Chris Barbosa

Chris Barbosa is an American record producer from New York. He is credited with redefining electro-funk as Latin freestyle in the early 1980s with Shannon's "Let the Music Play".

In 1981, the Bronx-born Barbosa was a reporting DJ on New York's WKTU. This process entailed the radio station calling up select club and mobile DJs, who would then report to the radio station, these reports would determine which records were added to the station's playlist. Other DJs who participated in this process included Ralf Rivera (from New York City Mixology Disco Spinners) and Frank Forti Jr., whose variety show had a part in Twister’s huge success.

In 1983, an executive from Emergency Records named Sergio Cossa signed Barbosa to do production work with the record label. Some of Barbosa's musical influences were Arthur Baker and John Robie, the duo that invented electro funk with their production of Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock". Later that year, he teamed up with Mark Liggett to produce a vocal version of "Fire and Ice", the instrumental track of "Let the Music Play". They used a young R&B background vocalist named Brenda Shannon Greene, later changing her name to simply Shannon. This track was produced differently from the rest of the electro-funk records. It had a more Latin American-based rhythm with a heavy syncopated drum sound than the records produced by Baker and Robie. This style of electro funk was defined as "freestyle" because of the way it was produced and mixed. Barbosa is widely credited as the genre's founder.

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