Rio de Janeiro's funk gains acceptance

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Rio de Janeiro’s rich, oceanfront promenades have their own music, made immortal in Bossa Nova tunes such as “The Girl from Ipanema.” Carioca funk, on the other hand, is the soundtrack to another city — the one that doesn’t make it onto postcards. As one hit tells it, funk is “black music, music from the favelas.”

Borrowing freely from Miami bass, rap, soul and other American genres, funk layers a frenetic rhythm with lyrics that describe the reality of Rio’s working poor: low wages, packed buses, dead-end jobs, the everyday threat of violence.