Brazil is such a huge country with such a rich musical culture and diversity, new crazy trends and hybrid genres keep popping out every other day. If you were wondering what can be crazier than the Rio De Janeiro’s baile funk scene, just travel north and way into the Amazon jungle you’ll find the city of Belem, original birth place of the ’80s dance craze known as lambada and now tecno brega.
Tecno brega basically translates as tacky techno, and tacky it is indeed. But that’s the whole reason why it’s so much fun. Based on early ’90s techno beats with the addition of some very cheesy keyboards, the whole tecno brega movement pretty much revolves around bootleg remixes of current pop songs in brega versions. The scene stars are the remixers and the DJs with their sound systems and with out-of-this-planet stage structures that look like carnaval floats with neon lights and lasers. These DJ’s however are not too much into showing off mixing skills, but more into giving shout-outs on the mic. It’s like Mexican sonidero, on acid.
To be honest, tecno brega is not really a new thing. It’s been happening in Northern Brazil for a while now, the only reason it didn’t blow up commercially is because of copyright infringement, almost all the music is bootlegged, there are almost no official releases available, hence no record labels interested in promoting it. But things are changing and the new generations have brought to the scene artist who embrace the genre and use it to create their own original compositions too (well for the exception of these guys).
A recently released digital compilation titled Electro-Amazonas introduces us to a handful of songs by many of these new artists playing around with tecno brega beats and their own lyrics. Put together by the UK-based record label, Mais Um Discos, the compilation is one of the few commercially available tecno brega releases in the international market, so far. And here, for the first 100 lucky remezcleros who read this will have an exclusive link to a free download by tecno brega’s next diva Gaby Amarantos. Make sure to stream all the rest of the tracks in the comp as well as the previous releases by the label. Some very interesting stuff there.
Below, download Gaby Amarantos & Maderito’s “Festa Das Mulheres” for FREE: