Tropa de Cultura

Even if it's old news in Brazil, I'm due to provide a refresher on Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad in English). It was directed by José Padilha as the second film in a trio that began with Bus 174, the documentary of a hostage taking on a Rio bus that was captured by national TV to disastrous results. His cinematic vision is to tackle the city's central pressing issues -- violent crime, the drug trade, police corruption and brutality. In Tropa de Elite, he focuses on the BOPE, Rio's equivalent of a SWAT team, that conducts intense operations in favelas -- usually with callous disregard for human life. Shoot first, ask questions later, as it were. Their ostentatiously violent symbol makes that abundantly clear ("It looks like a biker gang in the third reich.")

I first watched it in Rocinha with some 2Bros folks, where the scene portraying BOPE invasions of the favela were eerily similar to real life. We had a pirated copy that had leaked in August 2007, just a week or two before my departure. It had already spread like wildfire, and by the time of its official release in October, it was seen by a reported 11.5 million Brazilians. Not much the copyright police can do about that.

Most interestingly, it was equally popular among all strata of society, but for opposite reasons. Favelados were on the side of the victimized favelados as well as cavalier gangsters, and a friend of a friend was proud to have been an extra as a bandido. The middle and upper classes were taken by protagonist Capitão Nascimento, whose strongarm, torture tactics elicited applause in movie houses.

In a country whose moneyed interests frequently feel that the drug trade can only be reined in by extra-legal measures, Nascimento's take no prisoners attitude made him, as this magazine cover argues, a new national hero.

Padilha cannily rejects any claims that his film endorses either side of the debate. I saw him speak at the Harvard Film Archive last spring, where he maintained the position that the film was a portrayal designed to spark dialogue, not a polemic. In short, he's let the film be a mirror on its viewers' own prejudices and opinions about the power relations in Rio.

I don't think a strong-willed director tackling such challenging subjects should get off so easily. Surely there was some authorial intent. For one, the group that comes off the most negatively in the film are the wealthy college students who patronize the drug trade -- they provide the funds that keep the whole operation going, much to the detriment of folks who live just a few miles away up in the hills (on a longer scale, Colombia is taking the anti-cocaine message to middle-class Europeans).

Those folks, meanwhile, get their fair due of fun for a brief moment at the beginning of the film, with a stellar baile funk scene that tragically ends in a police-gang shootout. It's chopped up by the opening credits, as you can see in this trailer, but the shots come the closest I've seen on screen to a baile funk, or at least one c. 1997.



I say 1997 because that's the setting of the film, not too long after Rocinha brothers Júnior and Leonardo popularized one of the classics of funk carioca, "Rap das Armas," which they sing live in this opening scene. I documented a recent acapella usage and linktubed to a Yo! MTV Raps-esque version during my Rocinha sojourn. The popularity of "Rap das Armas" as the theme song to the film was a real turn of fortunes for Júnior and Leonardo, who I met around the same time in August 2007 just as they were preparing to tour Europe in advance of the film's release there. After skyrocketing to fame in the early '90s, they became increasingly impoverished until they were reduced to driving a taxi cab on 12-hour shifts each, so the car was constantly in rotation. Now they're back in the driver's seat, so to speak, as funk MCs.

MC Júnior & MC Leonardo - Rap das Armas (Versão Tropa de Elite) by gregzinho

This version is from the official Tropa de Elite soundtrack, which amazingly is on sale stateside, as is the DVD. It cycled around some film festivals in the U.S. this year, but I never saw it make much of a splash in wide release. I was convinced it would become the next City of God, a lush but violent film about Rio, set to further fix foreigners' minds that the city is a violent nightmare. I guess I was wrong. But if you don't want to shell out for the official copy, you can see it for yourself with English subtitles.

With such broad appeal, meanwhile, it was only a matter of time before edits/dubs/remixes trickled out of the Brazilian webosphere. In fact, to permit a cross-linguistic pun -- Tropa became a trope, its catch phrases and music trotted out in all manner of remix culture fashion. Below is a sampling of the samples --

• Capitão Nascimento viciously berates his wife as his battles in the field increasingly rattle him. He created a new slang term, "Quem manda nessa porra sou eu" (I'm the one who controls this shit), that caught on rapidly, enough to become remixed as a funk track.
  

Cabide DJ e Duim DJ - Quem Manda Nessa Porra (Tropa de Elite) by gregzinho

• A Fakeipedia page on Capitão Nascimento

• Brazilian humor site Kibe Loco has some video remixes cobbling together scenes from the film with tamborzão, crunchy guitar (and in the first, the riff from "Seven Nation Army"), and popular lines from the movie. The stutter-start chopped scenes actually recreate the funk vocal sampling technique with some accuracy.
  

• "What if Capitão Nascimento had read Convergence Culture?" In a little meta-tropa, Xiaochang Li at MIT puts a comparative media debate in the subtitled mouths of BOPE's finest.

Mnml do Morro

Brasil still on my mind -- stripped down & sped up.

First, there was some percussive ferocity lingering in my inbox, c/o Daniel D'Errico. He plays in Boston's BatukAxé, a drum group led by Bahian Marcus Santos. Up above, they're playing at the "Welcoming New Bostonians" event, holding it down for the constant stream of Brazucas coming to the Bean. (Daniel is the odd one out in the yellow shirt.)

BatukAxé (Marcus Santos' Bateria) by gregzinho

Then wayne&wax tipped me off to Discobelle's most recent Mixin' It Up by DJ Downtown of Helsinki (what is it with the Finns?! tropical living vicariously through funk carioca?) The opening track is a stripped down version of "Rap das Armas", the ever controversial and ever misinterpreted telling-it-like-it-is funk track. This version sounds like the one re-recorded for Tropa de Elite, which I shamefully never blogged about, although you can read up on all the fuss from last year over at the now defunct BOPE Blog.

Electoral Maps

It's an off-year election season in Brazil, too, where my man Cabide DJ actually ran for vereador (selectman or alderman) of his town, São Gonçalo, just over the Guanabara Bay from Rio proper. Unfortunately, he didn't make it past the primary, but I don't think we need to worry about him quitting his day (night?) job: being O No. 1 Sampler do Brasil. See him live at the Milky Way in just a couple hours.

That said, a friend recently sent me an interesting campaign tool released by Fernando Gabeira, PV (Green Party) candidate for mayor of Rio. He's most famous for having helped kidnap the American ambassador in 1968 to protest the military dictatorship, which resulted in his exile (the event was later made into an Oscar-winning movie, "Four Days in September"). Gabeira has since given up armed revolution for politics, however, although his cultural revolution continued on Rio's beaches. After a distinguished career as a deputy, hopefully his strident leftist voice will now put him in charge of the city.

Like any mayoral candidate, he wants to address the overwhelming issue of the criminal factions that run the drug trade. How anyone is going to stem that tide is beyond me, but if calling a spade a spade is a start, then he's on his way:


Exibir mapa ampliado


This is a map of all the favelas in Rio, color coded by the ruling faction (one of the three gangs, or independent vigilantes called milícias. There are symbols for recent flare ups as well. Laying it out like that is a very stark -- and very powerful -- method of recognizing the scope of the problem. I wish him luck on Sunday.

p.s. On a lighter note, there are several Barack Obamas running in Brazilian local elections this weekend.

Favela Keeps Getting Chicer

Paris and London have long had their own corner favela serving up $10 caipirinhas made from $1 bottles of 51 cachaça. Tomorrow, the NYC crowd will be able to get its own first-world favela fix.

