Questão 17 - Dia 1 - Unifesp 2026

A new kind of Brazilian music is poised for a global boom

The world is watching Brazil after the country won its first Oscar for “I’m Still Here”, a film set in Rio de Janeiro during the dictatorship in the 1970s. The film’s smooth soundtrack feeds into foreigners’ imagination of Brazil as a country where samba and bossa nova bands croon jazzy songs on sandy boardwalks. But this image is out of date. Modern Brazilians prefer sertanejo, a bouncing country genre, and funk, a style that emerged from Rio’s favelas.

Sertanejo has been the most listened-to genre on Brazilian radio and streaming platforms for a decade. Its ascent reflects changes in Brazil’s economy, which used to be based on manufacturing but is now driven by agriculture. “Most music producers in Brazil used to be based in Rio,” says Leo Morel of Midia Research, a market-research firm. But as agriculture became more important, “rural states started winning a voice”. Sertanejo singers’ themes are cattle, beer and American pickup trucks. In 2003 the genre accounted for 15 of the 100 most-played songs on Brazilian radio; in 2022 that figure was 76. But, despite this dominance, sertanejo has little export potential. Few artists care about going global, says Mr Morel. That leaves funk (which Brazilians pronounce as “funky”) as the genre that could go global and alter Brazil’s brand.

Brazilian funk emerged in the late 1980s, inspired by Miami bass and electro-funk, two sub-genres of American hip-hop that incorporate electronic drums. Brazilians made funk their own by speeding up the underlying rhythms. Where hip-hop or reggaeton, the genre popularised in Puerto Rico, run at around 90 beats per minute, funk races along at 130 or more. Brazilians have developed a sub-culture around the genre, including weekly baile funk (dance parties) in favelas, with moves like the acrobatic passinho for men, which involves elaborate footwork, and the rebolada for women, a paced variant of twerking.

(www.economist.com, 06.03.2025. Adaptado.)

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