Hey DJ

Diplo talks about Brazil, baile funk and his documentary "Favela on Blast."

What would you want from this film? Your work’s already brought a lot of attention outside of Brazil to this type of music. What can a film do that that can’t?

People that are interested in the music side of it are our peers, like, kids. It might get featured in Rolling Stone, but it’s always a footnote. If anything, the film can give it a real hardcore footprint, so everybody can trace back — what is this baile funk? The artists down there aren’t doing a very good job of archiving it. Almost everything is on WMA files on the internet, and half the guys don’t even know what the tracks are.

It’s such a ghetto music that it doesn’t have a real shelf life like the rest of Brazilian music. It’s starting to be that way. There’re a few compilations, Caetano Veloso or Hermano Vianna, those guys are into it because they’re interested in new Brazilian music. But it’s like — Snoop Dogg, how do I get in touch with Snoop Dogg? There’s a way to get in touch with him. With a lot of funk guys, [there isn't.] You have to chase them down or look at a flyer. Even the manager is not going to know what the hell is going on.

Did you stay in the favelas at all?

There was a guy, when we first started the film, who actually lived in Rocinha, and I would go there to stay with him — that was kind of more towards the road. But other than that, we were just staying at Leandro’s friend’s house, different neighborhoods.

We actually went on a safari in some favela. We were hoping we could do some exposé of how ridiculous [it was] — they would bring people, the tourists, into the favelas and walk them around. We shot the whole thing.

Does that happen a lot?

Yeah, it’s probably three rides a day into Rocinha. You drive around in a safari truck. [laughs] You stop and this guy paints a picture, like “I am just a simple man. I paint my picture here in the favela.” We were filming it and no one would sign a clearance form, but the people were so cool, we couldn’t even really make them look bad. We were like, damn, we just wasted all this money riding this stupid freakin’ ride.

I feel like every travel book advises you not to go into the favelas, that you wouldn’t be welcome.

If you get robbed, you’re going to get robbed in the nice neighborhoods, because that’s what they’re looking… they’re not looking for people to rob in the favela, you know? But some situations, three years from now, I’ll probably look back and be like, what the fuck was I thinking?

So tell me about one.

This one guy was like, let me take you around this place called Coreia, a favela after the name of the country. We get there, all the kids are knocking on his windows. We stop and he sings a song and kids follow him around, it’s this awesome shot, we were all happy. Heading out, we get stopped by this guy on a bike with a gun showing out of his pants. He’s like, “You can’t leave yet. What are you doing? You have to come to our party.” We didn’t know what was going on. We were like okay, let’s just be cool with it.

We go deep into the heart of this favela and the place where the headquarters are — there’s like giant bags of cocaine all over the place. [Leandro interjects: "80 little kids with machine guns."] We’re super frightened. Then they start cooking barbecue. They actually invited us to a party. [laughs]

They had a karaoke machine for all the kids, with their guns, and they had swimtrunks on, singing Ja Rule tracks, like “There’s an American here! Bring him over! Do you know Ja Rule!?! Do you know 50 Cent?” I’m like… I guess I know those guys. They’re like, “Yes!!!” Singing off this arcade game. Just bizarre. Totally bizarre. Like it’s the apocalypse or something.

[Additional photos: "Favela on Blast," Mad Decent/Mosquito Project, 2009]

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