Interview with Felipe Maia - your favorite Baile Funk journalist
If you ever did some research on the web about new music coming from Brazil - specially that one that mixes with urban sounds and electronics - then you probably ended up reading a text written by Felipe Maia. We are talking about one of the recurrent pens at sites such as Remezcla, Mix Mag and Resident Advisor, and an author that does a lot of good for this world due to his work connecting the alternative music coming from Brasil with audiences from the rest of Latin America, Europe, the U.S. and viceversa.
Besides his work as a journalist, during the past decade he has carried on a career as an Ethnomusical researcher from France, a place from which he has analyzed the connections between the baile funk scenes from Brazilian favelas and hip hop scenes from the French suburbs and inner cities. Besides that, Felipe plays an importan role as an ambassador for baile funk for French audiences from his show BAÏLE at Rinse FM France- the first French speaking show focused completely in this type of music.
In this interview we go through many of the details of his career and we ask him many things that allow Felipe to share some analysis of Brazilian music history. In them Felipe shares many details and explains topics that reach all the way from the connections of Brazilian and U.S.’s music, the development of baile funk as a global language and other amazing stories that give us clues on Brazilian grime, tropicalia and other types of music.
This is a conversation that is worth it to check with a pen and paper at hand. I hope you enjoy it. I also invite you to listen to his show BAÏLE at Rinse FM France and follow all of his portfolio at his personal website.
https://maiafelipe.com/
We know that you are a Journalist and also a Phd Candidate in Ethnomusicology and you also do a show for Rinse France. However, I’m guessing you do many other things as well . How would you briefly describe your everyday activities to someone that doesn’t know much about you?
Over the past ten years or so I've been trying to find a sort of balance among my main activities and not a while ago I think I found a good spot. All of that revolves around music, as you can imagine.
As an independent journalist/writer, I'm always looking for new stories, pitching new ideas and working on assignments with a couple of media outlets. My bylines at the time are mainly for Remezcla, Resident Advisor, Okay Africa and the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo and UOL — both the largest Portuguese-speaking outlets in the world, for press and web media. I'm usually on the Brazilian and Latin American beat for the English-speaking media and writing about what's going on in Europe to the Brazilian media. I like to think I'm trying to close this gap and link up interests from each side of the Atlantic.
I'm also a PhD candidate, as you've mentioned. I hold a journalism bachelor from the University of São Paulo but, once I started my career and got my first gigs as a journalist, I felt a needed to know more about music in order to write about it. Thinking of Brazil, this feeling has only grown stronger in me since Brazilian music is huge! That led me to start a master in Music and Social Sciences at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, in Paris, where I wrote a thesis on the use of digital technology in the making and consumption of music in underprivileged neighborhoods of Paris and São Paulo (basically a comparison between French rap and Brazilian funk). Eventually, I began my doctorate in the Center of Ethnomusicology Research, at the University Paris Nanterre, where I'm starting my research on paredões — huge Brazilian itinerant sound systems.
Finally, I'm also a DJ. I'm a resident at Rinse France with BAÏLE, the first French-speaking radio show fully focused on baile funk as a global music genre. That is, in each episode I try to look at baile funk music as an idiom, creating bridges and linking dots with different club/popular/electronic music genres from all over the world and within Brazil as well. With the covid pandemic I have put parties on hold, obviously, but little by little BAÏLE is coming back to the dancefloors as well.
I like to think of my activities as part of a cyclical music triangle with three angles: writing, analysis and performance. Each one of them nurtures each other and helps me to have a global vision (or listening) on music.
How did you start in music? Can you tell us some of the key moments that led you to become a music Journalist and Phd candidate? Who were your main mentors along the way?
I think my first real grasp on music was as a kid, when I started a rock band with some friends from school. We used to play Dead Kennedys, RATM and Offspring cover versions, but we had our songs as well—I was a hardcore singersongwriter back then! At home, I recall listening to music that my parents used to play on the record player. We are not a family of musicians, and I don't come from a musical upbringing in the sense of creating music. But my parents just loved to listen to music, and I remember being surrounded by Jorge Ben, Tim Maia, Caetano, Alceu Valença, Elba Ramalho, Luiz Gonzaga — music from the Northeast of Brazil, where my family comes from — and blues — my dad used to love it. That said, I don't think I have a key moment that led me to become a music journalist. It was gradually, reading, listening, talking to people and eventually I found out that music could be a compelling lens to understanding human outer and inner worlds, social and subjective spheres. And I was a music nerd as a kid, you bet!
