[ANPPOM-Lista] don blanquito, funkeiro carioca da califórnia no nyt

[Carlos Palombini]

NOVA IGUAÇU, Brazil — The train to this city on Rio de Janeiro’s edge
carries passengers from the urban underclass chasing dreams big and small:
teenagers trying out for a soccer club, a maid studying to be a nurse, a
knife salesman plying his trade in the aisles.

Then there is the 30-year-old American in a U.C.L.A. Bruins shirt, equipped
with an M.B.A. and a fluency in Portuguese that one acquires only in Rio’s
favelas, or slums.

“That’s Don Blanquito,” said Claudia de Oliveira, 21, a commuter who smiled
in admiration of the American before stepping off the train in the Mesquita
district. “He’s the most courageous gringo in all of Rio.”

It is not every day that an American gains household-name status in Rio’s
gritty periphery, much less with a nickname that translates roughly as “Sir
Whiteboy.” It is even rarer that he does so as a singer and a composer of
Brazilian funk, a musical genre that emerged in the favelas.

But Don Blanquito, whose real name is Alex Cutler, is not just any
American.

“I know it must seem insane to find a white guy from California in this
scene,” said Mr. Cutler, who earned an undergraduate degree from
Northeastern University and an M.B.A. from Pompeu Fabra University in
Barcelona. “I could’ve gone to Wall Street, eating at Nobu every night. But
the funk world is where I found myself.”

Brazilian funk, not to be confused with the classic sounds of James Brown
or Parliament-Funkadelic, is American hip-hop’s rapid-fire cousin,
influenced by the Miami Bass style in the United States while blending in
elements of local rap, samba and techno.

The result, with lyrics that often graphically celebrate the sensuality of
Rio’s women and the exploits of its drug lords, is not for the faint of
heart. Samples of machine-gun fire are blended into prerecorded beats, and
some funk shows have turned into riotous bacchanals.

The most explicitly violent songs, those considered by the Brazilian police
to incite violence, are illegal, putting them in a league with other Latin
American outlaw musical genres like Colombia’s “prohibited
ballads<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/world/americas/05colombia.html>,”
which celebrate guerrillas and paramilitary warlords.

In a musical subculture that still frightens and fascinates many residents
of the self-described noble seaside districts literally in the shadow of
Rio’s hillside favelas, Mr. Cutler talks the talk. His Portuguese flows
with roguish street terminology and self-deprecating wisecracks, a
stream-of-consciousness commentary that would merit at least an R rating.

And unlike many fair-weather foreigners who frequent Rio for its beaches,
he also walks the walk. He performs here in the gritty city of Nova Iguaçu
and other sketchy parts of the Baixada Fluminense, the patchwork of poor
districts on Rio’s periphery. He has put down stakes in Tabajaras, a favela
perched atop Copacabana, where he paid $20,000 in cash for a tiny house
where he lives with his girlfriend, Yasmin Leiros.

Tabajaras is a long way from Los Angeles, where Mr. Cutler was raised in an
affluent Jewish household, before attending
Berkshire<http://www.berkshireschool.org/>,
a Massachusetts boarding school. (His Anglo-sounding surname, he jokes, was
changed by an ancestor who emigrated from Russia, thinking it sounded like
“cutlery.”)

Mr. Cutler clawed his way into the funk world from the ground level, after
earlier efforts rapping in Spanish in the United States and then the
Dominican Republic. He said he was drawn to rap, and later to funk, by the
sense of incomparable adventure these genres offered compared with working
in an office. The brother of a Dominican girlfriend christened him Don
Blanquito, a name he kept.

After moving here four years ago, Mr. Cutler traveled by bus and train each
weekend to the Baixada Fluminense, where he distributed his music to
prominent D.J.’s. Cutting his teeth in these clubs, ducking bullets
sometimes when gunfights broke out, he says he found his calling.

He relies on what he calls guerrilla marketing, passing out CDs to
passengers on train cars, as well as T-shirts and condoms emblazoned with
“Don Blanquito.”

“I want my fans to laugh a little and remember me, even if it’s during one
of those intimate moments,” he explained.

Humor also offers a way to co-opt the comic incongruity of his position.
When specialists in Rio’s funk scene hear his unlikely tale, they expect to
encounter some type of gagman, or a white foreign provocateur appropriating
a largely black music scene, an Eminem or an Ali G, the satirical hip-hop
poseur created by the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

During a recent show at a club in São João de Meriti, jaws dropped among
some who did not know what to make of the American on stage.

But Mr. Cutler overcame the skepticism. Some of his appeal has to do with
the novelty of an American in quarters where few foreigners dare to tread.
Some fans like the way he glorifies big appetites for Brazil’s sensual
pursuits or the gyrating female dancers accompanying him.

“Don Blanquito’s coming at it from the bottom up, not imposing his own
aesthetic as much as possible, but working within existing structures to
make his music,” said Paul
Sneed<http://www2.ku.edu/%CB%9Cspanport/people/faculty/psneed.shtml>,
a professor at the University of Kansas who has written widely on Brazilian
funk.

His success has made him something of a celebrity. On Rio’s streets, fans
rush up to take photos with him on their cellphones. A performance on a
prominent television talk show in February brightened his star.

“I trended ahead of Qaddafi on Twitter that day,” he said with typical
bravado.

While Mr. Cutler specializes in what he calls “funk light,” emphasizing
racy lyrics but eschewing the celebration of violence, he knows that the
broader funk scene is evolving as Rio’s favelas are increasingly pacified
by security forces, squeezing out the rawer, more bellicose singers favored
by drug traffickers and their minions.

He is contemplative about the changing nature of funk, even acknowledging
that his own days performing it may be numbered, despite the new
opportunities for purveyors of “funk light.” Maybe it has something to do
with the realization that fame is fleeting. Maybe it involves turning 30 in
a young man’s world. And maybe it is because, despite his celebrity, making
ends meet as a funk singer is not easy.

He has already diversified, taking a day job selling event equipment for a
multinational.

But his heart remains in the slums where funk was born. He is buying a
bigger house in Tabajaras, a pacified
favela<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/world/americas/authorities-take-control-of-rios-largest-slum.html?ref=simonromero>.
A shabby affair commanding a stunning view, the property befits a figure
who cracked Rio’s code.

“I’m staying in the favela,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll sing funk
forever, but I know what it’s like to do music that trembles your soul.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/world/americas/don-blanquito-funk-star-and-rios-bravest-gringo.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

    A version of this article appeared in print on December 26, 2011, on
page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Californian With an
M.B.A. Follows His Heart to Brazilian Funk.
  --
carlos palombini
www.researcherid.com/rid/F-7345-2011
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