no major funk artists took
part in the mobilizations in favor of democracy or human rights, still they can be a major
factor in social change.
In 30 years, Brazilian funk, especially from Rio de Janeiro, mutated from a artisanal music
style to an industry with world-class producers. In the 1980’s when it appeared in Rio
de Janeiro, funk was a mix of American funk and hip-hop with the high BPM of imported
drum machines. It was identified with favela and a form of counter-culture. There are
many issues with funk: from the relation it has with women body and masculinity, the
way it sometimes valorizes different ways of living to survive in a profoundly unequal
society including promoting illegal activities (funk proibidão). It sometimes advertises
consumerism and what it calls “ostentatiousness” as a reaction to the social inequalities
and violence that define the reality of favelas and poor neighborhoods. Acknowledging
their common roots, many rappers consider funk as too commercial, while they define
their own style as less compromised with the “system”. The “system” here stands for the
capitalist economy and star system used as a political mean of control to divert attention
from socio-economic inequalities. To put it in a schematic way, while they have
common roots funk is said to be included in the system while rap would be trying to
change it. Even though it is materialistic, many people still see funk as a form of cultural
resistance against a dominant culture’s good taste and reject the explicit references to sex
or violence. As Bourdieu showed it, the elites define “good taste” as a way to distinguish
themselves and to reject other cultural practices coming from lower social classes. But
there is more politics behind it than good or bad taste and funk also have become a way
to oppose the criminalization of the disadvantaged populations.
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It is striking how this “marginalized culture” has earned its legitimacy abroad for a long.
In Brazil, it has become very common for graduation parties of elite universities to weldoi:
10.18278/aia.3.2.6