Summer School 2013 "Situating Media" - Participants
Leonardo Cardoso (Austin)
Sound-Politics in São Paulo: Funk and Youth Networks
This presentation discusses recent research on the emergence of a new type of funk in Brazil. São Paulo-based funk ostentação (ostentatious funk) is a sub-genre of funk carioca that has achieved remarkable popularity among youths across Brazil. Similar to funk carioca (from Rio de Janeiro), it grew and expanded among lower-class urban youth, outside conventional media such as Radio and TV. Whereas funk carioca has been condemned for its of 'pornographic' content and arguable links with drug traffic, "well-behaved" singers of ostentatious funk focus on social mobility as consumption power (from Johnny Walker whiskey to Hayabusa motorcycles). Using São Paulo's large nightclub infrastructure as an initial soundboard, and making strategic use of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, ostentatious funk astonishes by its ability to engage more young adherents than any other musical style in Brazil today. Four of the ten most viewed music videos on YouTube in 2012 are ostentatious funk songs. I argue that for the first time in the history of Brazilian popular music both online and offline communities have merged to celebrate a marginalized music production - interestingly, a phenomenon that emphasizes material abundance over deprival.
Leonardo Cardoso was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where he studied music composition at UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul). In 2005 he joined the Ethnomusicology Group at UFRGS. From 2005 to 2008 he participated in projects involving Afro-Brazilian and indigenous communities in Rio Grande do Sul. In 2008 he started my Master’s in ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin, under Prof. Veit Erlmann’s supervision. His interest in film sound led him to write a thesis on the experimental field of visual music in Los Angeles from an ethnographic perspective. His Ph.D. dissertation (also under Prof. Erlmann’s supervision) tackles the institutionalization of noise control and debates on funk as a controversial sound in São Paulo, Brazil. Leonardo has published in Society for Ethnomusicology Student News, Anthropology News and SoundingOut! In 2013 he taught the first undergraduate course on sound studies offered at UT.
Recent Publications
2012a: “Noise and Sustainability in São Paulo, Brazil,” in: Anthropology News, Anthropology
and Environment Section
http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/08/02/noise-and-sustainability-in-sao-paulo-brazil/
2012b: “Sound-politics in São Paulo, Brazil,” in: Sounding Out!
http://soundstudiesblog.com/ 2012/10/15/sound-politics-in-sao-paulo-brazil
For more information about Cardoso's work please visit www.leonardocardoso.me