Zuzuka Poderosa Takes Control

By Cluster Mag correspondent Alexis Stephens
Photo feature styled by Dalila Shannon

Zuzuka Poderosa is the the matchmaker among her friends. She told me so between wardrobe changes at Randolf and Varick in Bushwick; “it can get me into trouble sometimes.” That generosity, with a hint of mischief-making, says a lot about her knack for inventive and potentially explosive unions as a DJ, a cultural mash-up artist, and a raucous party instigator. Zuzuka Poderosa has the vision to see when good things make sense together and the power to blend them into something great.

Since she left for her Power Tour, she’s been bouncing between America’s metropolitan hubs, infecting listeners with a unique brand of globally cross-pollinated party rap, a cocktail of rave styles from the global South that she has come to call Carioca Bass.  In the past week she’s stolen shows and hearts at The Spot, the summer pop-up venue for “alt-Latin” online magazine Remezcla.com, and at Ghe20 G0th1k, the infamous warehouse happening that represents the bleeding edge of experimental dance music in New York City.

Zuzuka’s work sounds a lot like “Baile Funk”, otherwise known as “Funk Carioca”, the gritty, earth-shattering bass music cooked up in the urbanized outskirts of Brazil’s Rio De Janiero, a sound that developed a worldwide cult with its unique logic of sample, remix, and mash. With characteristic samples ranging from 808 beats of Miami bass in the 90s, to victory horns from the Rocky soundtrack to sounds of jet planes, accordions, and gun cocks, the original Carioca style exemplified the exciting mash-up culture of the mid-2000s. But Poderosa is not making Baile Funk, and that’s an important distinction. She calls what she does ‘Carioca Bass.’

Zuzuka wears vintage cropped top from the Grand St. Bakery, modified vintage fanny pack from Deconize by Ari Paoletti, necklaces and bracelet by Charlene Foster

“Carioca Bass is Funk Carioca mixed with Brooklyn bass music and other influences,” she says–”Brooklyn bass music” being her umbrella term for the diverse collection of urban dance music from Latin America and the Caribbean that local DJs and producers have brought in and reworked. With the open space that Baile Funk established for sampling, signifying, and clever re-appropriation, it makes sense that Zuzuka would revisit it under such an all-inclusive banner. Carioca bass is a genre Zuzuka invented; she raps and sings in the signature Baile Funk style over house, dancehall, Baltimore/Jersey club, dubstep, moombahton, and crunk. It is not just anyone that can draw from such a wide breadth of musical genres and movements and maintain creative control. She possesses a command and potency that makes almost anyone and anything sit up, listen, and even take orders.

Recently she has been closing all of her shows with an original vocal arrangement rapped over Dillon Francis’ dubstep remix of Bingo Players’ “When I Dip,” jumping off stage and directing the crowd to get down to the ground with her. The bass line itself is enough to make you arch your lower back, pop your bunda, and drop into a slow squat, but when Zuzuka turns her burning gaze onto you and yells “DIP, MOTHERFUCKER! DIP DIP, MOTHERFUCKER!!” sinking as low as possible becomes mandatory.  No matter which venue or town she’s in, the audience surrounding her eventually makes it to the floor.

“Zuzuka Poderosa. Poderosa means power. Zuzuka Power. It just makes sense. I feel like the shows are quite powerful, too. I feel like women feel powerful when they’re there dancing, when they’re getting down [to my music].  I feel like I am projecting all this to them and it is amazing all around — for the audience, not just me.” Pause. “I just want to bang it out.”

Zuzuka wears vintage Versace top from Grand St. Bakery, bracelets and earrings by Charlene Foster, oversized chain necklace by Bluebrow

“Banging it out” is exactly what she did under the futuristic green glow of the projectors at the Heineken-sponsored The Spot party in Nolita. That night Zuzuka opened for San Francisco’s Los Rakas and local singer/emcee Maluca. In addition to the weight of opening all of the evening’s performances, there were a few other quirky aesthetic issues that could have rattled Poderosa — an over-lit room, an Astroturf floor too squishy for dancing, a crowd of people passing around business cards, and a front row filled with press photographers.  But few things seem to intimidate her. She projected a confident and spectacular presence over the pallid glow of the sponsor’s advertisements, upstaging the posturing and strategic shoulder-rubbing of the crowd.

The themes of her songs are classically those of a street storyteller: sex, weed, and beats that make you dance. Even though most of her audience does not speak Portuguese, these themes get across through her composed gesticulations, her treasure chest of facial expressions, and her well-timed interjections: “Damelo!” “I just want to go wild tonight!” “Let the weed buuurn”, and “Are you into Carioca Bass?” all purred and roared in between Portuguese bars rapped in the typical Baile Funk cadence. In her set at The Spot, she highlighted tracks from the recent EP that she did with Sonora, DJ/producer in the Texan tropical crew Sonora Remezcla: Zuzuka Poderosa. “Ao Som Do Tamborzão (Sonora Remix)” is a slow club rumbler jocking the synth line of Reel 2 Real’s 90’s pop hit “I Like To Move It”, that bumped the room’s booty shaking scale up into the red. She moved on to “Thriller Beats”, an upbeat ode to her beat selection process, punctuated with refrains of boom cha cha and killer, ha ha ha.

The singularity of her style and her performances allow her the right to claim her own genre. It also slyly shifts her away from the associations that many people have with Baile Funk. Briefly, the predominant narrative surrounding the genre in “nu-whirled” circles was something along the lines of, “that is so 2005.” As the first force to circulate in a young, hip, broadband-powered World Music economy (what some have referred to as World Music 2.0 or “nu-whirled music”), it was eventually overtaken by more obscure, exotic “discoveries” that satiated the hipster’s taste for the next hardest edge of difference.  After the release of Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats and Favela on Blast, everyone with a BitTorrent client and a dream scurried to the internet to uncover the newest, hottest dance craze/riddim/genre tucked away within the concrete dancefloors and minimally-viewed YouTube videos of the African and Latin American ghettos of the first-world imaginary.  More positively, it was the motivational uniting force for a whole generation of beats-and-bass seekers.