Among Brazilian immigrants in the U.S., at least in the plentiful Brazilian Boston (or more accurately Cambridge/Somerville) community, the universal referents for Brazilianness are fairly typical: futebol, Rio, samba. But it seems the CDD phenomenon definitely had an impact: Among the chic, favelas are the real stand-in for Brazil.

I don't doubt they deserve visibility, but consumer consumption at expensive nightspots is hardly a helpful way of getting it. When it comes to favela chic, this is more my style.

Unlabeled: The Anonymous as Exotic in Presenting Proibidão

[Update: The folks at norient.com liked this paper enough to publish it. It's missing the hyperlinks from the blogaversion, but still nice to see it circulated it further afield.]

[The reason I went on down to New Orleans after all was for the BRASA conference, where I appeared on the panel: "Raps do Parapapá: Representations of Violence in Brazilian Funk Carioca," organized by Paul Sneed, of 2Bros fame. Below is the paper I presented, modified for the blogging public with some links &c]

The existence of this CD, Proibidão CV, the subject of my talk, is due in no small part to the efforts of American DJ Wesley Pentz, aka Diplo, who first brought funk to a certain kind of American audience: young, musically au courant, tapped into wider hip-hop and dance music scenes that include music from across the United States, Jamaica, other parts of the Caribbean, the UK, Latin America, and increasingly Africa. Beginning in 2003, he released two funk mixes, “Favela On Blast” and “Favela Strikes Back”, and included several funk tracks on his mixtape “Piracy Funds Terrorism,” which was a promotional tool for the Sri Lankan by way of London artist M.I.A., who in turn borrowed some aspects of funk to make a bricolage of global urban beats that catapulted her to pop stardom.

However, whether out of a desire to monopolize access to funk or simply out of carelessness or even ignorance, Diplo’s inaugural funk efforts were notoriously devoid of any contextual information. In particular, artist and track names are simply nonexistent. The two exclusively funk mixes do not come with track listings even though some tracks are by extremely well known artists like Bonde do Vinho. The mixtape, meanwhile, is more egregious. It features a mixture of commercial hip-hop, recordings of M.I.A., and funk. The latter, however, is listed only as “Baile Funk 1,” “Baile Funk 2,” “Baile Funk 3.” [I should add that “baile funk” has become the name for funk among non-Brazilians.]

Diplo was criticized somewhat for this disservice, although ultimately let off the hook. Music critic Nick Sylvester, reviewing Favela Strikes Back for Pitchfork Media in June 2005, argues “But 10 wrongs do make five rights, and if Diplo’s shtick is bringing this shanty to the world in a way they might respond to and ultimately might take vested interest in (read: $$$), then let’s drop the charges for now and indulge the music as wide-eyed as he does.” While I don’t share Sylvester’s laissez-faire attitude, I’ll nevertheless point out that Diplo has at least made recent efforts to act less like a “culture vulture,” including plans to open a branch of HeapsDecent, an NGO that offers music production workshops, in the favela of Cantagalo in the Zona Sul of Rio de Janeiro. He is also working on a movie, Favela On Blast, that purports to put names, faces, and stories to what he had previously presented as anonymous.

Anonymity, however, is the order of the day in this recent release by the label Sublime Frequencies, Proibidão C.V.: Forbidden Gang Funk from Rio de Janeiro. Its liner notes, after providing a brief, simplified, and somewhat inaccurate explanation of proibidão, read: “Recorded and assembled by Carlos Casas. Courtesy of some anonymous MCs and DJs in different bailes along the favelas of Zona Sul, Rio de Janeiro during March-April 2003.” On the opposing page, it prominently states: “All artists are Anonymous. All tracks are Untitled.” It then lists the tracks as “Untitled Proibidao CV” numbers 1-17. [Italics are my own.] For the listener who doesn’t know any Portuguese that, unfortunately, is the end of it. However, a closer listen reveals a more complex CD than the providers are willing to admit, or perhaps are even aware of, in their liner notes.

To begin with, there is little indication that all of the tracks take place in the Zona Sul, as track 3 sings of “tranqulidade na Mangueira,” track 10 speaks of a “Festa da Jacaré” in addition to mentioning Vidigal, both 7 and 11 indicate that they are from “Borel”, and #2 perform the well-known trope of poetically listing a series of favelas from across the city. Conversely, Rocinha, the stated source of the photographs in the CD package, is not mentioned once. Instead, the photos, which do not document any act of criminal behavior to my eye, implicitly link favelas with the drug trade. It’s an unfair generalization — a CD of proibidão, therefore it needs photos of favelas no matter what they show.

The liner notes also mention “the explicit lyrics of apology to drug gangs and the violent content.” I will not dispute that this is present, as tracks 4 & 5 – which appear to be a continuation of the same live recording and not separate tracks – declare, “Hoje vai ter churrasco pra geral / só ninguém vai comer” when speaking of burnt bodies in a prison riot at Bangú 1. On the other hand, there is a more thoughtful view in track #15.

It opens with a protest against stereotypes in a clever call and response: “Dizem que nós somos violentos / Mas desse jeito eu não aguento / Dizem que lá falta educação / Não é desse jeito não / Dizem que não temos competência / Mas isso sim que é violência / Que só sabemos fazer refrão.” (They say we're violent / But this shit I don't buy / They say we lack education / That's not it at all / They say we're not competent / But that right there is violence / That we only know how to cut refrains") Later, the MC sings affirmatively: “Nós temos escola / nós temos respeito” (We have schools / we have respect) and “cidadão brasileiro e tenho meu valor" (Brazilian citizen and I have my value). Such sentiments are hardly the one-dimensional view that the CD Proibidão CV presents. The prominent spelling of “Cidade de Deus” also makes it clear that this is another track not from the Zona Sul.

Likewise, something beyond apology for the drug trade is taking place in track #12. While the reference to the Comando Vermelho motto “Paz, Justiz, e Liberdade” would affirm its status as proibidão, the earlier lines are of considerable interest. “Eu sei que um dia a gente saí daqui / Não sei o dia e nem sei a hora. / Mas sei que um dia a gente vai embora.” There is an escapist, and I believe even utopian, impulse in these lines. Will “a gente” leave by escaping the cycle of violence, by leaving their community, by dying in a blaze of glory in a gun battle? This open-ended vision credits more toward the insightful analysis of Paul Sneed, who I’m sharing this table with, in his dissertation on proibidão: “Machine Gun Voices: Bandits, Favelas and Utopia in Brazilian Funk.”

Indeed, it is precisely a perspective like Paul’s this is lacking in Sublime Frequencies’ presentation of proibidão. They conclude in the liner notes, “This CD is in no way an apology for these groups, but a document to portray a moment in time in Rio de Janeiro musical and social history.” On their website, meanwhile, they declare the label’s mission: “SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, and other forms of human and natural expression not documented sufficiently through all channels of academic research, the modern recording industry, media, or corporate foundations.”

Such rhetoric is a dodge. If indeed they are “explorers” on the “urban frontier” of Rio de Janeiro seeking to “portray” a particular “moment,” then they are uninformed explorers who make no effort to explain the parameters of that moment – where, when, why. Instead, they let the listener concoct his or her own vision of Rio’s favelas based on abrasive beats, gruff voices, and the sampled sound of gunshots.

