A new kind of Brazilian music is poised for a global boom

Sertanejo has been the most listened-to genre on Brazilian radio and streaming platforms for a decade. Its ascent reflects changes in Brazil’s economy, which used to be based on manufacturing but is now driven by agriculture. “Most music producers in Brazil used to be based in Rio,” says Leo Morel of Midia Research, a market-research firm. But as agriculture became more important, “rural states started winning a voice”. Sertanejo singers’ themes are cattle, beer and American pickup trucks. In 2003 the genre accounted for 15 of the 100 most-played songs on Brazilian radio; in 2022 that figure was 76.

But despite this dominance, sertanejo has little export potential. Few artists care about going global, says Mr Morel. That leaves funk (which Brazilians pronounce as “funky”) as the genre that could alter Brazil’s reputation. “We make music to be heard by as many people as possible,” says Kevin o Chris, a funk singer.

Brazilian funk emerged in the late 1980s, inspired by Miami bass and electro-funk, two sub-genres of American hip-hop that incorporate electronic drums. Brazilians made funk their own by speeding up the underlying rhythms. Where hip-hop or reggaeton, the genre popularised in Puerto Rico, run at around 90 beats per minute, funk races along at 130 or more. Brazilians have developed a sub-culture around the genre, including weekly baile funk (dance parties) in favelas, with moves like the acrobatic passinho for men, which involves elaborate footwork, and the rebolada for women, a paced variant of twerking.

Brazilian funk’s themes and lyrics can often be violent. At a recent baile funk in a favela in the Rio neighbourhood of Glória, teenagers walked around with rifles slung over their shoulders and cartridge belts around their waists. A man in his 20s waved a gold-encrusted semi-automatic rifle. Behind the stage, armed men guarded a table stacked with pouches of cocaine for sale.

Despite this hardcore vibe, funk’s catchy tunes are helping it go mainstream. Taísa Machado, a dance teacher and curator of an exhibition on funk in Rio, says that her students used to be regulars at bailes funk. Now they are dentists and therapists who live in rich neighbourhoods. Most are white. This normalisation has incensed conservative lawmakers. In January a São Paulo councilwoman introduced a bill banning local government from hiring artists who promote crime to perform at public events. The national Congress is now discussing the bill. It is seen as explicitly targeting funk.

If Brazil’s musical ambassadors used to be the likes of Gilberto Gil, today the preferred mascot is Anitta, a genre-crossing artist from a poor suburb of Rio known for her prodigious hip-thrusting abilities and “innumerable” plastic surgeries (she has referred to herself as “Frankenstein”). She has worked for years to break into the international market, teaching herself Spanish and English, buying a house in Miami and singing her way onto the books of Republic Records, a prestigious record label owned by Universal Music Group, a Dutch-American giant. In 2022 she was the first Brazilian to top Spotify’s global charts with her song “Envolver”, a reggaeton tune sung in Spanish. Her latest album is trilingual and returns to her origins in funk.

Não falo português

The fact that Anitta has had to learn two new languages and mix genres in order to go global shows up the difficulty Brazilian artists have in reaching international audiences. “It is easier to export Brazilian footballers than musicians and culture,” says Michele Miranda, a music journalist. Spanish-speaking Latin American immigrants in the United States have helped popularise genres such as reggaeton. Brazil’s diaspora is smaller and more insular.

But funk producers think their genre will boom before long. Last year Beyoncé and Kanye West, two American superstars, sampled funk on their new albums. Papatinho, a Brazilian producer who often travels to the United States, says musicians there had no idea what funk was, until recently. Then last year he received phone calls from Timbaland and Snoop Dogg, as well as Mr West, all famous American musicians, asking him to send samples. “I used to add funk in small quantities, like a spice, but now people want the whole sauce,” he says.

The likes of Mr West and Beyoncé may be responding to business incentives as well as looking for good beats. Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa are the fastest-growing music markets in the world. Though Latin America contains only 8% of the world’s population, it accounts for almost a quarter of Spotify’s monthly active-user base, according to Roberta Pate of Spotify Brazil. She notes that a key ingredient in the success of other international genres, like reggaeton, was “consistency in how artists dedicate their resources to conquering global audiences”. If Anitta is anything to go by, then funk’s global crescendo may not be far off. 

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