Tiago Pereira Simões

Biography

Tiago Pereira, originally from Covilhã, is a PhD candidate in Musical Sciences (Ethnomusicology) at Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas (NOVA University). At the same institution, he completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Musical Sciences. His Master’s research resulted in the dissertation “Is he the Eusébio of jazz?”: Jorge Lima Barreto and the discourses and practices surrounding jazz and “avant-garde music” in Portugal (1968–1982), as well as the book chapter co-authored with his supervisor, Dr. Pedro Roxo, ““Conceptual Jazz” and “Jazz-Off”: Avant-Garde, Globalization, and Personal Interpretations of Jazz in Portugal – The Legacy of Jorge Lima Barreto (1968–1974),” published in The Routledge Companion to Diasporic Jazz Studies (2025). He participated in the project “Timbila, Makwayela and Marrabenta: A Century of Musical Representation of Mozambique” (PTDC/CPC-MMU/6626/2014), coordinated by Dr. João Soeiro de Carvalho.

His doctoral research seeks to examine the practice, reception, and dissemination of what is emically referred to as “Brazilian Funk” in Portugal, and to investigate its role in the migration projects of Brazilian immigrants in the country, taking the bailes funk held in the Greater Lisbon area as its object of study.

Doctoral Project
Title
‘Brazilian Funk’ on this  side of the Atlantic: An Ethnography of  ‘Funk Dances’ in the Greater Lisbon

Supervisor
Pedro Roxo

Abstract

“Brazilian Funk” is the term used to designate the electronic musical practice that emerged in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro at the end of the twentieth century. Despite the apparent success of this genre in Portugal, Funk has not yet been the subject of study within Portuguese musicology. In order to contribute to the study of Brazilian musical practices in Portugal, Brazilian immigration in Portugal, and music in contexts of international migration, I will conduct an ethnography of “bailes funk”—parties where Funk is played, sung, and danced to—held in Greater Lisbon. The study will investigate how these “bailes” can serve as a means of negotiating questions of identity, belonging, and power within the dynamic context of migration.

Keywords: Brazilian Funk; Funk Dances; Migrations; Greater Lisbon.