Such a proposition – suggesting the violence of Rio’s favelas without fleshing that concept in with details – is reminiscent of the attitude that Alex Bellos takes in an article on proibidão for online music publication Blender. He opens the article, “Coke. Guns. Booty. Beats.” with the declaration that funk is “the most dangerous – and most exciting – underground club scene in the world.” The implicit link, however, is that it is the most exciting because it is the most dangerous. The same principle is at work in Proibidão C.V. – one doesn’t need to actually know what the songs are saying; rather, the music should be exciting simply because of its violent, dangerous context. In both cases, exciting is also a substitute for exotic, for the exotic is exciting as well because it intimates danger. I should add that Sublime Frequencies traffics principally in “exotic” locales like “Java, Bali, Sumatra, Burma, Morocco, Thailand, India, Mali, Syria, Laos, Cambodia, and Nepal.”

Anonymity, then, is indeed the rub. I am certain that a lack of knowledge of Portuguese, both among foreigners like Diplo and among their audience, plays a role. However, I think there is a more sinister impulse at work as well. For anonymity ultimately implies unknowability. Radical urbanist Mike Davis provides a chilling account of the consequences of unknowability in Planet of Slums. He concludes the book by arguing that the Pentagon is the only global institution to take seriously the implications of rapid slum growth in large urban areas. He cites U.S. military tactics, which “assert that the ‘feral, failed cities’ of the Third World – especially their slum outskirts – will be the distinctive battlespace of the twenty-first century” and continues by quoting an Air Force theorist writing in the Aerospace Power Journal: “Rapid urbanization in developing countries results in a battlespace environment that is decreasingly knowable since it is increasingly unplanned.” But the attitude that slums are going to be the next global battleground, perhaps because of their unknowability, is not limited to the U.S. military. One only need look as far as a recent edition of O Globo to find the polícia civil or, in more extreme cases, the BOPE in blockbuster hit Tropa de elite, engaging in such tactics, trying to bring Rio’s favelas back under the city’s control. Unplanned favelas are unknowable spaces to the uninitiated. They are, moreover, soundtracked by proibidão. But when proibidão is presented as anonymous and unknowable, as in the case here, then it does nothing to increase knowledge – and knowability – about both the music and its environment. Instead, it only encourages the exoticization of both, a process whose consequences may be extremely dire.

Favela Passport

I first heard of the Grupo Cultural AfroReggae, an NGO that uses culture to keep favela youth out of drug trafficking, when I saw the documentary Favela Rising before my first trip to Rio in '06. Why I didn't take the initiative to volunteer with them then is beyond me, but I've been an admirer ever since and have slowly managed to visit most of their outposts around Rio -- always located in the favelas that they serve, always upbeat, always brightly painted and well-maintained. Culture is our weapon indeed.



Their newest nucleus in the notorious Complexo do Alemão opened in the midst of a vicious police operation that was the talk of Rio. The national guard was still stationed at the entrance when I visited later in August.


AfroReggae was still unpacking when I dropped by, and most of my visit ended up being in the company of Flávia, a 1o-year-old girl whose mother cleans the building. Flávia kept pestering me to take pictures of her, and I was happy to oblige.



She told me that she hadn't been to the beach in the 3 years, that teenagers sell drugs outside of her school (but she knows drugs are stupid), that she can only play a few feet in front of her house, that school was canceled during the recent police blockade. And here she was turning cartwheels on the roof with Alemão all around her. I was reading a book at the time whose title couldn't be more appropriate -- Favela: Alegria e Dor na Cidade (Favela: Joy and Pain in the City).

I headed off with the goal of visiting AfroReggae Digital, their Internet radio station (tune in!), located in Parada de Lucas, in the Zona Norte (north side) at the border with the suburbs. Lucas was at war with neighboring Vigário Geral, where the founder of AfroReggae is from, for almost two decades. It was a big step, then, for VG-based AfroReggae to open a nucleus on the other side of the tracks (literally, the SuperVia rail line divides the two communities).

I didn't make it before leaving in August, but I was able to go earlier this week.


More than just a radio station that uses radio as an educational tool, it's a whole community center, serving a neighborhood of 20,000-25,000 . . . as the only NGO. In contrast, I've heard that Rocinha has more than 80 for a population of approximately 200,000. In other words, there are 10x more NGOs per resident in Rocinha than in Lucas. That, unfortunately, is part of the divide between the Zona Sul and Zona Norte, with the Zona Sul consistently getting more investment and attention.

It was here, though, that one of the AfroReggae Digital organizers told me about the new HQ going up in Vigário Geral to be inaugurated in April. It will be open 24/7 and has been described as the favela Guggenheim -- a curious comparison in light of other Guggen-de-Janeiro proposals I've commented on. I can't wait to see it the next time I come back.

Finally, yesterday I hit a third AfroReggae nucleus, back down on my end in the Zona Sul at Cantagalo, the favela between Ipanema and Copacabana. I've been to Cantagalo many, many times now for their baile funk and finally had the chance to return in the daytime. The prime location commands some great views . . .


That's the cidade partida (divided city) for you right there.


The Cantagalo operation teaches, of all things, the circus. Júnior, the founder, got connected with Cirque de Soleil and now it's part of the AfroReggae stew. I caught them rehearsing for a visit by representatives of the Barbican Centre, a London arts behemoth, where AfroReggae has performed before, and will be artists-in-residence or a similar arrangement later this year.



Their director made a very telling comment in my interview with him. He said he sees his AfroReggae t-shirt not a shield -- one that will let you pass between rival favelas as a neutral entity -- but as a passport -- one that enables you to enter them and mediate conflicts, which he saw as AfroReggae's main goal.

I got a shirt for my trouble (and in truth picked one up last year, so that makes two), so I'll be wearing my passport on Sunday when the Bloco AfroReggae does its Carnaval parade in Ipanema.

Dirty Work

For those cooped up in the Beantown cold, the Rio summer heat will be there in sound&spirit tonight at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for the opening of "Dirty Work: Transforming Landscape in the Non-Formal City of the Americas." The exhibit is up through March 16, and tomorrow (January 30), I encourage everyone to see Robert Neuwirth speak on the "21st century medieval city." His book Shadow Cities was a huge influence on my own understanding of Rio, and in fact he put me in touch with Two Brothers -- I certainly would not be sitting in the room I'm writing from if it weren't for him.

I can't be there in person to tonight (7 or 8 pm, I'd guess? No time listed on the site) for obvious reasons, so instead I sent in the following mix&commentary that will be played&displayed during the opening. It's practically another Blogariddims contribution (& one of the 76-minute specials at that) featuring tracks that diligent readers/listeners will recognize from both my own blogariddims funk mix and postings throughout the last year(s), but hopefully now contextualized in a different way. And of course, there's stuff I got just a few days ago, so it's fresh all around.

I'm quite happy about the title's twist on the name of the class that produced the exhibit (see below) -- the catchier Low Income Tomorrowland was unfortunately already taken.
___

Landscaped Beats for Low-Income Strategies
Mixed by Gregzinho in the favela of Rocinha
Rio de Janeiro, January 2008
75:46

The tracks in this mix come from the favelas, suburbia, periferia, villas miserias, or, in more technical parlance, low-income settlements, of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires, three of the seven cities featured in the exhibit “Dirty Work: Transforming Landscape in the Non-Formal City of the Americas,” a product of the Harvard Graduate School of Design class Landscape Strategies for Low-Income Settlements. The other four are certainly also rich in music that has its strongholds in the cities’ barrios, from Colombian cumbia and hip-hop (Bogotá) to reggaetón and other Caribbean sounds (Caracas), to Mexican music both traditional and contemporary (Mexico City and Tijuana). However, I was limited by what I know personally—having been to Rio, Sampa, and BsAs, I’m intimately familiar with samba, funk carioca, cumbia villeira, and Brazilian hip-hop and reggae. Tranquilo? Pronto? Vamos.

