Rio - The art of transformation

The World Cup in 2014, the Olympics two years later, huge oil finds that have had OPEC knocking on the door, an economy barely scratched by recession and a currency which has seen a 34 percent rise against the dollar in 2009…. It would seem that there’s only good news coming out of Brazil.

But all is not well. In late October, the world saw a city celebrating, with hundreds of locals gathered on Copacabana beach. But shortly after, gunmen shot down a police helicopter over the Morro de Macacos favela and a drug trafficker was found dead in a shopping trolley on a main thoroughfare. Campaigners from Movimento Rio de Paz (Peace for Rio) staged a protest - they sat silent and grim in shopping trolleys, mimicking the murdered and bearing placards that simply read: ‘twenty thousand dead in a thousand days’. The figures are for Rio alone.

Eduardo Paes, the mayor who secured Rio the Olympics has promised tough action. So has the chief of police. But Rio has suffered for decades under tough action - and its counterpart contraband trade in drugs and military and police firearms. Many believe that the way forward is to work with the favela communities, not against them. Those that have done so have proved hugely successful. Here we profile a handful of many who are paving the way through a series of innovative artistic projects which have changed thousands of lives and which continue to give real hope.

AfroReggae – the art of social justice

“If the powerful in Brazil wanted to end the violence they could do it tomorrow,” Altair Martins of pioneering cultural group AfroReggae told me: “No one in my favela, Vigário Geral, speaks English. Yet all the guns here are imported from the USA and Germany. There are far greater interests at work here. Interests who encourage this violence for their own gain. Interests with the finest houses in Brazil.” Creating cultural projects in Vigário Geral and neighbouring favelas since 1993, AfroReggae have forged new futures for many local young people. Their intense music and dance programmes have taken root as viable alternatives to drug trafficking. Here, creativity is literally saving lives.

Favela Rising – AfroReggae documentary trailer
www.favelarising.com

The Favela Force Theatre

On 20 November 2009 Mayra Avellar, a youth activist from Brazil spoke at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)'s 20th Anniversary Commemoration of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, telling her favela story. Mayra is a teenager from Vila Cruzeiro, one of Rio’s most troubled northern favelas, who has become a role model and icon in poor Brazil for her vocal opposition to drug-gang and police violence. Her theatre group, Favela Força performs plays which portray the brutal reality and stark choices faced daily by favela teenagers. And her childrens’ marches – demanding an end to gang intimidation and police patrols during school hours have brought teachers and doctors back into communities which had become inaccessible to public services through violence. In Spring 2008, Mayra was awarded the fourth International Children's Peace Prize by Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Trailer for Cruzeiro, a documentary about favela life featuring Mayra Avellar
www.faveladocumentary.com

Back to school with Ex-Cola

Totonho (together with his band Os Cabra), is at the cutting edge of a new wave of Brazilian musicians loosely grouped together under the ‘vanguarda’ banner who are re-inventing the Brazilian sound by mingling theatre, psychedelia and roots music. He’s recorded two albums in Rio and toured in Europe, including appearances at the Barbican in London. Off stage, Totonho spends most of his free time and money engaged in social work with street children; with whom he identifies and who are his greatest priority: “I am from the forgotten community of the street underworld ……my salary is my imagination.” Totonho’s Ex-Cola NGO has saved hundreds of lives, weaning children off glue (cola) and back to school (escola) and protecting them from the vigilantes of the Rio shop workers coalition, who have killed street children whilst the police turned a blind eye. Look out for his new album in June 2010.

Totonho & Os Cabra - Totonho Venha Salvar o Mundo

Drumming up a change with the Batucadas Brasileiras

Robertinho Silva – who has played session drums with Brazil’s greatest names from Milton Nascimento to Tom Jobim and Egberto Gismonti has a percussion orchestra and drum school in Gamboa – the neighborhood where samba was born. Thousands of children from the poor communities around Rio’s port area have graduated with music degrees from his Escola da Batucadas Brasileiras. The best have gone on to play with the Orquestra de Percussão Robertinho Silva who play several times a month. Look out for their shows in Lapa.

