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Braziliant
DJ Marlboro brings Rio to the Cape
BY CHRIS NELSON

Let me get all Bob Ross and paint a picture for you: imagine a hillside shanty town in Rio de Janeiro, filthy, drug-addled, and generally lacking any sort of infrastructure. In that village — or favela, if you’re nasty — picture a packed warehouse with jacked electricity, kids with CDJs playing a vicious hybrid of rap, funk, and Miami bass, with lyrics so base and filthy that the music is outlawed in some regions. Now consider the polar opposite of that place and you’re probably pretty close to Hyannis, Massachusetts. Oh, but keep the music.

Legendary summer home to the Kennedys and plenty of other rich old white guys, Hyannis is the last place on earth you’d expect to hear baile funk, Rio’s equivalent of crunk. But hear it we did last Sunday night, when Brazil’s DJ Marlboro made a low-key stopover at Pufferbellies. A bizarre, out-of-the-way "entertainment complex" best known for its wacky name and its location next to some abandoned railroad cars, Pufferbellies would seem a strange choice of venue for Marlboro. After all, baile is enjoying a renaissance right now, thanks in part to cultural cross-pollination by American DJs like Diplo and Paul Devro. (Diplo even borrowed some chopped-up Rocky horns from a Marlboro cut for "Bucky Done Gun," the track he produced for this year’s M.I.A. album, Arular.) With a new-found following hungry to hear in a club what they’d been able only to download, Marlboro — a 15-plus year veteran of the Rio scene and the generally acknowledged king of modern baile funk — could easily have sold out a smaller club in Boston, and generated some additional hipster buzz along the way. But the man has seen baile flux before, and he knows where the music’s heart is.

That’s not to say there wasn’t some hipster spillover — security dudes and promoters alike were confused at the sudden rush of bespectacled chaps in tight-fitting T-shirts. (Guy checking IDs at the door: "You know it’s Brazilian Night . . . right?") But a party’s a party, and though the crowd was slow to trickle in, by 11, it was certified buck wild. Granddaughters of all races and creeds and grandmothers who’d borrowed their clothes — a style we’ll deem "tasteful hoochie" — lined up outside well after the music had started, eager to get through the metal detector and start windin’. And even through a sometimes-sputtering sound system and heaps of man-made fog, Marlboro did not disappoint. Strapped only with a pair of CDJs and a slew of no-label burnt discs, he delivered a set full of baile’s trademarks: entirely unknown MCs (some even with MCing skills!) and twitch-inducing beats that get up in your grill like your drunk uncle on the Fourth of July and just dare you not to dance. Not being one to let things go stale, Marlboro tossed in a few wink-nodding surprises, noticeably his own remix of a track by M.I.A. So though people might doubt the realness of those enjoying baile outside the places that spawned it, you have to appreciate the opportunity to experience it close to home — and in a region of the world where cops won’t bust up the party. At least for now.

Chris Nelson can be reached at chris@lemon-red.org


Issue Date: June 10 - 16, 2005
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