1. Dudu Nobre – Batucada 01

Dudu Nobre is a young, popular samba composer out of Rio de Janeiro and the fierce rhythms of batucada, a percussion-heavy samba variation with strong African influence, set a proper tone to start things off.

2. G.R.E.S. Imperatriz Leopoldinense – Liberdade! Liberdade! Abre as Asas Sobre Nós (Liberty! Liberty! Open Your Wings Above Us)

The story of the rise of samba in Rio—and later Brazil writ large—is inextricably tied to the growth of the city’s favelas, where samba—once outlawed for being too African—took refuge in the first decades of the 20th century. Groups of sambistas who performed routines around Carnaval began organizing themselves in escolas (schools) around 1930 and by the post-war era became the premiere attraction at Carnaval time. This 1989 samba enredo (story samba, the elaborate, scripted routines performed in the official parade at the Sambódromo) commemorates the centenary of the proclamation of the Republic of Brazil, which was precipitated by the abolition of slavery a year prior in 1888—itself an important theme in the 1988 sambas, especially given samba’s origins in slave music. Imperatriz Leopoldinense hails from the Ramos neighborhood in Rio’s north side, which includes the Complexo da Maré, a large complex of favelas that greets visitors as they get on the Linha Vermelha expressway at the international airport and head downtown.

3. Cartola – Verde Que Te Quero Rosa (Green That I Want You Pink)

Cartola is quite simply the most famous sambista of the 20th century, and one of the founders of the most famous samba school: G.R.E.S. Estação Primeira da Mangueira. Green and pink are Mangueira’s colors and were chosen by Cartola.

4. Digitaldubs Sound System ft. Ras Bernardo – Morro Não Tem Play (The Hill Doesn’t Have Playgrounds)

Digitaldubs is a contemporary reggae sound system in Rio. In addition to importing the latest 7”s and dubs out of Jamaica, they produce and perform their own Brazilian reggae, with MCs toasting in Portuguese and their DJs mixing in other Brazilian music, including funk carioca (see tracks 6-14). This lament about conditions on the morro (hill, a catch-all term for favelas in Rio, which are often located on hills), especially for children, fits perfectly with the social concerns that reggae has traditionally taken up.

5. Capoeira Mestre Suassuna - Macuele

The dance/martial art of capoeira, like samba, has its roots in Brazilian slave culture but has since become a prominent part of Brazilian culture. While the best capoeiristas don’t necessarily come from favelas, the historical link between enslaved black Brazilians, and favelas is well documented historically. No surprise, then, that the ginga (rhythm) of capoeira is cited as an influence on the development of the tamborzão (big drum) beat, which has been the basis of most funk since about 2000.

6. MCs Leonardo e Júnior – Endereço dos Bailes (Address of the Bailes)

Funk carioca (carioca is the adjective to describe someone or something from Rio) or just plain “funk” to those who live it and love it, is something like the new samba—nurtured in favelas, persecuted by authorities, bane of the middle and upper classes, but slowly gaining respectability. Musically, its most direct antecedent is not American funk (from where the name comes) but rather Miami bass, the syncopated, minimal-beats-maximum-bass hip-hop style of the late ’80s (think 2 Live Crew). Black American dance music (funk, disco, soul, early hip-hop and techno) had been popular in Rio for some time, but when Miami bass arrived, it took the black dance crowds by storm and, coupled with technology that allowed producers to record local vocalists on top of looped Miami bass beats, became an immensely popular Brazilian style. “Endereço dos Bailes” is a 1995 track by this duo of brothers from the favela of Rocinha, Rio’s largest, and shouts out the different bailes funk (funk balls) taking place in favelas across the city, forming a kind of alternate tourist map to the one they describe in the opening lines, featuring the usual gamut of sun, soccer, sand, and samba.

7. MCs Cidinho e Doca – Rap da Felicidade (The Happiness Rap)

Also from 1995, this song became a national hit, its plaintive “Eu só quero é ser feliz, andar traquilamente na favela onde eu nasci (I only want to be happy, to walk peacefully in the favela where I was born)” resonating as Rio was racked by violence in the early ’90s. Cidinho and Doca hail from Cidade de Deus (City of God), whose reputation for violent gang activity was immortalized (and to some extent sensationalized) in the Oscar-winning movie of the same time.

8. MCs Leonardo e Júnior – Rap das Armas (The Arms Rap)

Back to the brothers from Rocinha. “Rap das Armas”, from the same era, is another anti-violence song. The lyrics are basically a run down of the different kinds of guns (Uzi, M-16, AK-47, etc.) that the two saw on a daily basis in Rocinha. It concludes with a call for peace, but was misinterpreted by the media as an apology for the criminal factions. They fell on hard times, ultimately working consecutive 12 hour shifts as a taxi driver (so the car was always on the road), but are now rebounding and recorded a new version of “Rap das Armas” for Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad), a film that promises to be the new City of God and will be released in the U.S. this year.

9. MC Binho – Meu Sonho (My Dream)

Sticking with Rocinha, but more recently, is MC Binho, a current funk MC who handed me a CD with this track over the weekend. The more electronic, almost techno sound in the track is a new trend in funk production. While definitely a positive dream—to become a big star in music or on TV—it doesn’t have quite the same conscience as the previous three tracks. But then again, I can’t blame the guy: He squeezes his MCing in between shifts working as a cobrador, the guy who takes your fare in one of the vans that supplement the bus system.

10. Beto da Caixa – Blindão

Beto da Caixa is another current artist who deals more directly with the reality of favela life. “Blindão” is a slang term for the favela code of conduct—it comes from the word for ‘armor’—and Beto swears by it in this track. “Tenho fé não tenho medo / A gente é sempre no blindão (I have faith, I don’t have fear / We’re always in blindão),” goes the refrain.

11. Menor do Chapa – Vida Louca (Crazy Life)

Beto’s lyrics hint at one of the obvious preoccupations of funk tracks: the criminal factions that are, for all intensive purposes, the chief authority in a vast majority of the city’s favelas. Funk has evolved as the soundtrack of the favela—blasting out of nearly every corner bar and car window—and a particular subgenre called proibidão (extremely prohibited) sings exclusively about, and in favor of, the factions. Menor do Chapa has built a career praising the Comando Vermelho (Red Command, abbreviated CV), the city’s first, and most notorious, narco-trafficking gang.

12. Anonymous – Proibidão do Cantagalo

While Menor do Chapa’s proibidão has almost gone mainstream, much of it is recorded live or on rough studio equipment and stays very local—as in, specifically about the faction of the MC’s favela. In the case of Cantagalo, the favela between Ipanema and Copacabana, the CV is in charge—“minha facção, claro que é o CV (my faction, clearly it’s CV)”. It’s this kind of proibidão, however, that isn’t just an apology for drug trafficking, but also a vital form of communication within the favela. The proibidão MC speaks from the faction to the community, certainly, but also from the community back to the faction, and can articulate local concerns in communities that don’t have another medium in which to do so. While this role, at least in my opinion, absolves the proibidão MC from being a simple apologist for the gangs, they still tend to remain anonymous because of the possible trouble it can lead to from police or rival gangs.

