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Notes from the Hillside: The Funk and Favelas in Rio de Janeiro “On the fair green hills of Rio Sixty-three stone steps separate Copacabana from Cantagalo. The former is the postcard neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, its beach crowded with tourists looking to find their own girl from Ipanema. Ipanema itself lies just to the west, separated from Copacabana by the morro , or hill, of Cantagalo. This juxtaposition is a common enough fact in Rio, whose metropolitan population of 13 million is spread over rugged topography. However, the morro takes on a special significance in this seaside city, as more often than not a blanket of densely packed brick houses coats any given hill. Oftentimes picturesque from a distance, these developments are called favelas , usually referred to in English as “ghettos,” “slums,” or “shantytowns.” But all of those terms carry a pejorative denotation that isn't necessarily merited. Unlike ghettos, favelas are not ethnically or racially homogenous, reflecting Brazil's long tradition of immigration and miscigenação (while the English “miscegenation” is tied to racism, the Portuguese term carries the positive connotation of a melting-pot of colors). Unlike slums, favelas are not always squalid, undesirable places to live; rather, many have proactive residents associations and command breathtaking views. Unlike shantytowns, many favelas have taken permanent enough roots that makeshift brick has been replaced by concrete foundations. Etymologically speaking, a favela is a type of plant. It grows on hills in northeastern Brazil, where the military was sent to put down an insurrection in the city of Canudos from 1896-1897. When soldiers returned to then-capital Rio de Janeiro, the government had yet to build housing it had promised in exchange for their services. In protest, the soldiers camped out in the city center on Morro da Providência and nicknamed it “ favela ” in honor of their encampments during the campaign, nestled among carpets of favela plants. Rio's hills, being unsuitable for agriculture and difficult to build on, were otherwise unoccupied. The promised housing never materialized, the name and the concept of favela blossomed, and today they house a third of the city's population. Morro da Providência is still there—it slopes up steeply a few hundred yards from Centro, the city's chaotic transportation hub. Despite favelas ' century-long history and ubiquity in Rio —from almost every landmark or beach, a favela is in sight—the city, especially in its presentation to foreigners, tries its hardest to ignore them. On a tourist map of Rio the hills are green with vegetation, nary a building to be seen. Every map prominently features Corcovado, atop which rests Cristo Redentor, the 125-foot Art Deco statue of Christ with arms outstretched that has become a symbol of the city. But no mention is made of Morro do Inglês, a favela one passes on the train ride up to the summit. Even the metrô map is biased: Rather than take an objective, top-down view, its angled perspective gives disproportionate space to the tourist-friendly Zona Sul at the expense of the much larger, favela -heavy Zona Norte— even though more metrô stations are located there. Most cariocas (inhabitants of Rio) I spoke to who live in the asfalto —literally “asphalt”, the flatland where the middle- and upper-class neighborhoods are located – preferred to direct my attention to the city's profusion of shopping malls, uncreatively referred to by the Anglicism “ o shopping .” But even at the ritzy São Conrado Fahsion Mall in a nouveau riche neighborhood of gated high-rise condominiums, the other half of Rio is inescapable. Turning 180º puts you at the foot of Rocinha, Rio's largest favela sprawling up the Morro Dois Irmãos, where 150,000–300,000 people make their home. Rocinha's antidote to the São Conrado Fashion Mall is the passarela , a bustling row of stalls selling clothes, bootleg CDs and DVDs, snacks, cell phone accessories, toys, and daily essentials that line the highway shoulder lane where buses drop off passengers. Pass up the Via Ápia that leads into Rocinha and you'll find the trappings of any vibrant neighborhood: bars, restaurants, grocers, a pharmacy, pet stores, cell phone vendors, an arcade, Internet cafes, clothing boutiques, or even Rocbuster, a video rental store decked out in familiar blue and yellow. Incredibly, this city within a city has all been constructed on squatted land. To residents, this blatant violation of traditional property rights isn't much of a concern. In Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World , Robert Neuwirth, who lived in four squatter communities across the globe, recounts an experience he had in Rocinha. Sitting at a bar with a group of men, all of whom had built their homes by hand, he asked them who owned the land on which their foundations rest. They laughed at him, mostly in incomprehension. It's ours, they responded. We built our homes there, so it's ours. What lies on top of the land is more important than the land itself. Indeed, an ad-hoc system has developed in which homeowners sell the right to build an apartment on the floor above their own, somewhat akin to air rights in Manhattan . The favela 's self-made status confers a strong sense of community, as residents are eager to reinvest in what they built themselves. My friend Alex, who received a scholarship to study in the U.S.