Hip-hop met Rio de Janeiro and never stepped back
Hip-hop met Rio de Janeiro and never stepped back
Catherine Osborn spoke to The World about Rio's Charme dance culture and weekly dance meet-up after reporting on the iconic overpass event for Americas Quarterly.
I spoke to The World about this dance culture after reporting on the iconic overpass event for Americas Quarterly. Journalist Sofia Perpetua captured the scene on video. The event plays a major role in the cultural and racial imagination of Rio — a reference to it was even included in the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics.
Charme dance was born in the early '80s, in the waning years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, from a music circuit called the Black Rio Movement. The movement’s celebration of black pride made authorities so suspicious of political insurrection that they arrested one of its organizers. The name “charme” comes from a Black Rio DJs frequent charge to his dancers to relax their pace and turn on the charm to slow R&B hits from artists like Frankie Beverly and Maze, The Jones Girls and Al Johnson. Crowds adopted synchronized line dance moves seen in videos of American songs like the Electric Slide, and soon all-charme dances sprung up across the city...