13. MC Alex – Seu Presidente (Mr. President)

The lo-fi production values are a hallmark of funk—all it takes is a cheap sampler and some mics—as the bricolage quality of the music is, in many ways, reflective of the architecture and visual environment that supports it. Here, MC Alex from a favela in the Zona Norte (I never did get the name of it), sings as a “pobre cidadão” (poor citizen) against both the corruption of politics and the corruption of the gang, the latter complaint having made it very difficult for him to find bailes to perform at, as the gangs are usually the financiers in favelas, throwing huge bailes da comunidade (community balls) that are free to all.

14. DJ Sandrinho – Medley Yazoo

That said, lo-fi production values are becoming a thing of the past, especially among the best DJs and producers who oftentimes have top-notch computers and recording equipment. Funk has commercialized, commanding huge radio audiences and massive festivals, but that doesn’t mean it has entirely left the favela. DJ Sandrinho still lives and maintains his studio in the favela of Borel, despite having been the DJ to Mr Catra, hands down the most in-demand funk MC in all of Brazil, and also having toured Europe several times and had tracks on foreign releases. Clearly, his place of residence hasn’t diminished his access—and interest—in the wide swath of music he pulls into this feijoada de funk: new wave (Yazoo’s “Don’t Go”), early disco-house (Indeep’s “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life”), and commercial alt-rock (Nirvana’s “Come As You Are”). It’s amazing what an Internet connection can do.

15. MV Bill – É Nós e A Gente

Rio rapper MV Bill helped found the Central Única de Favelas (Central Favela Factory, abbreviated CUFA), a national NGO that focuses on hip-hop culture as an alternative to the drug trade. He riffs on the arbitrary divisions of the narco-trafficking world in Rio by juxtaposing “é nós” and “é gente,” two slang expressions that mean the same thing—it’s us—but come from rival gangs, the CV and the Amigos de Amigos (Friends of Friends, abbreviated ADA), respectively.

16. Xis e Profeta – Us Mano e As Mina (Profmix)

MV Bill is really an exception to the rule: Funk is the music of Rio, and hip-hop is the sound in São Paulo. The two are considered very different, with paulista hip-hop fans looking down on funkeiros as juvenile and vulgar compared to the serious social concerns that SP hip-hop tackles. Xis’s 2002 track with Profeta doesn’t directly deal with the favelas paulistanas, banished to the periphery of the world’s fourth largest city, but the sound sets the right mood for the hip-hop paulista mindset.

17. Criminal Master – Pobreza (Poverty)

Going back to the roots now—“Pobreza” is from the 1988 hip-hop compilation Consciência Black. Lamentation in verse about the constant urban condition, all set to a funky (this time the American sense) beat.

18. Racionais MCs – Pânico na Zona Sul (Panic on the South Side)

Racionais MCs formed in 1988 and also contributed to Consciência Black with this track, launching a career that turned them into Brazil’s best-known rap group, a very serious voice for the millions of favelados in São Paulo. “Justiceiros são chamados por eles mesmos / Matam humilham e dão tiros a esmo / E a polícia não demonstra sequer vontade (Hired killers as they call themselves / Kill, humiliate, and shoot at random / And the police doesn't show any will to stop them).” Guess who opened for Public Enemy when they came to São Paulo?

19. Sidestepper – Mas Papaya (More Papaya)

Moving south to Buenos Aires, but picking up a sound that comes from further north. Cumbia is a Colombian folk music, but in its various mutations throughout Latin American, it has sprouted as cumbia villeira in the Ciudad Autónoma, popular in the villas miserias with hardcore lyrics about gangs and drugs, in a way akin to funk proibidão. A new breed of DJs and producers in BsAs has recently picked up cumbia and begun blending it into other global urban sounds, including Jamaican dancehall. [Edit: A commenter pointed out that Sidestepper is Anglo-Colombian -- so maybe I hit Bogotá after all -- but I got it off a compilation I bought at ¡Zizek! in BsAs, which evidently isn't a reason to assume every track is porteño.]

20. Colon Colon – El paena loco (The Crazy Crown)

Pure cumbia without other styles mixed in—the telltale shaker (shickishin is the local onomatopoeia) is cumbia’s signature sound.

21. Princesa – Aquí Princesa (Princess Here)

Princesa is a porteña MC who has been tearing up the local scene with a fierce blend of reggaetón and dancehall.

22. G.R.E.S. Acadêmicos da Rocinha – Rocinha é minha vida, Nordeste é minha história (Rocinha is my life, Northeast is my history)

Beginning with a forró flourish, the Acadêmicos da Rocinha chose to honor the heritage of many of the community’s residents in their samba enredo for the 2008 Carnaval parade—it will be performed on Saturday night, February 2, at the Passarela do Samba (known colloquially as the Sambódromo) in the Series A & B competition. The population of favelas in Rio’s largest cities has swelled in recent decades with an influx of nordestinos (northeasterners), fleeing the most impoverished region of Brazil. They in turn have increased the popularity of northeastern music, like forró, in Rio. Mangueira, for example, is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of frevo, a rhythm from Pernambuco, in their performance on Sunday night in the Grupo Especial. Broadcast live on national television with the winning samba school feted in Brazil as much as Super Bowl champions will be in the U.S. that same night, samba endures as a striking example of what the non-formal city in the Americas can accomplish culturally.

Economics Lesson

The other day I paid a quick visit to VivaCred, a non-profit bank founded about 10 years ago under the auspices of VivaRio, perhaps the city's biggest and best-known agent for social change, to investigate ideas for a financial literacy class at the Instituto Dois Irmãos. I was first of all struck at how clean, orderly, and simply impressive of a space it was, the kind of quality in the building itself typically reserved for the few chain banks and pharmacies that have Rocinha branches.

But then again, VivaCred in Rocinha is its headquarters, where for almost ten years it has been lending small loans to businesses both formal and informal, à la the Grameen Bank and 2006 Nobel Laureate Mohammad Yunus. The staff member I spoke to very proudly told me that they do not survive off donations, but rather have been able to maintain their facility and staff while still offering new loans all with the interest revenue from successful old loans. The micro-credit/micro-finance concept is an intriguing, and in many ways logical one that ably breaks down a lot of stigmas and stereotypes about poor communities and their residents. I'm not surprised to find such an operation in Rocinha, indeed a little excited that they chose to headquarter it there, even after having branched out all over Rio (admittedly, with some support from the city government).

Rio, and Rocinha, being places of great contrast, I mused nonetheless on the competition between VivaCred and the boca-de-fumo in Valão that I passed on the way there & back from the Instituto. While I doubt the ADA specifically sees the revenue generated by new businesses in Rocinha as any kind of threat, in the grander scheme, what's bringing more money into Rocinha, what's the economic engine: drugs or businesses (both formal and informal)? I'm not sure there's a fair way to make the comparison, as the drugs of course supplement a display of power and the authority of a certain civil order that a league of merchants likely couldn't.

Patrick, a kid I met in Rocinha early in my stay, was able to rattle off a figure of how many reais per week pass through Rocinha in trafficking. Where he got the statistic and whether it had any validity was left unsaid. He claimed it was the most in Rio, another point of pride.

