It was invented in Ro de Janeiro, bubbling with its sunshine, beaches, and the welcoming “jeitinho carioca” way of life (“Rio’s way”) that we could translate as a metaphor for how people from the urban city, especially in poor communities, navigate daily challenges in the face of inequalities, violence, and paradoxical beauty. They face these by finding clever (sometimes cheeky) solutions often born of necessity in a metropolis marked by stunning landscapes and a mix of humour, love, and resourcefulness that reflects its chaotic energy. As the singer and composer MC Carol states: “O funk é a voz da Quebrada.” (Funk is the voice of the periphery).
As a journalist, I want to illuminate how music journalism shapes public perceptions of Afro-Brazilian culture. We can’t comprehend baile funk without knowing its origins. Let me take you on a journey to Brazil, where I come from. In 1500, my homeland was recognised as a nation and became a Portuguese colony, which it remained until 1822. Despite its European discovery by Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the region for the Portuguese crown, millions of Indigenous people, like the Tupí-Guaraní and countless others, having come from Asia during the last Ice Age, lived there.
In the second half of the 16th century, the Portuguese enslaved native people to work on plantations and mines. The country saw a shift from Indigenous to African slavery as a result of diseases sickening and killing so many Indigenous people. It was a Portuguese colony for over 300 years, and in the first 67 years of its independence, it was an empire and monarchy rather than a republic.
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During the three centuries between 1550 and 1850, an estimated four million Africans were brought to Brazil, making it the country with the most significant slave population in the world at the start of the 19th century. It was the last in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw slavery, only doing so in 1888 with the Golden Law (Lei Áurea).
Enslaved people was forcibly taken from Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Sudan, Congo, Angola, Mozambique, and other parts of Africa. Rio de Janeiro and Salvador were the two biggest ports that received enslaved people in the trade. Brazil benefited greatly from Africa’s economic, cultural, and social contributions.
Examples of slavery have persisted since it was legally abolished. In 2022, the Ministry of Labour declared the most extended slavery case recorded in Brazil. A woman who spent 72 years in an exploitative situation in Rio de Janeiro was rescued after an anonymous complaint. The organisation warns that cases like hers, which occurred 134 years after the outlawing of slavery, are not uncommon.
There has been no compensation in any form, with slaved Africans left to live in poverty. Industrialisation driven by European immigration, as part of a program to whiten the population and replace Black labour, and soldiers returning from the bloody Canudos War—who had been promised land upon their return—resulted in the settlement of overcrowded tenement housing (cortiços), which became the precursors to favelas.
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