Is Portuguese The Language Of Dance Music?

Over on the Guardian’s arts blog, Danny McFaddern wonders whether the language of dance music is Portuguese. He says that Portuguese is creeping into our musical culture - whether we understand it or not:

I don’t speak Portuguese but perhaps more of us should: it appears to harbour ambitions to become dance music’s first language.

First it was Buraka Som Sistema - then playing a DJ/MC set at Manchester’s Tramp club. Biased towards Kuduro - a style reared in Angola - their sound had developed from African kids making their own stab at techno with that failure producing a hybrid that reflects both indigenous culture and “foreign” dance strains. Culminating in a fusion of zouk, soca and dancehall, a thriving scene over in Lisbon (the sometime ruler of the colony) had, in turn, infused touches of dubstep, drum’n'bass and fidget house elements from UK labels Dubsided and Counterfeet.

Meanwhile Buraka Som Sistema’s “progressive Kuduro” approach actually appears to be a close cousin of Brazil’s Baile Funk or Funk Carioca movement. Both genres identify fun, furious global music that’s worlds away from the stuff once popularised by Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon.

More: Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - music: Why the language of dance music is Portuguese