As a college student and young journalist, I didn't always try to work with music. I enjoyed other beats and it took me a while to specialize as a music journalist. I worked for a while on the technology and science beats, and I truly believe this helps me a lot in the way I investigate and flesh out my stories in culture journalism today.
As for the mentors... To be honest, I think this is a very Anglo-Saxon thing. This is not to say in Brazil we don't have teachers or professors or, in journalism, editors-in-chief who help you out in your career. But at least to me this has taken place as a set of organical exchanges throughout the time (and up to today) rather than an enclosed relationship where the so-called mentor shows you the way to follow through. So yeah shout out to all the editors I've worked with and, thinking from a researcher background, I have to mention the late professor Ciro Marcondes Filho, my first research supervisor back in college; Emmanuelle Olivier, my former master's supervisor (she has a great research work on West African music); and finally my current PhD supervisor, Jean Beaudet, a musicologist and anthropologist with a extensive research in Latin America.
One of your earlier research works was about Rap in the periphery of Paris. Tell us a little bit about that project; especially how you came up with that subject to research and what were your main findings from it.
My master thesis was a comparative research on how digital technology affects music production, distribution and consumption in both Paris' and São Paulo's underprivileged neighborhoods. It led me to a 4 to 5 month field work research where I accompanied several DJs, producers, rappers and MCs in home studios, parties and live performances.
I came up with this idea after I came back from an exchange year in the south of France, where I had a first contact with French rap and got really impressed on how powerful this movement was. Back in Brazil, around 2011, I started to go deeper in the baile funk as well, trying to understand more of this movement that was in its early days in São Paulo — not in Rio, where baile funk was born in the late 80s. In 2015, when I decided to start the master program in Paris, I thought that this comparative perspective could be an interesting approach as a first experience investigating global music and differences between Global North/South.
It took me three years to finish this project and my main findings cover two axis: first, the production axis, where I found many similarities between São Paulo and Paris underprivileged neighborhoods, leading me to conclude that the home studio, as a music/sonic device, is not necessarily the result of privilege or social hierarchy in the world we live in today. This doesn't mean a kid producing baile funk beats has the same structure as a kid producing rap beats in Paris, but they do share elements when it comes to producing like a regular PC and a pirate software, that will lead to the same gestures or styles of mastering and mixing. As for the second axis, the distribution and consumption one, I found that there are much more differences than similarities between São Paulo and Paris, since both cities have historically placed different cultural policies for these different music genres — rap has been an asset for French government to "access" underprivileged neighborhoods, whereas baile funk is fought hard by official power up to today.
In conclusion, I came to understand that digital technologies could be an important key to create a global community of music-makers, since they are relatively cheap and accessible. However, there are still local and global vectors that are still strong on what/how music is distributed and consumed in the favelas or banlieues.
Tell us about your Doctoral research.
For my doctoral research, I decided to keep on the comparative approach, but going further on the use of the music/sonic/technologic device known as paredão. These are huge, automobile sound systems found in virtually every favela and underprivileged neighborhood in Brazil. They are the heart of weekend block parties, blasting baile funk, pisadinha, pagodão and other several Brazilian popular electronic music genres all over the streets. Depending on where you are, paredões are different not only in size or shape, but also in sound frequencies and speaker arrangements. And there are a lot of crossing cultural practices within this world, such as sound clashes or conflicts with the police forces. My research revolves around this device and covers music/sonic production, body/tacit knowledge, social hierarchies, soundscape and urban anthropology. My goal is to understand the paredões as a quintessential part of the contemporary Brazilian (and Latin American, since we have sound systems in many countries in LatAm) soundscape.
Regarding both of those research projects, what are the concepts and “lens” that you used for analyzing these scenes? For example, in a past conversation I had with Alejandro L. Madrid that did a book on Nortec, told me that the main concept of analysis he used for that scene was “Cosmopolitanism” and how artists try to be “Cosmopolitan” through their music. Do you use any concept like that? Maybe a concept related to black identity or social class?
Cosmopolitanism is a concept I want to explore more in my ongoing research as well. I find it really interesting as a possible branch of new thoughts on globalization, a concept I use here not as a neoliberal trope, but as a new path for global connections out of a North-South paradigm — as in Brazilian researcher Milton Santos' work.
