John Gray Loves Funk!?!?

Little known fact: John Gray loves funk. Or at least funk loves him. Or at least funk loves his idea of different forms of capitalism. Or at least funk supports his idea of different forms of capitalism. Or at least...funk...capitalism...John Gray...something or other. In the "From the Great Transformation to the Global Free Market" chapter of his book, False Dawn, Gray states that the global free market is much more than the spread of American capitalism. The new global market has created various strains of capitalism which abide by their own rules and cooperate into a diverse world market. Gray points to Chinese and Russian capitalism as examples of non-American forms. He bases this argument on the different structural decisions of the founders of these regimes, but there is one other category that sets these forms apart and creates a fork in the road of capitalism where each country is forced to make its own choice and follow its own path. Now, you might be asking yourself right now, "well, Ben, how is he going to tie Brazilian funk into these differentiating forms of capitalism?". The answer is simple: funk is a siren which rings the distinct pitch of the Brazilian social situation. NO WAY could a purely American style of capitalism hope to stay in afloat in a nation where the distance between the rich and the poor is so polarized and, somehow at the same time, so blurred that the sons of playboy millionaires go to swanky high class clubs and listen to songs like "Som de Preto" which literally translated means "Song of the Blacks" and contains lines like "a sociedade pra gente não dá valor. Só querem nos criticar pensam que somos animais" which, translated, means "society does not give us value. They only consider us animals." The middle class in Brazil, while growing, is currently barely significant on a social scale, and the two cultures, rich and poor, are kept exclusive of one another in most ways besides funk. A society this torn, with polar disparity between the lavishly rich and the hopelessly poor, yet seemingly tied together by the appeal of funk music, is only compatible with its own distinct form of capitalism. Therefore, the Brazilian market is representative of this difference, with the incorporation and importance of the small business (the fruit stand, the small restaurant, the churrascaria). The poor mingle with the rich in the market, selling favela trinkets or home-cooked meat, but their spheres are drastically different. The economy is therefore similar to the culture: divided into polar opposites, yet blended together in some minuscule ways, which contradicts the American market that puts great importance on the consumption and production of the middle class (which has been virtually non-existent for the last hundred years in Brazil).