Afro-Reggae Cultural Group
By Andra Brosy

A member of Bloco AfroReggae

In Brazil, a nation known for samba and carnaval as much as serious social and economic inequality, youths in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas (shantytowns) are using music to craft an alternative to the prevailing culture of drug trafficking and gang violence. Since 1993, Afro Reggae Cultural Group (GCAR or simply Afro Reggae) has worked to lure children that could otherwise become involved in drug trafficking into a life of music, dance, and martial arts performance. The group, now classified as a nongovernmental organization (NGO), contains 460 members and many different affiliated performance groups; its flagship group, Banda Afro Reggae, has toured the United States and Europe and in 2002 released a debut album with Universal. The group is significant because it has combined popular culture with political mobilization to achieve concrete results in the lives of the favelados who are the group’s target.

Afro Reggae Cultural Group was formed as a response to the 1993 police massacre in Vigário Geral that left 21 innocent dead. Jose Pereira (known as Júnior), at the time a 25-year-old taxi driver and funk DJ, had been publishing the monthly newspaper Afro Reggae News and organizing reggae dance parties in downtown Rio, bringing together diverse sectors of the progressive community – women, human rights activists, unionists, ecologists – in addition to groups in the black movement. Having grown up in a favela and been involved in trafficking, Júnior saw popular Brazilian music culture as an opportunity to draw favela youth away from the violence of the drug trade.

The Vigário Geral massacre is indicative of the violent daily life in Rio favelas, especially Vigário Geral. In addition to the desperate poverty of the favelas that o­ne third of Brazil’s 6 million people must endure, favelados live in a daily war zone. In the early 1980s armed drug mafias took over the favelas, recruiting youngsters to be drug runners and lookouts, providing the favelas with sorely needed infrastructure such as sewer systems and roads – and introducing semiautomatic weapons to the favelas, initiating a relationship between favelas and guns that would prove persistent. Police and gang violence make gunshot wounds the number o­ne cause of death among young male Brazilians, and many youth do not live beyond their teens. In 2002 nearly 40,000 Brazilians were killed by guns, while in United States, which has over 100 million more people than Brazil, there were roughly 11,000 gun deaths. According to Human Rights Watch, Americas, an average of 14 civilians a month are killed by Rio police: o­n a per-capita basis New York City police kill that many civilians in a year. Almost everyone has been affected by the death of a family member due to drug or police violence.

Júnior’s plan began by bringing “educators” – other musicians like himself who had grown up in rough neighborhoods – into Vigário Geral to give workshops in traditional Afro-Brazilian drumming styles, music, dance, and capoeira, a dance-like martial arts form born among slaves brought to Brazil. Most children who joined Júnior had no experience in music or dance.

The first and often most difficult task is to convince the youth to join Afro Reggae. A child involved in the drug trade can earn as much as 5 times the minimum wage of $90 per month, allowing access to luxury goods that bestow social status within the favela and the ability to help support his family economically. Life with Afro Reggae, however, promises something more: living beyond adolescence. Vitor o­nofre, the manager of the Vigário Geral program, explains that “[Afro Reggae] had o­ne thing the traffickers couldn’t offer. They could live without fear.” Banda Afro Reggae’s lead singer and rapper LG says that he was able to make more money as a drug trafficker than as a band member, but he “saw a lot of friends and relatives get killed…. When a spray of bullets flew over my head and almost killed me during a favela shootout in 1995, I realized that everything ends from o­ne second to the next. I thought, ‘How could I use my life better?’ So I started meeting Junior and these people at workshops and realized it was a better crowd.” The captivating drumming, dancing, and acrobatics is often what initially captures children’s attention and brings in members. Megan Mylan, who shot a documentary o­n Afro Reggae, writes, “the energy of the music gets children in the door; straight-talking respect and professionalism keep them participating.”

One of the key aims of Afro Reggae is to instill self-esteem in the favela youth who must struggle constantly with the reality of favela violence as well as the stereotypes placed o­n their communities, especially the notorious Vigário Geral. Since its inception in 1993, Banda Afro Reggae has gained popularity among middle-class Brazilians, appearing frequently o­n Brazilian talk shows and performing for MTV Brazil; it has won international fame as well, touring Europe and playing Carnegie Hall in New York. The band had the help of Brazilian music legend Caetano Veloso o­n its debut album “Nova Caro,” and has collaborated with many different performance groups. It has a special relationship to the band O Rappa: after working with Banda Afro Reggae, O Rappa chose Paulo, a member of Banda Afro Reggae, to be apprenticed and become a member of O Rappa. Everyone in Afro Reggae gains self-esteem from the fame and recognition of their group, from the youngest participants in Afro Samba (7-12-year-olds) to the local cult heroes in Banda Afro Reggae.

Just as important as developing individual members’ personal self-worth, Afro Reggae has begun to change favela stereotypes. Brazilians from across town witness the favelados engaging in positive, nonviolent cultural activity instead of drug and gang violence. O­nofre explains, “All anyone from outside knows about Vigário Geral is violence and death, like that’s all that exists here…. So Afro Reggae can show the world that there are real people living here.” Gradually disproving stereotypes has had the important effect of reducing the number of police shootings. According to O­nofre, “when the band started getting known, the police’s attitude changed. They started respecting the members, and the shootouts stopped.”

In addition to transforming the personal self-esteem of its members and the collective self-worth of the favelas, Afro Reggae provides a political voice for its marginalized members. Singers and rappers are able to vent their daily frustration and make scathing critiques of social injustice with their words. The culture of Afro Reggae is simultaneously a form of therapy and political action. Anderson recalls that o­nce he arrived at rehearsal furious from a fight with his mom, and began yelling, “To bolado! To bolado!” (I’m pissed off!). Then, instead of being mad at his mom, he thought about the massacres and deaths of friends, and he incorporated that anger into a song that is now part of the band’s regular show:

To bolado!
21 residents killed by hate and the violence of vengeful police.
To bolado!
This cruelty happened because the day before traffickers killed four police.
To bolado!
The right path is the path to luck; the wrong path can lead you to death.
To bolado!

Afro Reggae’s performances have expanded to include street theater as a way to disseminate HIV/AIDS information and raise community health awareness. With the right cultural medium, it seems, Afro Reggae can confront even the most intransigent social problems.

In addition to acting as a transformational agent in the minds of its members and the politics of Rio, Afro Reggae is also equipping youth with concrete, marketable skills that enable its members to enter the performance and entertainment industries and become citizens of mainstream Brazil. Paulo, for example, was able to have a career as a drummer in a professional touring band when the members of O Rappa asked him to join them. Afro Reggae members have gone o­n to form independent bands, o­ne graduate is now part of Canada’s Cirque du Soleil, and another alumnus is with Ringling Brothers. By innovatively using music, dance, and other performing arts to draw youth away from the drug trade, Afro Reggae is transforming the way that favelados, middle-class Rio society, and the world view Vigário Geral and its neighboring favelas.

Members of Afro-Reggae

Other articles by Andra Brosy.

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