COLORSxSTUDIOS

COLORS: Baile funk is a male-dominated scene. Is it tough to be a woman in this context?

T&T: The music industry has always been oppressive for women, as has society in general. When women become visible in the funk scene, they are listened to: in funk, your appearance and age really don’t matter. It’s about your voice, your music, and people’s ability to access it. But it’s the question of access and distribution that’s the problem, as most funk studios are run by men. New technologies are making it easier for independent artists, including women, to create music at home on their phones and release it on the internet, cutting out the middleman and going straight to the public. So things are changing.

In reference to funk lyrics, they do often include a lot of putaria—a conservative Portuguese term referring to swear words or dirty words in music—but when women sing them it feels empowering. It’s not the same as when men sing them about women.

COLORS: Do you want to be role models for other women and girls in Brazil? We know that outside of music you have a blog, Expensive Shit, which celebrates Black women from the favelas. 

T&T: We are trying to be the reference that we wanted when we were teenagers, to sing the things that we needed to hear. We used to buy magazines and it was like looking into another reality. We wanted to see people like us, but there never seemed to be anyone or anything featured that was connected to our culture.

We want to make women feel like they can be independant. That’s the most important message we want to get across with everything we do. We sell the boss woman image for people like us from the favelas. We want to speak to the girls who work in supermarkets, or the girls who don’t have a lot of money, but that always manage to pay their bills, get their nails done, and that don’t need men to take care of them.