ABSTRACT
An important phenomenon in the vast outskirts of global youth culture is the massive popularity of public funk dances in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, Bahia, two largely black and mestiço cities of a nation that has been defined by many as “extreme West” and that evokes associations with many other countries. 1 The present study is moved both by a curiosity for the ways the locals reinterpret the global and by concern with two troublesome positions in the study of subcultures, styles, and new forms of ethnic identity among young black people in the modern city.
