Bo knows / Cabide after the jump

Catching up on some long-neglected RSS feeds and came across an insightful Maga Bo post. He uses mp3, YouTube, and his own observations on the Volt Mix to Tamborzão progression of rhythms (or more accurately riddims, given how they freely they float around) in funk.

Tamborzão Mix 2005

From Batidas Instrumentais Ineditas Vol. 5, a compilation of instrumentals for aspiring funk producers, that I copped at the Uruguiana market in Rio. The tamborzão (tambor = drum, ão = intesifer, so "big drum") will sound immediately familiar to anyone who's heard a fairly recent funk track. As Bo points out, "It's a big dry sound that works really well on a massive sound system in a mostly open air space. It's a mix that has lots of room for vocals and other elements. I would say it's as big and ubiquitous as sleng teng was in its heyday." As of summer 2006, DJs would ride the tamborzão beat through a whole set for easy mixing, and there certainly wasn't a lack of tracks to choose from if one stuck to it.

My man Cabide DJ (his site's down at the moment, but I'll tell him to fix it), who I interviewed over the summer, told me the the tamborzão was invented by Luciano DJ on a Roland-808. But as I've mentioned briefly, the dominant beat used to come from Miami bass, natch.

Cabide with record in hand.

Zoom-in to the goods: 808 Volt Mix, DJ Battery Brain

What's that in the corner? Something to make the Philly heads flip. $4.99 went a long way. Too bad they're closing up shop.

___

Sany DJ holds up his copy in the YouTube vid (sorry, português only), but just to show that other old-school DJs had their hands on it too. Cabide said a friend picked it up for him in Miami. Miami --> Philly --> Miami --> Rio --> Philly over 18 years. Not a bad run.

The tamborzão mini-doc is also a hot demonstration of the live MPC DJ style that I found very prevalent in Rio. More from Cabide. First, as he says, "This here was the first sound used on a sampler in Rio, by MC G, with the Volt Mix beat."



Now some of his more contemporary stuff with a tamborzão flavor:



Cabide also claims to be the first DJ in Rio to use the Rocky Theme. He told me he bought a CD put out by O Globo (media corp) called "Sons do Cinéma" (Cinema Sounds). I tried to explain to him how the Rocky Theme has become synonymous with funk to Americans and Europeans, although getting into a detailed explanation of M.I.A. and pop stardom didn't really translate well. He was pleased that it had some popularity, suffice to say.

Something else dovetails nicely with all this discussion of rhythms and origins. I asked him how Rio DJs discovered Miami bass -- did folks go to Miami because they had heard about it, or when expat cariocas returned from abroad it came with them? He was stumped and called his friend MC Paul. While Paul didn't answer my more specific question, he sidestepped it to a broader point [audio in portuguese, translated & edited for clarity below]:

MC Paul on the origins of funk

"The beat of funk evolved in Africa. Africans began the beat, the drum beat, boom boom. Os americanos [in Portuguese, americanos refers to both North and South Americans collectively] brought this beat over and people made funk out of it. James Brown, hip-hop singers, they use the map of Africa because the beat comes from there, understand?"

That puts it in a much deeper perspective -- you can call anything from James Brown to 2 Live Crew "American" without being wrong, but you can likewise point to a historical arc that goes all the way back to Africa. It brought certain sounds to the USA and to Brasil, so it shouldn't be surprising that they link up and recombine themselves a few centuries down the road.

All in all, it was a productive interview -- who knew I'd stumble over the Rocky Theme originator? Cabide's a really nice guy and a testament to the friendliness of Rio's music scene: I had bought his CD at Uruguiana market, liked some of the tracks, and wanted to know more. There was a phone number listed on the back so I called him, explained what I was doing, and we set a date a few days later where I could come out to his studio and do an interview. He's 31 years old and has been DJing since 1987 -- he was adamant that Marlboro doesn't deserve credit as the sole originator of the Miami bass-tinged sound. Several DJs, himself included, were doing the same thing back in the late '80s.

I don't have a good excuse for having sat on all this for so long, but here are a few more pics from that day:

You know he's old school when he can crate dig.

Another classic Miami bass artist who had a strong influence on funk.

Cash Box was one of the earliest Rio soundsystems -- they even cut vinyl!

On the back: You can tell it's the pre-Portuguese vox days.

His studio was like an archaeology dig of music gear: from a Roland R-8 drum machine

to a Roland MC-50 sequencer

then moving to the present with his prized MV-8000 MPC

a less ancient keyboard

and his CD-J rig (he had turntables in a corner, if I recall).

Plus of course the computer set-up

from which he ran Sony ACID.

All in a soundproofed room, I might add.

I thought the bright pink house was a nice touch -- it's actually a sort of complex with several houses surrounding a courtyard. There's space for that out in São Gonçalo, a suburb of Rio on the other side of the Baia de Guanabara (and over an enormous freaking bridge).

