Feminist movements in Carioca Funk

Funk.  Its throbbing, off-beat rhythms make your body want to move.  It's the magic spell that takes you over when you enter the nightclub or the exercise studio, grounding you, flowing through you, empowering you to cast off all of your worries and get into the groove.

In the mid 80s with the advent of Miami Bass and Hip Hop, Brazilian MCs visiting Miami brought those rhythms back to Brazil and created their own unique style, called Carioca Funk.

I grew up listening to those rhythms blasting from car steroes, boom boxes at the beach, and night clubs.  It is the defining sound of music in Brazil at this point.

Unfortunately, just like American Hip Hop lyrics, Brazilian funk lyrics have often spoken of women as mere playthings or worse.  While the rhythms get us all excited and are the soundtrack to a great time, the lyrics can be very disempowering for women.

But that is changing, both in America and Brazil.  Thanks to female Brazilian artists like like MC Rebecca and MC Carol, who sing explicitly about owning their sexual energy and fighting back against abuse, funk is becoming a source of womens' empowerment.

MC Rebecca's hit "Cai de Boca" - "Drop Your Mouth" - is about a woman guiding her man to give her pleasure through oral sex.   MC Carol sings about social consciousness, fighting back against abuse, and getting "woke" - dismissing Brazil's paternalistic, authoritarian education system.  This is good news. "Female singers are a mirror of the diversity we find across the Brazilian population, full of totally independent women, who are real fighters, mothers and much of the time the breadwinner," says Ronaldo Lemos, director of the Rio Institute for Technology and Society. "Such a woman doesn't want to be seen as a sexual object because this is not the reality."

The questionable election of openly sexist and racist Bolsanaro has further encouraged Brazilian women to own their power as breadwinners and nurturers but also to own their sexual power.

And at Flye we're not just about exercise.  We're about taking control of your sexuality, your body, your movements and making you as powerful in your life as you can be just like these funkeiras who are all about changing the old narrative.