The future of Rocinha, and certainly many other favelas in Rio, likely runs in tandem between the communities' ability to create, grow, and maintain businesses and the factions' ability to do the same. But could more support for investment initiatives like VivaCred eventually undercut the factions' power if the community didn't feel like it was relying on them for a certain kind of economic stimulation in the neighborhood? I don't know if anyone's untangled the paths of where the money goes to or comes from, but it's certain the two are intertwined.

Invasion

Fairly full days running around Rio have somehow let updates fall by the wayside, but today was too much to pass up: What had been feared since before the Pan-American Games finally occurred. Today, the police invaded Rocinha.

I awoke to the sound of firecrackers and helicopters. The former are a typical warning signal–the police are coming–while the whirlybird overhead left no doubt that the police had their eye on Cachopa. I exited the door of my apartment to head upstairs and inquire with my host family about the situation. As I climbed the stairs, I looked out onto the Rua da Raia, where a squad of 6 or 8 polícia militar (not what we think of as "military police" that guard military bases, but rather police with military training) was conducting house-to-house searches. They made it to our place, demanded that we open the front door, and proceeded to search upstairs, but did not come into the apartment I share with the other Two Brothers volunteers.

Later, still hoping to leave Rocinha for the day, I stepped out again. One of the police, who must've heard about me from upstairs, asked about my roommate and me. When I told him the roommate is from San Francisco, he lit up. "Ahh, já conheço São Francisco três vezes. A Califórnia é muito bonita." So, I can go? "Sim, sim, tudo tranquilo aqui."

Down on the Estrada da Gávea, business seemed to look roughly as usual. As I neared the bottom, I saw another squad of police with binoculars and sniper rifles, peering up into the Vila Verde area, trying to get a bead who knows what or whom.

Simply put, these were military tactics. The notion that Rio is a city at war, while easy to discuss in the abstract or via the media, has never been clearer.
___

Of course, my first-hand experience of the event pales in comparison to its media coverage. Down in Leblon not too long after, I mentioned to somebody that I had just come from Rocinha, where it was "muito quente," and I wasn't talking about the weather. The person already knew, having seen live TV reports. It was on the nightly news, the mental confusion of seeing streets I know, streets I had just walked, that 12 hours before were under police lock down. They were back under ADA authority, bocas-de-fumo in full swing, by nightfall.

I was going to wait until the papers came out tomorrow, but curiosity killed the blogger, and so the Globo article linked to above probably gives the standard account. I say standard rather than accurate, because reporters generally follow the police line. They aren't trusted by the favelas, especially after 2002's Tim Lopes disaster, and now seem to prefer a variation on the embedded reporter routine.

The 6-hour "mega-operation", according to the article, consisted of entering Rocinha from all its principle access points simultaneously and generally rounding up suspected traffickers, seizing arms & drugs, and going after one particular location of guns & munitions, which turned out to be empty. A few individuals were arrested, including a certain "Betinho da Cachopa," who I don't know, but who I suspect may have been busted by my San Francisco-loving uninvited house guest.

Of particular interest is the high-tech aspect: logistical support via a laptop with satellite imagery, abetted by the helicopter's bird's eye view. The police, in so many ways, were attempting to penetrate Rocinha, to control it in 3-D space, on the ground and from the air. But I suspect that satellites and helicopters aside, the dense layer of becos still proves to be a strong defense, many having run for the alleys as soon as the firecrackers started up. The Estrada da Gávea is easy to control–it itself is a kind of asfalto space, running city bus lines like any normal street–but the deeper into the becos, the deeper into the favela architecture, the harder their tactical manoeuvres become. The structure itself is a kind of self-defense, as I've maintained for some time.

The same concern has also made it to the U.S. military, where the urban slum/shantytown is seen as the key battleground of the 21st century. A choice quote: "'Rapid urbanization in developing countries,' writes Captain Troy Thomas in the spring 2002 issue [of Aerospace Power Journal], "results in a battlespace environment that is decreasingly knowable since it is increasingly unplanned.'" From Captain Thomas's perspective, this represents a threat. From my perspective, this represents Rocinha's most fascinating innovation. An unknowable space, it still remains closed to me in many ways.
__

I give the Globo article credit for at least paying lip service to the effect of the operation on Rocinha, mentioning the numerous schools closed and commercial strips shuttered. Two Brothers canceled classes tonight, even though firecrackers hadn't gone off since almost noon.

But as Rocinha settled down, I began to wonder, what does such an operation accomplish? Sure, they seized a small quantity of drugs and guns, but there are plenty more when those came from. A temporary incursion, temporary establishment of official authority over the illegal space. A continuation of promises from pre-Pan to take back the favelas. There nonetheless seems to be a Sisyphean aspect to it all, rolling an armored car up a hill, only to see it tumble back down a few hours later. While I was seized by a mild terror, especially when the police came for my house (suddenly I'm the enemy), it seemed to be greeted with a kind of wearied resignation elsewhere. The cycle continues, ad nauseum. Dona Josirene showed me bullet holes in the wall at the end of our alley on my way out after the coast was clear.

Taking Sides: A Hot Night in Rocinha

The day began well. I spent the morning and early afternoon at São Conrado beach – on the other side of São Conrado, the neighborhood of condos and the Fashion Mall across the highway from Rocinha – which is always a scene on Sundays. It seems that all of Rocinha is out: surfing & sunbathing, playing futebol & volei (or their dexterous child: futevol). It might as well be the Praia da Rocinha, although I'm sure the residents of SC whose property values depend on that beachfront cachet wouldn't approve of the name change. A few hours in the sun were followed by a rare treat: Sunday feijoada care of my Bahian neighbor, Almir.

That left me wanting only a light dinner, which I followed with a stroll down the Estrada da Gávea, Rocinha's main drag, in hopes of using a pay phone to make some calls back to the States. After striking out with occupied or broken phones, I finally was at the end of the Estrada. Having still less luck (it's complicated, but Brazilian phones don't seem to like the idea of me inputting the 12 digits of an account number and PIN after making a toll free call to my international calling provider), I was about to turn around and head back, when fortuitously my girlfriend called my cell phone. It's exceptionally windy tonight, along with the usual noisy pace of traffic at the bottom of the hill, so I had trouble hearing her. I wandered over toward a cluster of buildings – a grocery store, pharmacy, a few condos – running parallel to the highway but set at ground level, and ducked next to a garage door where there was some cover from the wind.

Not 5 minutes into my call, a police car drove by and stopped. Two policemen came toward me, one hanging back with his assault rifle, the other approaching me directly with a flashlight. He asked me what I was doing and I told him talking on the phone, out of the wind and the noise. This answer was less than satisfactory and he began to search me while asking me where I lived. "Rocinha," I answered. "Estou fazendo um trabalho social (I'm doing volunteer work)." He gave me a full pat down, lifted my shirt, pulled the waistband of my shorts & underwear outward then shined his flashlight down into my crotch, and then proceeded to scan the ground all around, looking for whatever drugs he was convinced I was in possession of.

All I had on me were my keys and my phone, not having expected to go very far. I didn't even bring a wallet, much less ID or a copy of my passport/visa, which I've been in the habit of doing. Finally satisfied, his partner said I could start talking on the phone again while the first cop kept searching the ground with his flashlight.