And last but not least the wheels: a VW that's prized only second to his DJ gear.

The Bass Connection, Part 1

Wayne asked if I could post a list of which Miami bass tracks caught the ears of the funk faithful down in Rio.

I picked up two CDs of Miami bass at the pirate stands of Uruguiana market. Unfortunately I don't have them physically with me, so I can't scan you the covers. But here's the track list of the first:

Miami Beat Vol. 11

1. The Beat Club - Security (Remix)
2. N2Deep - Toss Up
3. Toddy Tee - Just Say No
4. Svemtyle - Weekend Tool
5. Renard With No Regard - How Hard Can You Throw It?
6. Beat Master Clay D & The Get Funky Crew - Move Your Body to the Beat

This is one is incomplete because some of the tracks didn't rip to mp3 -- and without the CD, I can't recall what the other tracks were (nor does Google turn up anything for "Miami Beat Vol. 11" or similar searches).

Of the 6 tracks I do have, there are two odd ones out: N2Deep and Toddy Tee are both early 90s Southern California rap groups, examples of the sound that became popularized by the likes of 2Pac and Dre (cf "California Love", et al.). That's not terribly surprising given that this is theoretically volume 11 of a compilation series -- the roster gets a bit then by that point, I imagine. Doubly unsurprising given that Miami and California comprise two-thirds of most Brazilians impression of America. New York City is the other terra cognita, with Texas/Washington forming a bizarre twin identity in people's minds on account of Bush. I suspect that'll pass after '08, however.

What we're left with, meanwhile, are some decidedly Miami tracks, if not always identifiable ones.

The Beat Club have a verified Miami history, although the track in question, "Security (Remix)", comes off the A-side from an eponymous 12" released in 1990 after they moved to the UK. That would help explain why this version sounds more like straight dance music (the Discogs' bio notes that they hooked up with New Order's manager upon arrival). This track also presents a good example of the Miami-Rio borrowing, live and direct:

First, note the keyboard stab at 1:13-1:16:
The Beat Club - Security (Remix)

Compare to the opening of one of my favorite recent funk tracks:
Peko, Marcelinho, and MC Gil do Andaraí - Treme Terra

Moving on, Renard With No Regard and Beat Master Clay D offer two fairly textbook examples of both strains in the Miami music scene of that era. "How Hard Can You Throw It?" winds a single chorus and snappy drum machine hits & handclaps across a very skeletal structure -- just a pure, deep bass track -- while "Move Your Body to the Beat" works the more lush sound of freestyle.

Unfortunately, I can't identify the last track. "Svemtyle" and "Weekend Toll" have both turned up nothing in my searches, nor have the scattered lyrics. Hear for yourself and let me know if it rings any bells, but it's definitely squarely in the bass tradition, feeding in trademark snippets of "Planet Rock" and "Whoomp There It Is"-style bass.

Svemtyle - Weekend Toll

The identification issue is definitely a tough one. It took some digging to get tracks 5 & 6 named properly. From the CD I had them as the fairly incomprehensible "Ther - How Hard Can You" and "Tamber Raider - Crow Time", respectively. But a disregard for accurate attribution is nothing new, as the mess of my pirated funk CDs can easily attest to. It all reinforces an attitude pervasive in the funk scene that names and ownership of the recording are not as important as the live performance. Why, indeed, so many recordings I did get were simply from live performances.

Certainly a lot of this stems from simple economics. If you're among Rio's poor (as funk MCs often are), studio time is expensive. It's worth cutting a track semi-professionally so you have something to give DJs and are able to promote yourself among those who can pay you. Why bother recording for the purpose of a CD release when it's only going to be sold as a pirated copy?

And so, without the music-as-industry that we're used to in the States (take another look at Wayne's article again -- I just finished it today and it resonates quite a bit, the general trends he discusses as present in Jamaica are surely universal for popular music in developping countries), the emphasis is less on the objective (recording) and more on the subjective (performance). Everything, it seems, is wrapped up in the performance. Paul's thesis elaborates upon the socio-political aspects of the performance, my understanding of funk's economics all point to the performance as the main revenue source, and as a result (or because of?) all this, the music itself is generated more at the performance than anywhere else. That is to say, baile and funk are inseparable.

It's a double-edged sword, ultimately. The MC's life is not an easy one, as I witnessed. From the hustle of trying to get gigs, to the frenetic weekends of singing at multiple parties in the same night, to the impossibility of income from recordings, funk's flexibility is also its curse. From a theoretical standpoint, I think it's fascinating -- the openness, the fluidity, the subjectivity, the bricolage, the perfomativity -- but I can't forget the human element of it all. Paul ultimately demures from calling funk revolutionary, and looking at how it works in practice, I can only agree.

[booty bass rumblings into philosophical speculations part 2, coming soon. more tracks, better tagged, but also more predictable.]