A mixtape can be many things, but one thing is for sure, a mixtape is more than just random songs put in a particular order. It’s about recontextualizing sounds, giving them a new meaning (sometimes very different from the original) by setting them side by side, or juxtapozed in ingenious ways with others. Best thing about mixtapes, most of them are FREE (!), and they’re a great way to discover new music. In this column, Juan Data gives you a worthy one every week.
MIXTAPE: Feita Para Dançar Vol. 1
DJ: Uilson
Last week we featured a Brazilian music mixtape done by a gringo. This week we are going back to Brazil, but this time the mixtape was done by a Brazilian DJ. From São Paulo, Brazil, we have DJ Uilson, a vinyl fetishist and an authentic Brazilian funk aficionado. And I say authentic because we’re talking about real funk here, or what the rest of the world understands by funk, not the bootycentric dance genre known as baile funk, or funk carioca, that developed from Miami bass in the past couple of decades in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.
You see, way before baile funk, in the ’70s, Brazilian samba was heavily influenced by contemporary American funk and soul (James Brown in particular), but for some reason Brazilians love changing the music genre names, so instead of samba funk they called it samba rock or simply black music. A bit confusing for the foreigners, I know, but that’s how they roll down there.
Compared to last week’s retro, mellow chill-out soul mix by The Ambassador, DJ Uilson’s hour-plus-change-long mixtape showcases the other side of ’70s Brazilian music, focusing more on the dance part (the title means “made for dancing”), but still it’s not straight up batucada madness for carnaval (and of course, nothing to do with the current favela funk scene).