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Music

Kafundó is the Latest Player in the Brazilian Bass Renaissance

Stream the rising label's second compilation of infectious Afro-Brazilian electronic music.

Easy stereotypes don't sit well with Kafundó, a new label of bass-heavy Brazilian beats. Their first compilation, released at the height of last year's World Cup, was a far cry from the silky lounge music with sultry bossa nova vocals beloved by soccer tourists and Starbucks. "Kafundó is motivated by ganja and backgammon," says Maga Bo, the American DJ/producer who runs the up-and-coming label alongside Wolfram Lange, the German mastermind behind the SoundGoods blog. Both are gringo-born, but have lived in Rio de Janeiro for over a decade, running a radio series and playing percussion for a local samba school. "We're looking for people who aren't just slapping a berimbau sample on top of a house beat."

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Now back with their second compilation--which you can stream exclusively above--the pair hopes to spotlight Brazilian electronic music that goes beyond the country's typical cultural hubs, the affluent corners of Rio and São Paulo. In fact, Kafundó is a play on the Portuguese word cafundó, a far away or isolated place. They describe the label's sound as "Afro-Brazilian electronic music with regional or folkloric elements to it."

On "Ajéumba$," a highlight of Kafundó Vol. 2, Mauro Telefunksoul pays homage to Salvador's Coretjo Afro, a historic black Carnival troupe, with chopped up horns. The cultural cross-pollination continues with the infectious "Ainda Dapadá," where FurmigaDub remixes a middle-aged countryside housewife's coco chants into a dubstep banger. Gaspar Z'Africa Brasil's "Rap na Palma da Mão" is another standout that shows off the improvisational lyrical battles of Brazil's dusty northeastern towns long before South Bronx-style rapping touched down.

The magic works best when the local hook isn't just texture, but gets to the core of the sound. "We want to work within these Afro-Brazilian rhythmic cells," Bo says. "With trap stuff, for example, we can find gems, but it's a really big challenge to integrate Afro-Brazilian rhythms into the trap music structure."

Bo and Lange cite the Buenos Aires label ZZK as an inspiration, looking up to the way it was able to serve as a platform for the Argentinian digital cumbia scene. Working in a horizontal distribution partnership with New York's Dutty Artz and offering a generous 50 percent cut to artists, they hope to do the same for their adopted country's strain of dance music in the international marketplace. "We are involved in the Brazilian music community and know most of these people personally," Bo explains. "We've worked or played with them, have some sort of history with them. In the future we would like to inspire artists to produce and release exclusively with us." For lovers of Brazil-inflected bass, Kafundó isn't an isolated place--it's a wonderful new home.