—an unbelievable opportunity for a favelado —nonetheless is eager to return. He wrote to me, “I like it a lot here [in San Francisco], but my father and family live in Rocinha . . . and I bought a house there too, I need to help my community and my family in Rocinha.” It's no wonder residents wear t-shirts proclaiming “100% Rocinha.” However, Rocinha, due to its size, is somewhat exceptional. It's been one of the chief beneficiaries of the Favela/Bairro program, a municipal initiative to integrate favelas into traditional bairros (neighborhoods). Nowadays, several of the main thoroughfares are paved and Rocinha was the first favela to have a city bus line run through it. Electricity, once pirated, has become regularized, as the utility company realized that the hundreds of thousands siphoning off power weren't criminals, but potential customers. Broadband Internet access is available for those who can afford it, and Rocinha boasts two radio stations and even its own cable channel, RocTV. The arrival of amenities more characteristic of the asfalto , a process known as asfaltização , is greeted with some ambivalence. No different than in other cities, residents worry that what amounts to a form of gentrification will alter the fabric of their community and increase the cost of living. These trends, while present in other communities, especially in the Zona Sul , are certainly not the rule across Rio 's 700+ favelas , a range so broad that it's impossible to uniformly characterize the quality of life. In the less desirable Zona Norte and Zona Oeste , north and west, respectively, of Rio's tourist and commercial nexus, favelas still offer an inexpensive place to live, but are also less likely to be perched on hills with ocean views, farther away from economic opportunities, and more likely to resemble the sprawling peripheral slums of nearby metropolis São Paulo or any other Latin American city. * * * Favelas of all types, however, are culturally rich. The southern stronghold of forró , a folk music and dance from northeastern Brazil, is in the favelas , as many internal migrants from the poorer northeast end up in the morro . Samba , the legendary music of Carnaval , was once derided as the culturally backward music of slaves and their descendents. The Dicionário Cravo Albin da Música Popular Brasileira , in its entry on samba , traces the music's origins to “Rio de Janeiro, from 1850 on, [. . . where] there was growth in the population of blacks and mestizos originally from various parts of Brazil, principally Bahia [the Brazilian region with the strongest African heritage]” who settled in Rio's poorer neighborhoods. It cites the soldiers from the Guerra de Canudos and their “community that they named ‘favela', a term that later would come to be used as a synonym for informal housing built by the marginalized classes.” Far from its humble roots, samba is now an essential part of Brazilian national identity, a cherished piece of cultural patrimony, and a lucrative commercial endeavor, especially around Carnaval season. More recently, however, favelas have nurtured a new musical style that carries the same stigma samba once bore. It's called funk , and while it can trace its roots to American funk of the James Brown variety, the sound has deviated drastically from The Godfather of Soul's sultry slink. In the 1970s, funk, soul, and disco made their way down the Atlantic coast and became popular among black crowds in Rio. The process continued with newer sounds in the '80s. One in particular caught on: Miami bass, a sparse hip-hop style built on extremely deep bass and raunchy lyrics. It's perhaps best known as the genre of 2 Live Crew, whose album “As Nasty As They Wanna Be” eventually became the centerpiece of a landmark Supreme Court case on free speech. As sampling technology also arrived in Rio , simple presentation or imitation of American styles gave way to a distinctly Brazilian sound. Looped samples from Miami bass records formed a foundation—although even that faded with the advent of tamborzão , a rhythm concocted in Rio on a Roland-808 drum machine—but the music took on its own agency with the advent of lyrics in Portuguese and a blender-like aesthetic, incorporating everything from samba beats to capoiera rhythms to random samples from Northern rock, hip-hop, and television. While recordings today come out with a crisper sound than the rough cuts of the '90s, in a city where 50% of all CDs sold are pirated copies, funk is chiefly produced, consumed, and presented live at the baile funk ( baile meaning “ball”, especially one for dancing). Some clubs in the asfalto may have nights dedicated to funk , but it's undeniable that the music's continued evolution occurs in the favela and that the baile funk plays a vital role in the social and cultural life of the morro . It's a baile funk that brought me to Cantagalo in the first place, where for several consecutive Friday nights I found myself climbing those stone steps, leaving the tourist confines of Copacabana below for the ubiquitous soundtrack of Rio 's youth. * * * I walked up each step with a sinking fear, unable to forget the other crucial bond that ties most favelas together: Each morro is run by one of the three criminal factions that control the drug trade flowing through Rio . Narcotics traffic is, unfortunately, the economic engine of the favela . It's a fact that has been sensationalized, most notably in the