Life on the high wire with projeto Crescer E Viver

“If it weren’t for our circus”, says Vinícius Daumas of projeto Crescer e Viver, “I can honestly say that many of these teenagers would be dead. For sure some would be in a trafficking gang.” Instead some 2000 kids from the deprived communities of the Boca do Lixo neighbourhood, right in the shadow of the Sambódromo have gone to circus school and learnt their three Rs whilst also mastering the trapeze and the flic-flac. The current company perform a spectacular show to music composed by Luíz Gonzaga’s grandson, Daniel in a tent in the Boca do Lixo every Thursday-Saturday from August to late November. And they tour too – in 2010 they are due at London’s Roundhouse.

Putting carnival together with the women of AMEBRAS

Rio’s carnival is nailed, glued, stitched and sewn in the giant warehouses of the Cidade de Samba near the old ports. Much of the work is undertaken by AMEBRAS - an association of serious, stern older women who enrol, train and employ dozens of would-be artisans and dress-makers from the favelas. Amebras artisans help to make costumes and floats for all the big samba schools that parade in the Sambódromo. But Amebras president Célia Regina Domingues is keen to stress that carnival is really not the point: “There’s no fooling about here”, she says firmly, “everything we do from hat-making to foam-sculpting for the floats is directed towards a profession, post-carnival. People leave our project with real skills.”

Turning trash to art with Santa Sucata

Above one of central Rio’s most famous old school gafieira halls Estudantina Musical there’s a little make-shift factory where artists like Maristela Pessoa and Jac Carrara work with groups from the favelas to turn rubbish into arts and crafts. “People collect waste materials for us – cardboard, advertising hoardings, old uniforms from the post office… We wash them and turn them into products which we sell on to shops or tourists. And we train people from marginalised communities in practical skills – from working with their hands to design and book-keeping,” says Jac. You can buy direct from Santa Sucata or visit them in their factory – Estudantina Musical Ballroom, 3 piso, Praça Tiradentes 79, Rio de Janeiro tel + 55 21 2242-9901.

A model favela

In the late 1990s, in an attempt to escape a mixture of boredom and sporadic violence in favela Pereira da Silva, Cilan Souza de Oliveira, his brother and their schoolboy friends created a model of their home on a patch of wasteland at the edge of the community. “Soon all the kids began to get involved and we gave the play area a name – Morrinho.’ Painted breeze blocks served as model houses, lego as furniture, dolls and toy cars gave the model life and soon Morrinho had spread to cover an entire small hillside. “The adults took notice. Then the media started to come and the favela started to get famous for Morrinho” recalls Cilan. “Even the police changed their attitude. As we turned from children to teenagers they started to treat us differently to the others – ‘so you’re the kids who built Morrinho?’ they’d ask, impressed rather than suspicious. People started to call us artists. And we realised we’d made more than a toy. It was a model of our reality – our world in miniature – from the baile funk parties to the gangs and police raids.” Morrinho has toured as an art installation, including a show at the Venice Biennale in 2007. In Rio it is now a tourist attraction and the seat of an international NGO (www.morrinho.com) and Pereira da Silva has become one of Rio’s least troubled favelas. “It’s great when tourists come,” says Cilan. “They arrive full of fear and apprehension, and leave thinking that we have a wonderful community. Three foreigners who came as visitors have now moved in to the favela and one has even become a baile funk rapper. We call him MC Gringo!”

Projeto Morrinho – an introduction

Travel

Leo’s Rio run by dyed-in-the-wool Carioca Leo Viana, who offers alternative tours of Rio in comfortable a/c cars. They can include all the above and more. Leo also runs traditional and alternative music tours of the city. Portuguese speaking only but English guides available on request.
leosrio.blogspot.com

Stay with Cama e Café who match you with a local who shares your interests under a homestay scheme.
www.camaecafe.com

Footprint Brazil is the only guidebook to feature music and include contributions from leading Brazilian musicians.
www.footprintbooks.com

Text and photos Alex Robinson

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