“Law for Whom?”: responding to sonic illegality in Brazil’s funk carioca

ABSTRACT

Music and sound constitute an important site of politics in Brazil. Debates about laws regulating music and performance--particularly when related to historically marginalized genres--provoke debates about citizenship, belonging and inequality. Despite being Brazil's most popular contemporary genre of music, funk carioca (funk from Rio de Janeiro) faces multiple legal challenges. Various state laws have criminalised or banned live performances of funk. Furthermore, funk producers and DJs flaunt copyright through intensive, unauthorized sampling of American hip-hop, freestyle, funk, and other genres. Despite pervasive sonic and musical illegality, funk musicians imagine the law as a source of protection which should work for them. In response to funk’s illegality, musicians focus on lawmaking to declare the genre popular Brazilian “culture” and on educating artists on copyright law.

KEYWORDS:

• Brazil
• copyright
• piracy
• law
• popular music
• citizenship

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Marina Peterson, Michael Siciliano, Leonardo Cardoso, Veit Erlmann, and my anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I italicise Brazilian funk to distinguish it from US funk.

2. Who Sampled: Exploring the DNA of Music. https://www.whosampled.com/DJ-Battery-Brain/8-Volt-Mix-(Long-Version)/samples/?cp = 2 (Accessed 1 February 2018).

3. BBC Brasil. “The Law Project of the Criminalisation of Funk Repeats the History of Samba, Capoeira and Rap.” Globo.com. https://g1.globo.com/musica/noticia/projeto-de-lei-de-criminalizacao-do-funk-repete-historia-do-samba-da-capoeira-e-do-rap.ghtml (Accessed 1 March 2018).

4. Funk é Lixo (Funk is Trash) http://funkelixo.com.br/social/sobre/ (accessed 1 March 2018).

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. “What is UPP,” http://www.upprj.com/index.php/o_que_e_upp (Accessed 1 March 2018).

8. Extra. “MC Beyonce Says She Was Threatened by Her Impresario and Announces End of Career.” Globo.com. https://extra.globo.com/tv-e-lazer/musica/mc-beyonce-diz-que-foi-ameacada-por-empresario-anuncia-fim-da-carreira-8107195.html (Accessed 20 March 2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [DDIG 1058768]; Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion, UC Irvine .

Notes on contributors

Alexandra Lippman

Alexandra Lippman is an Assistant Project Scientist in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. Her manuscript, Opening Culture: Intellectual Property, Piracy, and Pacification in Brazil explores how alternative intellectual property practices impact creativity, technology, and music. She has published in Anthropology Today, Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society and Norient, has several book chapters published by MIT Press, and co-edited a volume, Gaming the Metrics: Misconduct and Manipulation in Academic Research (MIT Press, 2019). She also engages with multimodal scholarship through sound performance and curation and founded the Sound Ethnography Project in 2010.