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Used the phrase "rhythm comes down from the top" in my previous post, meaning that the top not the bottom was directing the rhythm. This is part one in an attempt to elaborate.

I first heard Brazilian funk – funk carioca – because M.I.A. and Diplo were getting excited by it and I was getting excited about their Piracy Funds Terrorism bootleg (2004); got (or Chuck Eddy sent me) the Favela Booty Beats compilation (also 2004). Waited 15 years to venture beyond that, but in the meantime I took in that the music was doing something viscerally different. I didn't (and don't) have the words for what I was hearing. It seemed more shouty than most of what I listened to, and more percussive – and the percussion seemed higher-pitched: wood-like cracking and clacking sounds more than deep resonance. I was both excited and a little put off, though I didn't turn away specifically because of that, just had other music to pursue.

I tend to think of bass as the heart-beating body of music – "bass" not only meaning bass guitar but sometimes tuba or cello or stand-up bass or a baritone voice or hollow cheeks or a deep drum or an electronic drum like an 808, etc., whatever is acting the part. But there's a bounce to it, a roll, not just the thud or the bomb of a big drum or the whack of a snare. Obv. you can have good rhythm without it, even with just a voice and two spoons, but for me bass is the liquid in the soup. It's the broth, the flow.

But a good deal of funk carioca (or whatever one should call it; I'm ignorant and really don't know the best overall term*) is giving us a turnaround, the high pitch directing the rhythm rather than riding it – this is viscerally effective, while flipping the emotional sense: like snapping the towel in your eyes rather than tickling your feet. Dancing that feels like fighting. Maybe it's fists rather than hips (though the videos these days sure seem booty heavy).

—What I'm saying is too simplistic, of course, in setting up a high pitch/low pitch opposition. For instance, in American rock and soul and funk and hip-hop the top doesn't just ride the bottom either; American funk especially is all about interplay, where it's not settled what's foreground and what's background, who's riding and what's being ridden. Same for jazz and Latin jazz** and various electronic dance genres. Etc. There's often no single answer to "what is directing the rhythm?" And as you can tell, I'm hardly set on what I'm calling "bass." So this is about a feeling as much as it's about a definite easy-to-identify-and-agree-on difference. It does pertain to about ⅓ of the Brazilian funk I'm listening to these days.

These three are the tracks that grabbed me most on Favela Booty Beats:

First, "O Baile Todo," nice 'n' shouty but there is an instrument acting bass-like and it's one of the track's pivots, just as it'd be on a James Brown record.

Bonde do Tigrão - O Baile Todo


Second, "Chapa Quente," the drums have a flow but for lots of this they're following the voice around like a puppy.

Os Tchutchucos - Chapa Quente


Third, "Bate La Palma de Mao," none of the drums are being a bass, though a tom sound is taking care of the clave when the horns are on. The chorus could be today, the shouty voices and high percussion dominating the beat.

MC Mascote - Bate La Palma de Mao


Finally, "Injeção," a track I didn't hear at the time, though obviously M.I.A. and Diplo did because they used a treated version of the Rocky sample in a similar way in "Bucky Done Gun." There are sections with drums pounding out the clave rhythm, but good bits of this are simply voice and percussion. The balance is shifted.

Deize Tigrona - Injeção


*I assume (and Wikip tells me, but I actually have no idea) that in Brazil the simple word "funk" is the usual term, if you're waving your hand in the direction of that broad area in Brazilian music. But "funk" would confuse readers for whom the term means the American funk of e.g. James Brown, Kool & The Gang, etc., and stuff that sounds like it. Am going with funk carioca because that's the other phrase that seems most common as an umbrella term for the Brazilian funk. ("Baile funk" shows up as well, but Wikip insists that in Brazil that's the term for the parties, not the genre.) Problem is that the word "carioca" references Rio de Janeiro, and most of what I'm hearing these days is coming out of São Paulo and Belo Horizonte and Recife. But again I don't know Portuguese and I don't know Brazil. I'm hoping that "carioca" is like the "Italo" in Italo disco, where it's understood that not all of it comes from Italy.

**The claves themselves, the pair of percussive instruments that the clave rhythm is named for, are a higher-pitched percussion, not a deep resonator.

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Cross-posting from Tumblr, where cureforbedbugs wrote:

Were you mildly disappointed in the new M.I.A. album even though you kind of liked it, and decided to listen to M.I.A. knock-offs instead and were then disappointed in them, too?