Oscar-nominated film Cidade de Deus ( City of God ). Today, the real Cidade de Deus is known for having one of the best community centers in any favela , equipped with classroom space and Internet access. Moreover, less than 1% of favela residents are directly involved in the movement of what's colloquially referred to as preto e branco —black and white, marijuana and cocaine. However, drug money goes not just to arming the gangs, but also to financing a lot of the favela 's social operations. Paul Sneed, in Machine Gun Voices : Bandits, Favelas, and Utopia in Brazilian Funk , cites “an informal welfare system in which drug traffickers have helped to provide minimal low-income housing, protection, medical assistance, public works and leisure and recreational activities.” It's a relationship that has created, to an extent, a parallel government. While the residents associations handle local municipal issues—after each Cantagalo baile , men in green uniforms reading “ associação de moradores ” cleaned up the trash in the street—the criminal factions are the undisputed absolute authority. But Sneed cautions, “Of course, it is fair to say, in many contexts, that Brazil is a ‘democracy' and that the ruling order of the favelas is a ‘narcodictatorship,' yet presenting the complex social terrain of Rio de Janeiro in terms of this facile dichotomy does no justice to the complexities of the issues.” He continues, “Most Brazilians are all too aware of the ways in which Brazil is not a perfect democracy, with its chronic problems of corrupt public officials, police abuse and neglect of the poor.” The poor of the favelas , indeed, are the ones who suffer most. Elizabeth Leeds, in her 1996 article for the Latin American Research Review , “Cocaine and Parallel Polities in the Brazilian Urban Periphery,” outlines the crux of the problem: “Squatter populations in particular are caught between the illegal violence of drug dealers and the official violences of security forces.” Without justifying the tragic bloodshed enacted by the criminal factions, nor absolving the excesses of the state in a country only 20 years out of a military dictatorship, there nevertheless exists a sizable population that doesn't deserve culpability for the symbiotic reality of the favelas . Moreover, the key point of interaction en masse between the favela community and the members of the local criminal faction is the baile funk , which certainly falls into the category of criminal social largess. While there are occasional pay-to-enter bailes , none but the ruling criminal faction can afford to throw a true baile de comunidade , open to all. As a result of this association, bailes funk have the sordid reputation of being havens for drugs and violence. The media was scandalized by reports of the corredor de morte (corridor of death) bailes in the '90s, when two groups of funkeiros would start on opposite sides of the room and, egged on by the verbal encouragement of the MC and the abrasive beats of the DJ, engage in vicious fighting, sometimes to the death. In 2002, funk reached another nadir in the public consciousness with the murder of Tim Lopes, a reporter for TV Globo who went undercover to a baile in the favela Vila Cruzeira. He was discovered with his camera, then tortured and killed at the order of the dono do morro , chief of the local faction. Without brushing off such awful brutality, I nevertheless was girded by a conviction that these lurid tales represented a disproportionate few. And so, when I arrived my first time at 11:30 pm—early by baile standards, which usually get underway around 2 am—I was pleasantly surprised to find nothing more than a street festival. The main drag through Cantagalo was lined by tiny booths laced with Brazilian flags, the air thick with the smell of skewered churrasco and fried shrimp. The residents were out socializing, sipping on beer or caiprinhas —a cocktail made from sugar, lime, and the potent sugarcane liquor cachça . Little kids kicked soccer balls around, avoiding the motorbikes that zipped up and down the hill. In short, the whole community was gathered together, whether for commerce or for fun. All the activity was clustered around the quadra , a gym–like space made of concrete and capped by a corrugated tin roof. In a revealing coincidence, it's also where the local escola de samba practices. As one of the few large, open spaces in the favela —otherwise a dense network of allies and passageways—the quadra served as an obvious focal point and a great spot for a festa . Even though it was clear I had found my destination, I heeded the advice of a friend who lives in Rio and made sure to ask some of the kids where the baile was, as children are the eyes and ears of the favela , always observing who's passing in and out. It's a common practice for them to launch kites to signal further up the hill when police are arriving, for example. I asked a thin boy, a soccer ball balanced under his foot, and he pointed to the quadra. That way, he could vouch that the gringo wasn't there to buy drugs or cause trouble, just came for the party. Sure enough, as the baile got started, he found me in the crowd and told me it was getting underway. But despite the baile 's role as a social outlet for the community, it's inextricably intertwined with its hosts. MC Gringo, a German who has lived in Rio for many years, accompanied me on my first night and explained much that was invisible to the untrained