The Ministry Of Funny Beats
Funny beats! Tied to riffs that resolutely don't go anywhere, but don't go away, either. There've been several of these recently, all Brazilian funk, all fluttering around the number 10 spot on my 2023 singles list. Each is a combination of funny peculiar and funny ha-ha, at least to my various and peculiar funny bones.
Not the same funny beat on each, though – these all seem like one-offs, not particularly sounding like each other and probably not even in conversation with one another.
And it's not always the beat itself that's the "funny beat." Sometimes it's the riff, or several riffs that intertwine with the rhythm so as to wave the funny flag on the rhythm's behalf.
Jiraya Uai, MC Tarapi – Hoje Tem Rodeio, Baile De Favela
I've slotted this in my mind as a Dave Moore tip, though it doesn't seem to be on his 2023 playlist. I don't have a name for this track's musical style – Google Translate says "Today there's a rodeo, a favela dance," and perhaps the cowboy hats are meant to signal sertanejo, a rural-identified genre I have no sense of. The music on this seems pretty radical and experimental. What puts this in the funny category is its folkish-countryish tendency, the snaking gtr line and the two (!) harmonica parts (one sucking in and the other blowing out). And to call the guitar "folk" or "country" fails to communicate the psychological sense it has for me: it's the sort of line I'd have sold my kidney to write in 1979 when I was listening hard to Miles Davis's On The Corner and even more to "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose"–era James Brown and trying to twist those into something stranger and more destabilizing, aspiring to create a kind of no wave that wouldn't necessarily be abrasion so much as the feeling when you suddenly go into a roller-coaster drop.
Mary Apelona, MC Boyugo – O Apelão Me Convocou
It's a classic "accordion" part except it's perching like a dazed bird atop a tuba. The two vocalists do a low-affect version of the same thing.
"Classic"? Well, I'm being silly. In suspense movies it's not an accordion but a flute or recorder or piccolo that plays the pretty melody, which is made stereotypically eerie by being thrown off-key against its musical surroundings. In this song, half-a-minute in, the instrument (whatever it is) lands emphatically on a sour note, which recurs often enough that when turned off it's still present, poised to inflict itself again – which it finally does, two minutes in.
(Actually, it's probably a keyboard setting.)
Yuri Redicopa & DJ Bnão – Bebê Tá Solta
Is one of those piano lines that you get in movies that are trying to evoke the 1910s or the 1890s but, as Dave says, used in a compulsively nondevelopmental manner, so, as he also says, it keeps promising to fall into a trot or a basic goofy post-disco no-speak-americano Austral-Romanian Empire* dance, but stops on the brink.
MC 2K, Almir Delas, DJ Samuk – Tropa Do Arranca Pix
Our unexpected beat here is the rockabilly bass. This also has its compulsively nondevelopmental aspects – all the instrumental parts except the drums – but they're not functioning as dance bohemia experimentation but just as regular Brazilian backdrop that allows the vocalists to declaim and grunt and giggle.
A couple tracks from 2022 that are relevant:
L7nnon & Biel Do Furduncinho – Ai Preto
Maybe the silliest beat is to have no beat at all. Seems radical, but this one's been racking up the streams.
MC's Pett & Bobii, DJ TS, DJ Duarte, DJ TN Beat – Foca Bebê/Vai Pagar Pra Ver
Train keeps chugging along, the little engine that's sure it can, always goin' round the mountain but always finding itself back where it started.
As I said above, what I'm gathering here aren't trends or any common beats; rather, they're just part of the variety that the ocean of funk tosses up onto the shore.
*Trot is sort of a Korean disco or two-step for old people and traditionalists (trot being much older than disco), but young people (LPG) play around with it, sometimes as a vehicle for acting like they're goofing off and having fun. Orange Caramel, on the song "Lipstick," hopped from trot to a beat that was breaking internationally, from Romania (Alexandra Stan's "Mr. Saxobeat") to Poland (Bueno Clinic's "Sex Appeal," a club hit in Korea), on through the French and Italian Riviera to Puerto Rico to Seoul to – not incidentally – Australia, from which emanated the "We No Speak Americano" of which Dave speaks. I don't think the beat had a particular name. It was bouncy and dancey, a 1,2,3,4 but with a spring to it. This description could apply to thousands of things, of course, but back in 2012 I did a write-up ("The Austral-Romanian Empire") and a playlist. As far as I know, however, this style didn't hit in Brazil, but since I actually don't know much farther than the tip of my eyebrows, the beat may well have not only hit in Brazil but flowered, permutated, and fermented there.
A lightning-fast YouTube search brings me this (Wanted no Beat's bregadeira remix of "Mr. Saxobeat"), but it isn't a flowering or permutation, rather just an international hit being stapled to a local rhythm. I like it, though, the Bahia Branch Office of The Ministry Of Silly Saxobeats. Every section of the song feels like it's being cut short, truncated. And half a minute in they get rid of the saxophone. How can you do that? Get rid of the Saxobeat saxophone? By substituting in for it a cheap brega-ass synth, that's how.
Meta paragraph for Substack: "Funny beats! Tied to riffs that resolutely don't go anywhere, but don't go away, either." That didn't seem right. Sounded like a young writer, pushing for effects. So, I thought of changing to, "Funny beats, tied to riffs that resolutely don't go anywhere, but don't go away, either." Steadier, matter-of-fact, more assured. Thought about it a couple more seconds and decided to stick with the young writer, pushing for effects.
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