Artes

In this article, the author examines urban development plans in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as of 2014. Particular focus is given to how this relates to the art scene in the city. Additional topics include Brazilian urban design, the summer 2016 Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro and the Favela da Rocinha slum in the city.

A regular tourist destination since the early 1990s, Rocinha - the paradigmatic touristic favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - has seen the number of foreigners visitors grow considerably after the successful international release of City of God in 2003. In dialogue with the new mobilities paradigm and based on a socio-ethnographic investigation which examines how poverty-stricken and segregated areas are turned into tourist attractions, the article sheds lights on the ways tourists who have watched Fernando Meirelles's film re-interpret their notion of 'the favela' after taking part in organized tours. The aim is to examine how far these reinterpretations, despite based on first-hand encounters, are related back to idealized notions that feed upon the cinematic favela of City of God while giving further legitimacy to it.

This article draws upon theories of performance, everyday life, social space, and community to explore an ethnographic vignette juxtaposing two scenes: in one, neighbors form an improvised huddle around a young gang member dying of a gunshot wound in the streets of the favela, or squatter town, of Rocinha, in Rio de Janeiro; in the other, a Palm Sunday procession passes through the same spot later that night. Contextualizing this illustration with detailed information on Rocinha (including police and gang activities there and changing trends in favela activism in recent decades) and a framework for distinguishing the live, "organic" spaces of performances from the still-life, "inorganic" spaces of abstract settings, I argue that Rocinha residents use popular performances to create refuges from the desolation facing them in the poverty, violence, and injustice of their lives and to reposition themselves in spaces of abundance, peace, and community.

Sneed's first contact with Rocinha, Rio's biggest favela, occurred in 1990, a year after the first Brazilian funk record was released in Portuguese.3 At the time he was not interested in researching the music genre but more in the experiences of Rocinha residents and the drug gangs that ruled the favelas (17). Paul Sneed's book Machine Gun Voices: Favelas and Utopia in Brazilian Gangster Funk is the first ethnography about this Afro-Atlantic electronic scene to be published in English. More than a mere outcome of a social context - Rio's favelas - Sneed sees gangster funk as a kind of mediator between drug traffickers and the favelas' inhabitants (214). The literature on Brazilian funk has expanded since Sneed's PhD dissertation in 2003 on gangster funk

Rio de Janeiro's "bailes funk," or funk dance parties, with their often intensely violent and aggressively sexualized nature, are fundamental expressions of the culture of the city's favelas, or squatter towns, with tremendous significance for enormous crowds of poor, young people who attend them. This article draws on ethnographic research and participant observation, conducted by the author throughout years of living in the favela of Rocinha, and close readings of funk lyrics to explore the utopian impulse at the core of the baile funk experience, especially in community dances sponsored by gangsters held in the streets of favelas. Like some other cultural expressions of African diaspora communities, these bailes conjure up and sustain a morally and politically charged musical space that joins the young people together, emotionally elevating them above the harsh conditions of their lives into a spiritual state that makes available to them the feeling of living in a better world.
Resumo em português: Os bailes funk do Rio de Janeiro, muitas vezes caracterizados por intensa violência e sexualidade agressiva, são expressões fundamentais da cultura das favelas com um significado especial para o grande número de jovens pobres que os freqüenta. Este artigo está baseado em teoria cultural, pesquisa etnográfica (conduzida pelo autor ao longo de vários anos na favela da Rocinha), leitura minuciosa de letras de músicas e observação participante para explorar o impulso utópico subjacente à experiência do baile funk, sobretudo nos bailes de comunidade patrocinados nas favelas traficantes de drogas. Como é o caso de muitas outras expressões de práticas culturais da Diáspora Africana, a experiência do baile cria um espaço musical que une e eleva os participantes emocionalmente para além da escassez da pobreza para um estado de espírito em que possam sentir a sensação de como seria viver num mundo melhor.