And, yes, rather than concepts, I like to think of authors who offer interesting lenses to my work. Milton Santos is one of them, just like Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and his idea of anthropology. Thinking more of sound studies and technology of sound, I find really interesting the works of Ana Maria Ochoa (huge fan here!) and her ideas on decolonization of aurality, a key aspect to my work with paredões so far. Julian Henriques and his work with Jamaican sound systems is something I cannot get rid of! It seems that I always come back to his findings and I feel that they are really close to what we see in the crossing paths of DIY technologies and popular music like baile funk in Brazil. And also Bruno Latour concepts of actor-network and his perspective on the role of tech-tools. It was really helpful to me when I needed to outline the web made out of social actors and devices as we see in baile funk or the paredões world. Last but not the least, Steven Feld and Pierre Schaffer, but I need to read more of them and find out how I will face their (sometimes opposed) ideas throughout my field work.
Are there any of the findings you found on your research about Baile Funk and Hip Hop between Brazil and Frances that you can translate to both the the Brazilian Grime and Desande scenes you covered for Resident Advisor and Mixmag? Can you translate it to other scene such as reggaeton, pop, etc?
I think both Brazilian grime and desande scenes (taking into account that the concept of scene is debatable) are rather different. We find in both of them kids from low-income neighborhoods making music, but the grime aesthetics (sonic and visual) is much more connected to an aggressive version of Brazilian music. It's raw, not as much as baile funk proibidão or the first years of rap in São Paulo, but it's still crude, vicious. Desande, on the other hand, is much more connected to a growing hunger for electronic music in Brazil, mainly commercial electronic music. For a long time non-commercial electronic music in Brazil was meant to be a thing for "underground weirdos" or "psy trance ravers". The commercial axis has always existed, but not as strong as we see now. What Desande shows is that electronic music in Brazil can be as powerful as any other pop music movement.
If there's a link between the Desande and Grime (and baile funk) is the rise in popularity of club/electronic music among kids from underprivileged neighborhoods and the growing blend of baile funk and rave culture.
In a piece for Remezcla you quote that Brazil is the only Latin American city in Pop Smoke’s top cities. I’m guessing that this is because there is a very strong music connection between Brazil and the U.S., especially around hip hop and which I dare to say feels stronger than the connection with the other countries of Latin America. Do you feel the same? Do you have any ideas or clues on why this connection is so strong? Is it because of the black culture connection?
Yes, I think you're right. I think that's also because of the size of cities like São Paulo, Mexico DF or Jacarta for the streaming industry, but I do see this connection between black music from the US and Brazil. There's this musical anedocte (I'm not that anedocte-type-of-guy, and I think the Brazilian music press has too much of it, but still): an important difference between the ships departing from the African continent over the slavery centuries was the direction—some went to the US, some went to Brazil. The violence of the slavery routes had as an outcome the foundation of two countries with heavy African colors in their music. But while in the US the Black population could be described as a minority (14% of the total), Brazil must be considered as a black or at least heavily mixed country: more than 50% of the country is black—and not many Brazilian people seem aware of that. After that, we must think of industry. The first music industry to exhibit a consistent development over the past decades was the US music industry. I'm a white Brazilian from a worker's family, but it's not that hard to imagine that, for a Black kid growing up in a low-income neighborhood, the rise of artists like James Brown or Tupac or Pop Smoke brings a strong sense of identity, one that goes as far back as the ancestral times to some. This is felt up to today, and I believe that, differently as we see in the US, in Brazil we cannot simply think of that as a matter of musical boxes. Due to our historical formation (a violent and colonized one, I stress this out), Black, Indigenous and White communities have come to create music in such an entangled way that we cannot simply think of that as matter of who owns what. That said, and I finish here, racism is a major issue in Brazil and in music it is not that different. We must reckon Black communities and artists as the precursors and leaders of many movements in Brazilian music, from Gilberto Gil to Racionais MCs, from Ataulfo Alves to Rennan da Penha, from baile funk to rap.
Tell us a little bit about your BAILE show on Rinse FM. What is the central concept or vision of the show and how has it changed over time. Also, what is the music, scene or process that catches your attention the most out of all the things you cover on the show?
