Runa (Aug 2017)
The “Baile Funk” circuit, the “Forbidden Funk”, and the imagined community: challenges in the songs of the slums
Abstract
The subject of this paper lies on a song compilation recorded between the years of 2000 and 2010 at bailes funk of the Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, and disseminated via homemade CD-Rs, through which we address the constitution of a musical scene at Rio de Janeiro’s periphery. It occurs due to factors which intervened at the form on how were framed the speeches propagated through the lyrics of the musical subgenre named Proibidão. This research broaches the specific case of live-presented street party songs, sold at the informal market slums’ stands CDs. The chosen method to comprehend the slums operation as “emotional communities” was reflecting upon the production and the hearing within the musical subgenre. A subgenre which express a micro-location identitary process, glance shifting our attention to zones where new intersubjective experiences emerge, where cultural values, representation strategies, and the marks of a small collectivity belongingness are all negotiated.
