December 9-16, 2004

naked city

Favela Chic

ghetto Fav: Sure, these cats from City of God look cool, but how many people do you know with the abs to pull this off?

How long before F-A-V-E-L-A becomes the new H-O-V-A?

by Joey Sweeney

There's a great scene in the 2002 movie City of God that illustrates the impoverished, politicized, anti-authoritarian party culture of Brazil, and why it's reaching (and appealing to) the rest of the world circa now. Benny—early on in the film dubbed "the coolest hood in the City of God"—is throwing himself a party in honor of an impending move from the drug game to something more stable.

The party—and indeed, it did happen, as City of God attests to an on-the-scene account of the nascent Rio drug scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s—manages to draw in every social group, from straight-up thugs to preppy kids to religious types, all rocking the baile, the Brazilian prototype of a sound system-cum-club night, with all manner of records being played and all manner of people out enjoying. One great record after another is played—soul, funk, rock, R&B—to everyone gladhanding, everyone gathered in that utopian partying moment that has echoed throughout the decades, from '60s discotheques to raves to whatever it is that we have now.

Then Benny gets shot, and a decade-long drug war ensues. Thug life, Rio style: When keeping-it-real goes wrong.

People never like hearing this, but it's true: In the modern age, when people crave realness or, uh, "authenticity"—authenticity in this case being an amalgam of exoticism, danger and mystery that becomes a wrapper that can go around just about any creative endeavor—they go slumming. Whether the artists themselves are implicit in this or not, it just becomes a part of their appeal. It's the story of everyone from Elvis Presley to 50 Cent. Usually, it's called "street cred." But as often as not, it's just the slum voicing itself.

Bearing that in mind, there is perhaps no greater slum in the world than the favela sections of Rio de Janeiro, hillside ghettos where people are stacked on top of each other, united in poverty but also pretty much ravaged by the drug trade. It's not the kind of place from whence you'd expect anything trendy at all to emerge. However, in dribs and drabs, the pop world is turning a wandering eye to the favela, the impenetrable hillside slums of Rio, and sometimes not even knowing it.

About a year ago, Wes Gully, aka Diplo, was asked to spin at a loft party on Broad Street that was to feature a performance by Brazilian dancers. "The dancers sent me their CD to see if I could match the style. It turned out to be the Brazilian carioca stuff from three or four years ago dubbed from tapes to CD with crazy hiss and fade-outs," says Gully. "It had Miami bass and Morrissey samples, little kids' TV show samples, weird-as-hell drums, screaming, moaning," he says. "I ended up going to Brazil 'cause I was so amazed by this music. I had to figure it out."

What came out of that trip could essentially be exhibit B to City of God's exhibit A in Favela Chic: Diplo's mix CD titled Favela On Blast. It's 35 minutes of cheap, fucked-up South American shock and awe: Popeye samples, teenagers rapping in Portuguese over The Clash, and like Diplo said, lots and lots of screaming and moaning. It's the sound of a party out of control, and in today's almost neoconservative hip-hop climate, it feels revolutionary, and stolen.

City Of God—easily one of the most compelling and engrossing films about street culture in decades—has done more than its fair share in promoting this same aesthetic. But mostly why this stuff is hitting now is about time and commonality. The baile funk CDs that are surfacing now in DJ shops and online stores like Turntable Lab and Other Music—and which are every bit as raw as Detroit techno or Miami bass—reveal a culture and style symbiosis: Kids in the favela are just as obsessed with booty bass, drugs and violence as their American peers. Tight clothes, bright colors, crazy denim? The Brazilians have been wearing 'em for years. Indie fashionistas will notice the clothes in City of God straightaway: It's the same stuff we've been turning over Global Thrift for the last two years. Hell, at this point, even Seth from The OC is looking like Benny.

But more than anything else, what is coming across in these salvos from Rio, be they fashion spreads, movies, compilation albums or magazine articles, is this: The world's youth culture has been experiencing a very Ghetto Moment, and for years, really. What's new in Favela Chic is that for the first time, that Ghetto Moment has morphed into a polyglot: Not just Dirty South, not just dancehall or reggaeton, not just any one thing. For now and forever, it seems, it's going to be everything at once. And baile funk, Favela Chic, that passing articulation, is just the latest flavor in the mix.