Colombian Karol G, winner of the Latin Grammy for best album of the year, spent the year filling stadiums in Latin America and the US and is now preparing to repeat the feat in Europe. Her tickets for her concert at the Santiago Bernabéu in Madrid were sold out in seven minutes. In Brazil, however, a country bordering her homeland, she is unknown to the vast majority. It is not something new: Brazil lives behind the rest of Latin America in many aspects, also in music. Portuguese is the most obvious barrier, but it is not the only factor. Now, with the world definitively surrendered to reggaeton, the indifference towards what is happening in neighboring countries is even more clamorous. Brazil is going about its business.
Among the 150 most listened to artists of 2023 on Spotify Brazil, none appear singing in Spanish. The absolute queen was Ana Castela, a very young sertanejo singer. This genre, a kind of Brazilian country where lyrics about cuckolding, love disappointments and nights of sleep abound. cachaça to drown the sorrows, it grew like foam in recent years and is now almost a monoculture. Sertanejo dominates the list of the ten most listened to artists of the year in Brazil. The only foreigner in that select group is Taylor Swift. In her great year, the Brazilians had the detail of making a place for her in ninth position.
Brazil has difficulties listening to music in Spanish and this has been the case for a long time, comments Analía Chernavsky, professor at the Federal University of Latin American Integration (UNILA) of Foz de Iguazú, who admits that the phenomenon, despite being known to everyone, It is very little studied in the academic field. “In addition to the language barrier, there is a shared historical narrative among Spanish-speaking Latin American countries in which Brazil does not participate. In teaching, Brazil is always told as an aside, and that ends up forming the musical culture,” she comments by phone.
There is another key factor: Brazil, with more than 210 million inhabitants and a powerful cultural diversity, has a vast musical wealth and an industry that makes the country self-sufficient. The sertanejo is now the king and lord, but there are genres for all tastes, and all made in Brazil: from samba, pagode and bossa nova to piseiro, axé, frevo, forró, tecnobrega, arrocha or the great umbrella that is Brazilian Popular Music (MPB). For its part, Brazil even has a large scene of drag queen divas, like Pabllo Vittar or Gloria Groove, true stars that attract the masses.
Funk deserves a separate chapter, the booming sound born in the favelas and peripheries of Rio de Janeiro. The strength of funk, in fact, with names that have brought it to the mainstream through pop for all audiences, such as Anitta or Ludmilla, is one of the main containment dams that prevents the entry of reggaeton in Brazil. “It is an idea of self-sufficiency. The Brazilian market produces and consumes right here, it is self-sufficient. Brazilian funk is correlative to the reggaeton of the Latin American environment. It is the same niche,” says the specialist.
The perreo genre is experiencing a golden era. Listening to reggaeton increased by 95% worldwide between 2019 and 2023. In Colombia it was an explosion: a growth of 333%, according to Spotify data. But Brazil did not surrender to that boom. Maluma or J Balvin had relative success a few years ago, but after collaborating with Anitta, the great national star, and taking risks with Portuguese versions. They didn't finish curdling.
Anitta, in fact, represents well those two worlds that do not understand each other. The Brazilian wanted to make the world known about the funk she grew up with in a neighborhood in the north of Rio, but she hasn't had it easy. Her biggest hit so far, Wrap, It is a reggaeton sung in Spanish. Spanish speakers find it difficult to listen to funk, and Brazilians find it difficult to listen to reggaeton. Anitta seems to have found her definitive strategy in her Pan-American evangelizing mission and now she gives each audience what they ask for. She has just released two singles at the same time: for the Spanish market, reggaeton Bellakeo, with the Mexican Featherweight. For Brazilians, funk Play for Lua, with the Brazilians Dennis and Pedro Sampaio. A summer song for every market and full stop.
“I think the last song in Spanish that was successful in Brazil was Slowly“, confesses somewhat embarrassed Isabel Amorim, executive superintendent of ECAD, the Brazilian entity that manages copyrights. Luis Fonsi's hit dates back to 2017. In Brazil it began to sound louder thanks to the English remix in which Justin Bieber participated. Even so, it barely managed to be the 29th most played song on Brazilian radio that year.
The greater permeability towards English than towards Spanish also occurs with Latin artists who sing in both languages. A curious case is that of Shakira. Brazilians sing the Waka Waka in its English version. And although “women no longer cry, women make money”, Brazil has not paid much attention to the Colombian's attacks on Gerard Piqué in the hits he released in recent months. At parties in Brazil, the Shakira song that unleashes excited loud chants continues to be I'm herewho is no more and no less than 28 years old.
Just like in much of the world after the pandemic, this year Brazil registered exponential growth in concerts and festivals. The ECAD gave licenses for 34,156 concerts, 50.3% more than in 2022. It is often said that Brazil is far from international music circuits and that for foreign artists visiting this continental-sized country is sometimes not profitable, but in the In recent months, Coldplay, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Weeknd, Taylor Swift, Roger Waters and Paul McCartney, among many others, have passed through Brazil.
Latin American artists are once again the great absentees. Last year, Bad Bunny took his world tour to 15 Latin American stadiums, but bypassed Brazil. It simply doesn't pay off, because there is no demand. Karol G, the latest bombshell of Latin music, will give a single concert in Brazil in May, in São Paulo, in a room with capacity for 8,000 people. Meanwhile, the incombustible Ivete Sangalo, one of Brazil's most beloved singers, has just filled the Maracaná stadium in Rio de Janeiro to celebrate her 30-year career.
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