What set them off, I wondered on my way back up the hill. I had on a Fluminense jersey, athletic shorts, and Havaianas, all standard issue Brazilian clothing. But with my light skin and my wristwatch, maybe that pegged me as a rich kid from a nearby neighborhood who'd come into Rocinha to buy drugs? It's a common enough occurrence – drugs, especially marijuana and cocaine, are cheap & plentiful in the favelas, and while favela residents are customers, they're certainly not the only customers. Common enough, too, for there to be police: they're at the bottom of the morro everyday. There are even police posts set up inside Rocinha along the Estrada da Gávea. Talk about penetrating deep into enemy territory . . . But they're all paid off, I've been told, and don't give Rocinha any trouble. I've seen bandidos with visible guns ride right by a police post on a motorcycle without a second glance.

On the one hand, it confirms all of my suspicions and prior knowledge about Brazilian police, how essentially in a country that's only 20 years out of a military dictatorship, civil liberties are far from guaranteed and the cops are not to be trusted. On the other hand, couldn't an analogous situation be drawn to any major U.S. city? If I were in a lower-income neighborhood near a known location where drugs are sold, and fit a certain police profile (like, say, black), and happened to be standing alone in a secluded corner on a side street at night when cops drove by, wouldn't they stop?

It's ironic coming on the heels of my thoughts on guns in Rocinha, because I did imply a certain lack of anxiety around gun-wielding police officers, who can be seen in the ritziest, most tourist-friendly parts of Rio with heavy-duty arms. While I didn't think at any point I was going to be shot, I entertained the thought of having something planted on me or getting hauled away on some kind of made-up charge, both practices I have heard rumors of. Indeed, the only "incident" of any kind I had last summer was with MC Gringo, when we were exiting the Baile de Cantagalo and heading into Copacabana. Right as we descended the stairs, a police car pulled up and just about gave Gringo and I the same once over that I got tonight. They seemed to be after bigger fish up on the hill and let us go, but afterwards Gringo told me that had we been searched, having something planted on us would not have been unheard of.

So I climbed back up the hill. It's a hot night in Rio, the first day that the heat has really soaked through day & night since I've been here. I regretted wearing a shirt on the walk back up, passed by crowds glistening with sweat at the door of Clube Emoções, their Sunday night baile funk in full swing. The wind whipping debris around the Curve do S, both an S-curve along the Estrada da Gávea and the área around it (Pipo's Locomotiva threw a massive baile at the bus garage there last night, still raging when I got home at 5 am, making the room vibrate at the right frequencies). Normally I take the becos home – stairs being easier to manage than the 30º incline up the hill into Cachopa, cresting the boca-de-fumo at the quadra de futebol and heading down to Seu Jose's house. But I was determined to walk right past the bandidos just to prove a point: that they wouldn't hassle me while the police would. Other than some bemused questioning when I arrived, loaded with luggage, no one's ever given me a second glance there.

Tonight was no different at the boca-de-fumo, but it was a new scene down on the Estrada da Gávea. Maybe the winds are getting to everyone, Santa Ana style, or there are just rumors about that I don't know of. As I rounded the Curve do S, a man lurked on the sidewalk, a large weapon positioned on his shoulder. I thought RPG at first, but it appeared to be an assault rifle with silencer. He was aiming it at cars coming up the Estrada. I crossed to the other side of the street to avoid walking in front of him. Over there, two of his comrades were also camped out, albeit without aiming. The swirl of humanity kept pace around them, barely noticing on their way up & down. Buses and vans lumbered up the road while motorcycles darted between them. Young girls in teased hair and tight outfits teetered down the steep grade toward Emoções on high heels. A group of hardened men didn't bat an eyelash as they sat at a sidewalk bar drinking cervejas and playing cards.

I walked up into Cachopa shaking my head. A hot night in Rocinha.

Kids With Guns

Update: I accidentally posted Cidinha e Doca's proibidão version of "Rap das Armas", even though they credit Junior and Leonardo as the authors. Thanks to DJ Zezinho for correcting me.


Before I got an Internet connection installed here in the house, I went up the street to a LAN House, as they're called, to take care of my digital business. I brought my laptop, so all I needed was to hook up a cat-5. Lucky, too, because all of the terminals with a full rig were constantly occupied. I'm not sure I ever saw a free computer in that place.

Most of the customers were kids, under the age of 16, if I had to guess, and they were almost always playing first-person shooters. It's a genre of computer game to which I can profess considerable familiarity, having passed more hours than I'd like to admit blowing my friends to pieces. I was always firmly against the argument that violent games inculcate violence – if you're maladjusted enough to let a game cause violent mood swings, perhaps you've got deeper problems than what you're playing on your PC. And in the case of Grand Theft Auto, everyone's favorite target, I think critics focus on the possibilities permitted by the game mechanics but miss the brilliant social satire, especially evident in the in-game radio. Not that it didn't hit too close to home in some places (note that it was also banned in Brazil, not that it's stopped some of the video game parlors I've seen in Rocinha, who might appreciate the tragicomic aptness of this parody).

On the whole though, such games are simply difficult to take seriously when you have a BFG9000 at your disposal. In the case of my suburban friends and I, such games were the closest we ever came to any weapons, whether they be the absurdity of Doom or the realism of Counter-Strike.

In the case of Rocinha, it's more or less the opposite. The public presence of guns has been a part of every young resident's life since birth, and likely they saw them in person before they ever held one virtually in a game. Certainly, the same goes for those in the asfalto, as the police pack plenty of firepower as well. But the concept of "police" still comes with a kind of separation from the average citizen (on-duty, off-duty). Not that my corner bandidos aren't uniquely different from Seu Jose and his family upstairs – they most certainly are – but it's a kind of 24/7 role. They don't seem to become "civilians" the way a police officer might at the end of the day. Indeed, that's part of how Amigos de Amigos (or ADA, the criminal faction that rules Rocinha) maintains its control, by remaining visible in the community and, as Paul Sneed has explained, firing magazines upon magazines into the air . . . in celebration, in mourning, in reminding you they're still on top.

So it happens, then, that I'm checking my e-mail in the LAN House with young kids on my left and right ripping through virtual decaying urban landscapes, blasting each other with assault rifles, only to have one of the traficantes working the nearby boca-de-fumo ("mouth of smoke", where drugs are sold, and hence the reason I always have bandidos on my block) walk in to watch the Mexico x Argentina match of the Copa América while idly holding an assault rifle. The leap from virtual to real was only a few feet away from every gamer in there.

Are Rocinha kids who play violent video and computer games more likely to join up with the ADA when they grow older? Sounds like a sociological study for another time, another place, another person. But suffice to say: life imitating art imitating life in a very disconcerting way.

Maybe I'm just the still-sensitive gringo who's not used to seeing high-caliber weapons on a daily basis. It's been a fact of life here for decades at least, cf the lyrics of Junior e Leonardo's "Rap das Armas". The closest I could find to the original is the cover by Monobloco, which only changes a few words; and even if you don't know Portuguese, there's some universal shorthand in there, M-16 anyone? Famous in its time, the track that was completely misinterpreted by the media: Junior e Leonardo were tagged as apologists for the criminal factions because they sang the phrase "paz, justiça, e liberdade (peace, justice, and liberty)", the supposed slogan of the Comando Vermelho, when they themselves had no clue that was the case (anecdote recounted in Paul's thesis). It was really just a rap about their quotidian lives . . . which happens to include an extensive catalogue of weaponry.

With an old school Volt Mix beat along with "Planet Rock" and "Push It" samples, it's a veritable classic of funk antigo. The live music video is also extremely dated, but in the best possible way. I've heard they live in Rocinha and someone at I2I knows them, so I may have to pay a visit.