Try THIRD generation M.I.A. knock-off Tkay Maidza, who out-clonestamped Santigold this year, and ALSO gave us a second gen Sant-O-gold and also gives a few hints of, like, is that Kid Sister? – or something. Basically, this album takes all the shit I’ve been kind of rooting for but not feeling for the last five years and just gives me a 100% decent all the way through album of it. Don’t expect anything less than totally derivative, and if that bothers you then, well, I hope you enjoy all of that super original horseshit you’ve got clogging up your year-end lists. 2016 is a nightmare; give me comfort food.
My reply: Haven't made it to the albums, but on this year's singles Tkay Maidza seems to be getting the singsong M.I.A. but not the jumprope or the tunnel-under-the-earth-and-claw-your-face-off M.I.A. Meanwhile, M.I.A. on her own singles (esp. various "Bird Song"s) is sing-songing and face-clawing and excavating like always. And on another meanwhile Tkay Maidza is shining as a sharp-toothed dance diva for Martin Solveig and Motez. And on a couple more meanwhiles, Tymee is still playing it too real and tough but she's truly grabbed me for the first time since she was E.via. And Die Antwoord are an art project disguised as a rodent infestation, but they're outdoing all the aforementioned.

Bird Song (Blaqstarr Remix)


Banana Brain
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Infants' Giant Leg* is due August 27, 2012, according to Tigertrap records. About half the album is from a couple of old EPs of theirs I reviewed favorably for Paper Thin Walls five years ago. Since the PTW archives no longer exist, I'm pasting in the reviews:

Infants - "DTL Infants Remix"
from Friend Paste 7-inch and CDS (Tigertrap)
Danced-Up Chants 'N' Spittle // Out Now
8.5

Clangorous fun from band of multinationals. "Information": Foghorns let loose with lovefarts, and a couple of subway cars rumble invitingly in each other's direction. Brakes break, chanters chant, a crazed passenger starts yammering at us in Japanese. Then foghorns lay down the beat and chanters resume chanting. Process repeats. "Firetruk": Same formula as "Information"; i.e., dark thuddy rumbles bounce off of counterrumbles and slide across the floor; chants are added as condiments ("Let's go Firetruk!"). Witty, but a certain amount of work is necessary for one to get into the rhythm. The fun is made complex by the band's tendency to drop refrigerators on one's toes. "DTL Infants Remix": This, our streamed track, not on the disc but available as an mp3, is the Infants' remix of Drop The Lime's "Wake Up Call." Howlers toss howls off of each other; hippopotamuses blow soap bubbles that turn into rubbery jungle breakbeats. Dueling locomotives. Shower scene where women pretend they're being slashed to death. Then blips go blip and someone fakes an orgasm. "Firetruk Drop The Lime Remix": The chants return — "Let's go Firetruk!" — augmented by tight funky guitar licks and rumbling, twisting bass. Vocalist resorts to old-Iggy-style throat retching from Stooges Funhouse freakout days. Those days are gone, so bands like this would be more powerful if they weren't hiding behind weirdness; but hoping for that to change is like wishing the world were different. FRANK KOGAN

Infants Foam Party )

*Streamed here:

http://www.tigertrap.co.uk/artists.php?artist=8
koganbot: (Default)
The Top Five is all T.I. and M.I.A., in a glorious feat of initials. Well, not quite: Pink is 1 and Rihanna is 3. But T.I. is 2, M.I.A. is 4, and there they are together holding hands and smashing feats at number 5. And five new tunes tick for the full circuit, Jazmine finally pushing through to the Top 40 from her base in the urban leagues.

T.I. & Jay-Z )

Taylor Swift )

Fall Out Boy )

Kevin Rudolf )

Jazmine Sullivan )
koganbot: (Default)
Rihanna's "Disturbia" finally knocks Katy Perry off the top spot, M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" jumps into the top five, both "Disturbia" and "Paper Planes" charting on the basis of huge downloads - "Disturbia" gets relatively few airplay points, as radio is still high on Rihanna's previous track, "Take A Bow"; probably pulls extra download numbers, however, since there are over a million people who bought the alb before "Disturbia" became a bonus track, and I can't imagine a lot of them are going to shell out for the alb all over again. "Paper Planes" has a small amount of airplay on the Top 40 and alternative rock stations, and almost nothing anywhere else - except of course on the TV commercials for Pineapple Express. All of which is more interesting than this week's new crop.

Jonas Brothers )

The Game )

Leona Lewis )

As a bonus for Year In America's intrepid readers, here's the trailer for Pineapple Express:
koganbot: (Default)
Summertime, and the mood is uneasy, which works well among the newbies, I think. Grating catchy Katy stays at number one, "Disturbia" jumps from 15 to 4, "American Boy" from 26 to 16, all propelled more by downloads than airplay.

Big new entry is Shwayze, whose reality show debuted on MTV a couple of weeks ago. And another strong leaper is... well, see below. I was NOT EXPECTING THIS. It's rising on the shoulders of this movie trailer, pulling in the downloads, and I can't find out how much or where, if at all, the song might also be garnering airplay, Mediabase for the moment having reverted to subscriber-only.

Shwayze )

M.I.A. )

Flobots )

Kid Rock )

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Frank Kogan

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