Music Cities: Rio de Janeiro
There are certain activities that work as glue in consolidating a city or urban area’s sense of identity. This affects how people who live in a city — or in particular one of its neighborhoods — how they related to each other, what they do for work and their free time, the relationship they have to their family, the environment, commerce, you name it.
I intend to make a profile of cities that I believe to be significant centers of culture, in particular music. I choose cities, like Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, because of the unique roll that music plays for the average carioca, or citizen of Rio. For starters, it actually plays a roll!
One very popular example of this are the samba schools that dot Rio’s many neighborhood streets, community centers, and hillsides. These schools, exist for the sole purpose of preserving and practicing samba and other Afro-Brazilian dances. During events like Carnival, which celebrate Brazilian culture, different samba schools compete to see who can have the best routine, they are often accompanied by sponsors or a patron celebrity. Samba schools will parade in the Sambadrome, which in Brazilian cities is a tiered spectator area with a walk way for dance groups. This is a major factor that brings people from the city, and the world, together, for an intense week long program (party??!) of cultural display, sensitivity and exchange.
These exhibitions of the samba schools, especially during Carnival, is a major display of cultural pride, and is a moment for Brazil to reflect warmly on its diverse population, its open and friendly nature/image and unique national-origin story.
Rio of course has been a leader in Brazil for several musical movements besides the propagation of traditional samba. These include the bossa nova craze, originated by composer/mastermind Antonio Carlos Jobim. Bossa nova, characterized by its easy flowing, syncopated rhythms, and airy, deliciously dissonant and effortlessly strummed guitar harmonies, was widely listened to and emulated after it become popular, and even served to cement American tenor saxophonist Stan Getz as a cultural interlocutor and jazz legend (he ventured into Brazilian music and made a second wind out of it). Jobim, the “inventor,” has been immortalized through countless renditions of his most famous songs, including “The Girl from Ipanema,” “Agua de Beber” and “Desafinado.”
Other famous figures in the bossa nova movement include Vinicius de Moraes, and singer/guitarist Joao Gilberto, both of whom worked extensively with Jobim throughout his career.
Bossa nova did a lot to forward the image of Rio de Janeiro, and Brazil in general, as an emerging paradise. Rio in particular is blessed with stunning natural beauty, many miles of beaches and undulating hillsides. Emerging in the 1960’s, though largely associated with the privileged youth of Rio de Janerio, bossa nova became a touchstone for the country, and a focal point for many a traveler’s list of reasons to visit Brazil. The music has even been commemorated in the naming the the Rio’s largest airport after Jobim, its progenitor.
Fast forward to the present day, and the music scene is a lot more multifaceted. Rio de Janeiro is a city of neighborhoods as much as it is a city of community, and the diffusion of musical tastes reflects that.
Baile funk, a hard driving and sexually explicit form of hip-hop/rap/bass music which began in the 1980s, has through the current times become extremely popular. It has held a major listenership from the many dwellers of Rio’s shanty towns and hillside communities as well as admirers from in Brazil and around the world.
Baile funk, funk carioca, or simply funk music (sounds like ‘funky’) holds pretty much to the tenets of the most bombastic and dynamic hip-hop. Loud, disorienting beats, dissonance, hard driving rhythms and densely woven soundscapes are all treated with blistering lyrics which address topics ranging from sex, to poverty, to black identity to violence and social injustice.
Many artists have been inspired by baile funk music and have created music in the same vein. One example is musician-extraordinare M.I.A.’s “Bucky Done Gun” from her debut album Arular.
Today the music scene, the music being played in Rio, cannot be summarized easily. Music is almost like another language everybody becomes familiar with. Not to mention the legacy of Tropicália on the youth of the cities and how literally musicians like Gilberto Gil scared the government and got exiled or making ebullient, challenging, uproarious music. Whether spoken of or not, music is certainly part of the lifeblood of the city, kind of like how one can see New York City during the Jazz Age, or perhaps how someone can look at the network of electronic musicians, dancers, fans and artists that sprang up out of Berlin’s abandoned warehouses following the reunification of Germany after the Cold War.
I will look forward to doing more of these profiles in the future. Next I will most likely write about Berlin, but if anybody is reading this and is interested in a particular city, you know what to do! Just #GetAtMe
