BEAT GENERATION
It’s late afternoon in Recife, a major city in Brazil’s northeast, and hundreds of young people have assembled in the city’s central point, Marco Zero. As the sun sets over the open plaza, bordered by neoclassical buildings, clusters of girls and boys in matching outfits move through synchronised steps. They spin, roll their shoulders and stamp their feet; flip-flops kick up dust, legs create shapes, bodies gyrate as sweat collects on arms and foreheads.
In front of an imposing phallic sculpture by Francisco Brennand, a celebrated cultural figure born to one of the city’s most powerful families, hundreds of young, poor and mostly black people are showcasing their own art. Portable speakers amplify a soundtrack of beats, bass lines and local slang. The sound is Bregafunk: a fast-growing genre native to the city and created with dance in mind. Rooted in the romantic Brega music (literally meaning ‘tacky’) of the 1980s, it has absorbed far-flung influences (everything from reggaeton to trap) before finding a pulse of its own: offbeat rhythms, clunking cowbells and kick drums that shake car windows even as the beat switches pattern.
In 2019, its spike in popularity has not only reached a wider audience but given rise to an accompanying dance craze: Passinho. The phenomenon is best summed up on the track.” (“This Passinho is new, and was born in the favela.”)