As written above, the BAÏLE radio show is the first French-speaking radio show focused on baile funk. I started DJing back in the first years of college, and I always spinned baile funk tracks. It was 2010, 2011, and baile funk was not that huge in São Paulo, but I really enjoyed playing old school tracks from Rio or the releases of that time, like MC Kaxeta, MC Dedê, MC Samuka e Nego. However, after I finished school, I had to put all my energies in my work as a journalist, and even though I had started a few projects as a DJ (like a selectah/vinyl collective with some friends), I felt that there was a lack of identity in all of that. Eventually I came to France and, as we see in research, the alterity was a huge driving power so I could create my own sense of identity. I felt that I should look again to baile funk as a DJ, but I didn't want to do this as the (amazing) DJs in the favelas do. I wanted to do that as a baile funk researcher, as a Brazilian in Europe and a Brazilian that felt aso as a Latin American person. I mean, I was much more into bringing baile funk from Brasil and pushing it throughout new sonic fields and music genres. At the time, 2016, 2017, baile funk was gaining momentum in SoundCloud as an aesthetic ressource for bedroom producers (music-makers that were doing that for a few years yet, like Sango, Marginal Men, Kojak, Carlos do Complexo), and, as Brazilian living overseas, I felt that I could bridge these worlds both because I enjoyed the idea of DJing but also because it was some sort of duty. Like, if I don't do that, someone might do and I'm afraid it will be awful, exotized, cultural domination etc. Eventually I sent over a radio show project to Rinse France and they were up to it and so BAILE started in May 2018. I swear that at first I didn't imagine that I could get so far with the show (three years now). I always sensed that baile funk was an enormous source of creativity in music, but looking at the rear mirror now and thinking of what the future holds I can't help myself but be proud of the show. So far we've had more than 40 invited DJs from different countries and loads of different influences. We've had Golden Kong with his heavy club baile funk, Deekapz and his Soulection-take on funk, Badsista and her dark techno non-western baile, Ckrono with his high-scoring style of mixing, and the list goes on. For the months and years to come I expect no more than new strands of baile funk, whether they are local iterations or global takes of this music that, I must say, I think it's more than a genre: it's an idiom. A Brazilian-made idiom of club, popular, electronic and street music.
Recently, I heard from a Dj from the Sao Paulo Brasilidades scene that Brazil experienced a process of high americanization during the late 1990’s and through the 2000’s; and that now that the country is rediscovering its own musical and cultural roots there is more Dj’s remixing classic brazilian music. Do you feel the same about this? Can you comment about the relationship between this Brasilidades scene with your work (the BAILE show on Rinse or the scenes you cover for in some of your articles)
I see the point here and I agree with that, but I go a bit further. The process of high (north-)americanization of Brazilian culture has been going on since the end of the XIX century. Once European countries turned their claws to Africa and SouthEast Asia, Latin America became a playground to the US. If you think of the Semana de Arte Moderna de 22, a major artistic event that took place in São Paulo in 1922, the whole idea of a Brazilian music was being made in the conflict of what country we would be. It's a creative, historiographical, symbolic effort that takes place in the vacuum left by European influences and the imminent arrival of the US soft power. A great writer and one of the first researchers of Brazilian music, Mario de Andrade captures this idea with a high level of dexterity. In his writings he shows us that the so-called folkloric Brazilian music was amazingly rich to that time, but there were already trends in the midst of the urbanization of the country that would be a definitive changemaker in the years to come. And this novelty is deeply connected to the phonographic industry, one that was first developed in the US. Through the first half of the century, samba grew bigger as the Brazilian music genre and an incipient national phonographic industry was built around it, along with other minor music genres and forms and radio stations based in capital cities such as Rio. If north-americanization was not an issue back then, it came to be palpable in the 1950s, with the bossa nova movement — as the Brazilian researcher José Ramos Tinhorão writes, the first time samba and the favelas got apart. Since then, the american pop music has always been a huge deal to Brazilian culture, whether in a absorb-transform movement, as we've seen with Tropicalia or baile funk (at first, a hip hop/Miami bass strand made in Rio), or as an element to avoid and even refuse (as in differents strands of samba or the sertanejo music). The rediscovery movement set by this sort of Brasilidades operates also in this dialectical movement: it throws some light on Brazilian music, and some of this music has drawn elements from disco, jazz, etc — and it has also lent a lot of stuff to these genres. What I see now is that things could change in the following decades. Different countries of Africa and Latin America have been shaping the new pop landscape. If this is still under the rules of an industrial layout set up by the Anglo-Saxon entertainment complex/industry, I think it's a question open to thoughts, but the sounds are changing. As a country with strong music production and culture, Brazil plays a leading role in this game.