Brazil exports baile funk at WOMEX, but its own curator asks who makes it

A visitor leans over an MPC, the sampler behind so much of funk's sound, and improvises a beat with Rafinha MPC. A few steps away, choreographer Arielle Macedo runs "Let's dance passinho", teaching the fast footwork that grew out of the funk scene. All of it fits into 24 square metres at WOMEX in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, where baile funk, the party and the rhythm born in the favelas of Rio and other Brazilian cities, gets its own exhibition at the world's biggest professional world music fair.

The show is called Baile Funk Invasion. It is presented by Embratur, Brazil's tourism promotion agency, together with Favela Sounds, a festival created in Brasília in 2016 that turns 10 this year. From 21 to 25 October, during the fair's 32nd edition, it traces funk from the Rio bailes to its global reach, anchored by a map of Brazil laid out by subgenre.

The sharpest note comes from inside the exhibition itself. Guilherme Tavares, artistic director of Favela Sounds and the show's curator, told Glau na Capital that funk's worldwide spread has not brought Brazilians along with it.

It is an unusual line to deliver at a stand built to promote a genre. Funk now travels without a passport, picked up and reworked far from the favelas, and the question Tavares raises is who gets to produce and circulate it once it leaves. The debate goes public on 22 October, when Rádio WOMEX broadcasts "Is Baile Funk here to stay?" with Deize Tigrona, as listed in the programme reported by the portal Mundo da Música.

Brazil has finally given funk an official address abroad; whether the beats heading out still carry Brazilian names is the part no exhibition can settle.