eye. The alley across from the quadra was a boca-de-fumo , “mouth of smoke,” set aside for selling drugs. A group of men from the gang descended the hill on motorcycles, off for a night of robberies and muggings. As an MC from the Zona Norte took the microphone, I moved aside as the stage was suddenly rushed by better-dressed funkeiros —new sneakers, jewelry hanging from their neck. Traficantes , it became apparent, when one took his shirt off to reveal a pistol in his waistband. They were riled up because the MC was there to sing proibidão , a style of funk that glorifies the drug gangs. Thumbs and forefingers making a ‘CV'—for Comando Vermelho , the gang that runs Cantagalo—shot up into the air as she chanted the CV's motto: “ Paz, justiça, e liberdade ” (“Peace, justice, and liberty”). Proibidão is the style of funk most linked to its vehemently negative reputation, although to say it is actually “prohibited,” as the name implies, is an exaggeration. As Sneed recounts in Machine Gun Voices , “[. . . W]hen I asked a police officer on the beach in the Leblon neighborhood of Rio whether or not he would personally arrest anyone over proibidão , he told me that he likes such music and that he buys it for his kids!” More to the point, Sneed sees proibidão not merely as an apologetic for drug trafficking, but rather as an essential dialogue between the community and the gang that rules over it. The proibidão MC is more than just a regular resident of the favela , but not accepted as an actual gangster. In that middle ground, the MC can speak from gang to resident, from resident to gang. It is here that the favela code of conduct, blindão (derived from blindar , “to armor”), is laid out, circulated in songs like “The Ten Commandments of the Favela ,” a CV funk track from 2001. “ Proibidão funk in the favelas,” Sneed argues, “has become the principal platform for the presentation of the power of the traffickers and the underlying values and rules of behavior in their governance of the favela.” It's a fact reinforced by their presence at the baile. He continues, “the drug traffickers are in their element at the funk dance; they are the warriors of the tribe, the special forces, brave, responsible, sometimes well loved, sometimes hated, and always dangerous.” Conversely, the MC speaks back from the community, outlining how the gangster himself should act. “[E]xamples of this sort of ‘code of conduct' for gangsters,” Sneed explains, “are the many songs that give advice, usually as if from the perspective of another bandit, telling them not to be selfish and to respect the community. There are also innumerable songs that humorously ridicule gangsters who are braggers, brown-nosers, cowards and bullies.” In short, proibidão deserves its own reformulation of the Chuck D quote “Rap is CNN for black people.” Sneed offers, “As the traditional media is to the status quo in Brazil , and the Globo television network in particular, so is proibidão funk to the order of the drug traffickers in Rio .” In this case at Cantagalo, proibidão was signaling the call to war. Rio's gangs fight each other as much as the police, and when I returned the next weekend, already halfway up the steps I knew something was wrong because I couldn't hear the telltale sounds drifting out from the quadra . Two guys—lookouts, I later realized—were sitting on the staircase with a questioning look that said, “Why are you here?” I asked about the baile and they said it was cancelled, “ à causa de guerra .” But, hope rising in their voices, “ Sexta que vem .” Next Friday, if they would make it that long: MC Gringo found me on the beach the next day and told me the Cantagalo CV had staged an attack on a nearby favela earlier in the week, sobering me to the obvious reality that many of the gangsters I had been on stage with that first night were now dead. * * *
Carnaval holds a ritual place in Brazil as a great moment of social leveling, when the whole society comes together in a rare display of harmony over the common bond of music and revelry. What MC Mr Catra told me in an interview, then, is only logical: “Funk is a Carnaval every weekend.” It's a spirit that MCs Júnior and Leonardo tap into in their early '90s classic, “ Endereço dos Bailes ” (Address of the Bailes ). Their back-and-forth lyrics call out bailes across the city, drawing an alternate map of Rio that hopscotches from favela to favela , rather than from tourist attraction to tourist attraction. In the opening quatrain, they praise Rio 's assets, from beaches to sun to soccer, then cinch the rhyme in the fourth line, “ Mas também tem muito funk rolando até de manhã (But it also has lots of funk rolling on into the morning).” Funk , growing pains and all, deserves its place in Rio's cultural pantheon. And whether or not the rest of the city wants to recognize them, favelas deserve their place in the urban makeup. It's the baile funk that won't let the asfalto forget: bass so deep it thumps your chest, ears ringing all the next day, sound so loud it wakes up the top floors of the Copacabana apartment building that faces the Morro do Cantagalo, the MCs voice ringing out: We're still here, we still count. All photographs and translations from the Portuguese by the author. He is indebted to the Two Brothers Foundation, which afforded him the opportunity to spend considerable time in Rocinha. To learn more and donate, please visit www.2bros.org. back to Winter 2007 Table of Contents |