Rio funk: The stigmatized dance that reigns in Brazil’s favelas finally enters the museum
The Rio Art Museum has dedicated this season’s grand exhibition to telling the story of the rhythm born in the city’s marginal neighborhoods, which combines African-American soul music and Indigenous elements
In the middle of an afternoon on a weekday, seeing such a long line to enter a museum in Brazil is quite striking. Even more extraordinary is that a good part of those waiting to buy tickets are under the age of 30.
The exhibition, Funk: A Cry of Boldness and Freedom, has been a huge success since it opened three weeks ago at the Rio Art Museum (MAR). Through 900 works and objects, it reviews the history of this rhythm — Rio funk — which was born in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The exhibition explores the relationship between the American soul music of James Brown and the demands of the Afro-Brazilian movement in the 1970s.
Rio funk — often mistakenly considered to be the preferred music of gangsters — has been triumphing for years in the peripheries of Brazil. Little by little, it’s finally acquiring the status of a respectable cultural expression, a path that samba already followed decades ago.
In the two rooms of the MAR that are hosting the exhibition, which runs until August 2024, the sound is thunderous. Visitors who have never been to one of these massive dances — which are held outdoors at dawn under plastic tarps in peripheral Brazilian neighborhoods — feel as if they’re standing next to a wall erected with speakers, which hammer out the funk. This is the same rhythm that catapulted Anitta, the great diva of Brazilian music, to international fame.
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