Another reason to finally learn some German for y´all Anglo Saxons out there is the new book “Funk The City”, which will be released by Berlin based publisher B_Books next week. “Funk The City” focuses on the urban every day life of Rio De Janeiro and Berlin and the subcultures of hip hop and baile funk that shape each city´s popular culture. In both cities, hip hop as well as baile funk are considered “ghetto” and associated with violence and marginality by the mainstream press. “Funk The City” asks: Do baile funk and hip hop represent a culture of urban action as resistance, with which the residents of the stigmatised favelas as well as Berlin immigrant quarters fight symbolically against their social marginalisation? Do they create more than “exotic” music and lifestyles or are they are a mere economic surplus which gets skimmed by the global cultural industries? “Funk The City” is based on year long researches and various interviews with activists from both cities, summarizing analyses, essays, talks, photos and lyrics of the sounds and cultural practice from the peripheries of Rio De Janeiro and Berlin. Featuring interviews with Mr.Catra, DJ Marlboro, Denise Garcia (director of “I´m Ugly But I´m Trendy”), myself and many others.

“FUNK THE CITY- SOUNDS UND STÄDTISCHES HANDELN AUS DEN PERIPHERIEN VON RIO DE JANEIRO UND BERLIN”
By Stephan Lanz/Gese Dorner/Katharina Gaber/Nele Harlan
Nadine Jäger/Sigurd Jennerjahn/Birke Otto/Swantje Plähn
Berlin, b_books, 2008

metroZones 9/b_books

218 Pages
ISBN 978-3-933557-91-9

Price: 18 €

Happy new year Man people. As a new year’s gift to you all I present the KL Jay Mixtape “Rotação 33″. KL Jay is the DJ for brazil’s biggest hip hop group Racionais MCs, who come from the favelas in the suburbs of São Paulo and whose songs potray quite harrowing scenes from the periferia and are chock full of ctiticism of the social situation in Brazil (all in Portuguese of course). They are into quite epic structures with songs typically stretching for 7-8 minutes and musically they are influenced by gangster rap but also RZA’s productions for WU-Tang Clan with heavily string laden backgrounds. One of the downsides of their popularity is that virtually every rap group that came out of São Paulo after them wanted to sound like them. And this is where the mixtape comes in as it mixes the old school of Braziilian Rap, De Leve, Costa a Costa, with the new school, Maloka S/A, Livia Cruz E as Camaradas, to show where Brazilian hip hop, rap, whatever is today.

My personal experiance of KL Jay was when I put on party with some friends a few years ago and KL Jay djed for us (racionais MCs had played in town the previous night). His Djing was pure old school funk, with him playing old funk, disco and soul tracks ( to a mainly bohemian white crowd) which must have been what they played in the 70s and 80s bailes in the periferias. he even slowed things down for couples to slow dance and was constantly chatting on the microphone between tracks – unbelievably he included “Grease is the word” by Frankie Valli in the set, and it sounded great!

Download Mix.

Pic and link courtesy of the ever-fantastic Trabalho Sujo.

kl-jay-19-humilde-mas-ligeiro-maloka-sa

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Apart from djing and producing, me and Dj Functionist also do a mix show called “Unlimited”, Monday to Friday from 2 -3 pm on radio FM4 in Austria. What I like about doing this show is that we pretty much get to play whatever we want; the challenge is to make it accesible and entertaining to your average daytime radio listener and simultaneously keeping it forward thinking and progressive for the music loving freaks who know and care about new music.

Another reason I love doing the radio is that we are 2 like minded djs on 4 turntables, which means that a lot of cool music experiments will happen live on radio, totally out of the blue. Just last week, as I was playing Dj Mujava’s “Township Funk” in my set, Functionist decides to slam on Missy’s “Lose Control” over the riddim. It sounded good in the set, so a couple days later Functionist decided to do a studio blend.

Dj Mujava vs. Missy Elliot – Township Funk Control (Dj Functionist blend)

Malcolm McLaren is known for being the ex-husband of Vivienne Westwood and the manager cum impressario making the Sex Pistols break punk rock on a global scale. Though one thing that history books largely neglect is that McLaren brought hip hop culture to European audiences. When the video to his song “Buffalo Gals” first aired in 1983 in Europe, armies of teenagers were single handedly introduced to a) scratching b) graffiti c) breakdancing d) postmodernism – with just one magic song. The accompanying album “Duck Rock”, conceived as a ficitional NY radio station run by the two MCs of the World´s Famous Supreme Team, in which Zulu music, Salsa, Electro Funk and Hillbilly songs got synthesized into a breathtaking mix is one of my personal top 5 albums of all time. If you want to understand where Man Rec´s 360 degree music approach is rooted – check Malcolm McLaren´s “Duck Rock” (produced by Trevor Horn, with a cover illustration of Keith Haring)

I´m eagerly awaiting the release of “Duck Rock – The Movie” on DVD. Does anyone know any release date?