Junior e Leonardo - Rap das Armas

Freshly Spannered

I've got some Rio reflections of the more journalistic variety up over at Spannered. They've written about and hosted music by such fine folks as Maga Bo, DJ Ripley, and DJ C.

Now check out: Gold-Plated Guns, Silver Linings, and Bronzing in Peace, some on-the-scene reporting that expands on my first impressions stateside of the 2007 Pan-American Games.

I'll admit though, I was excited to see Latin America's finest in the baseball competitions. Unfortunately, tickets were all sold out because the games are held in a small 5,000 seat stadium. I am locked in for the men's football gold medal game at Maracanã, however. If the Copa America was any indiction, Viva o Brasil!

Em Casa no Morrão / At Home on the Big Hill

The Beat Diaspora has been in a kind of Babylonian exile, you could say, for quite some time now. But it was just this time last year that it really picked up steam, occasioned of course by the time I spent in the cidade marvilhosa. Shame on me, though, for having left more bailes, graffiti, funk tunes extraordinaire, and carioca style completely unpublished than I'd like to admit.

But, as hinted, I was coming back, and here I am. At home on the big hill, this time living in Rocinha: Rio’s, Brasil’s, South America’s (?) largest favela. I’m here with the help of the Two Brothers Foundation—or, more accurately, their Brazilian counterpart, the Instituto Dois Irmãos—who helped me find a place in Cachopa, an área (not neighborhood, since Rocinha itself is a neighborhood, even if it’s one of 150-300k people) about halfway up from the entrance by the Lagoa-Barra highway.

I took the title of this post from a documentary that 2Bros produced at SDSU this spring. It’s only 25 minutes and worth a look: forget all the escalating hyperbole on favelas, just interviews with three students from the Instituto, regular kids, talking about hobbies and hopes. Big up to Paul Sneed for the old school funk soundtrack.

Rocinha: Em Casa no Morrão
[Portuguese with English subtitles]

I’m living in a house that belongs to the family of Sarah, the 12 year old. They’re evangelists of the Pentecostal Church, which has apparently been sweeping the third world (or at least the poorer areas that still conjure up such terminology; I suspect my condo-dwelling neighbors down in São Conrado would resent the label), stealing away the Catholic faithful. I asked Seu Jose why he converted from Catholicism and his answer was simple: more direct connection with God. So in a sense nothing new, Protestants have been saying that since Luther.

He’d probably be mortified if he knew how much I’m into the baile funk, so I try and keep the jams restricted to my headphones. Not that I need to most of the time—on every street corner, every sidewalk bar, there’s funk blasting from the speakers. It’s almost comical how I spent the first couple weeks here last summer searching for any trace of the music, only to have been cursing the tamborzão my first night in Roça because it was still blaring at 6 am and I wanted to go to sleep. A mere couple days here was more evidence than I needed for a basic, even obvious, premise that I want to develop further: funk is the soundtrack to Rio’s favelas. It’s an equation equally applicable in its own way to Baltimore club, Miami bass, London grime/dubstep, Chicago house, Detroit techno, Berlin techno, maybe even Boston bounce?

Well, duh. But I’d like to take this idea of a “soundtrack” a little further. What about funk makes it uniquely carioca, uniquely favelado? In terms of lyrics, musical structure, production, consumption, all of that. How does funk articulate favela and how does favela articulate funk? I think they reinforce each other—the rapid exchange of beats and samples in funk like the riotous growth of favelas, the precarious architecture of the morro like the rough, raw production of your favorite pancadão (big hit). If I’m starting to sound academish, it’s because I’m here at the behest of the H-Bomb, doing research so I can write another 100 some pages on this stuff and walk across a stage next June.

To that extent, I’ll be writing more with the idea of virtual research notepad in mind, as LuisInParis&Chicago; did with considerable dedication. Since the exact focus is TBD, I’m trying to absorb as much as I can about life up on the hills.

Less than two weeks in and I’m already backlogged on entries, but I’m optimistic: the casa da Cachopa is hooked up with Internet, something I managed to pull off about 4x quicker here than I could in Paris. Rocinha Ad Hoc Utilities 1, FranceTelecom 0.


That gray one streaking in from the upper-left corner, then hanging loose in the middle, before rejoining the tangled mass at the end of the alley? My lifeline to the world.

The picture was also the occasion to meet the neighbors. Amlir, who lives across the beco, was standing in the doorway as I took the shots. I remembered Seu Jose saying that a former guest in my room had taken shots in the alleyway and it had angered the neighbor, who thought they were of his house (Robert Neuwirth told me of a similar anecdote, when a guest from an NGO snapped some photos of sewage infrastructure and they were accosted later by an angry resident asking why they were taking pictures of his house). Well, Amlir didn't mind at all once we started talking, and even had me over for a shrimp cake he just made. He turns out to be from Bahia and a practitioner of candomblé with a fair share of paraphernalia on his walls.

Amlir dressed as a pai-de-santo, leader of the rituals.

Certificate from the Sociedade Cultural Afro-Brasileira.

Candomblé has been a minor abiding interest since reading Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé by J. Lorand Matory. But I've got a pai-de-santo next door, so I suppose I won't have to look too hard to find it. That's Rocinha life for you, camaraderie of the beco, because we're too close not to be in this together. He hosts parties fairly frequently and told me I'm welcome whenever (I already crashed one on Tuesday because I knew I wasn't going to sleep until it was over).

Time to hit the sack -- early rising to visit Vigário Geral, a favela in the Zona Norte that became infamous in 1993 when 21 innocent residents were shot by police in retaliation for a bribe scheme that didn't pan out. It became symbolic, along with the massacre of street children in front of Candelaria church downtown, of an era marked by violence excessive even for Rio. When favela youth stormed the famous beaches of the Zona Sul (Ipanema, Copacaban) to fight one another and rob tourists, well, that was the last straw. They say funk propelled the invasion, but that's another story for another day.

I'll be making the cross-town trek at the invitation of Jean-Philippe and Jasmine, who have been recording on location for Montreal-based Masala (which comes replete with blog, podcast, and radio), who I met my first Friday at the infamous Baile de Cantagalo, where DJ Sany Pitbull is still holding it down with consummate style. I'm going to check out Grupo Cultural AfroReggae (of Favela Rising fame), which has been doing its part to mend a few of the city's many many rifts. Adrianna, proprietress of Carioca Funk Clube, also had some Norwegian (? or some kind of Scandinavian) radio journalists in tow at Cantagalo. And Leonardo HBL was on hand filming for Diplo's Favela on Blast, which I still don't know much about. (Although HeapsDecent sounds, well, heaps decent, and I’m considering pitching 2Bros as an avenue for doing something similar in Rio. “Smash a Macaco” anyone?) Cantagalo’s turning into a regular foreigner hotspot, something of a Castelo das Pedras lite, you know, where they take the tourists. Hard to slight it though: with Sany cranking out the best MPC mixes in the city and the CV willing to pay for massive equipes de som ready to burst the bass through your torso, they’ll keep on coming up the stone steps from Copacabana (there are over 100; I counted this time).

And what kind of reinauguration would this be without some beats. In honor of the bandidos that hang out at the end of my block:

Amigos Guerreiros a Rocinha

No morro da Rocinha é o maior lazer
A onde é o quem sube não quer mais descer . . .
Up on the hill of Rocinha it's the most relaxed
Where whoever climbs up never wants to come down again . . .