Machine Gun Voices

Photo Gallery
Foreword by Carlos Palombini

Chapter 1 Funk Rio
Chapter 2 Machine Gun Voices
Chapter 3 Writing about Funk Carioca
Chapter 4 Proibid?o and Rio’s Gangs
Chapter 5 Rocinha Favela
Chapter 6 Crimes of Self Defense
Chapter 7 Social Bandits in Funk
Chapter 8 Bandits of Christ
Chapter 9 Trafficking Culture
Chapter 10 Musical Survival Tactics
Chapter 11 Utopias de Favela
Chapter 12 Mixes from the Margins
Chapter 13 Last Dance

Afterword
Appendix
Index

Through it all, I went from starry-eyed visitor to community activist and adopted Rocinha as something of a long-term home. Of course, I’m not making any claims to have authority as a native of the community. I’m not a native of Rocinha. But my status as resident did impact my research and this book. So, too, did my role as researcher, community activist and educator. Undoubtedly, my research also has been affected by the fact I am a US-born, middle-class, white male with a Ph.D. Hopefully, instead of radical objectivity the somewhat ambivalent perspectives I have developed have strengthened my analysis in some ways, even as it has undoubtedly presented certain limitations.

Within minutes, the street where the bank was located, the Caminho do Boiadeiro, was swarming with heavily armed gangsters from the boca-de-fumoboca-de-fumo, who were considered responsible for protecting the bank. But these gangsters were not alone. They had called the local police officers to help them find the assailants. Together, the unlikely partners were slowly walking up and down the street-gangsters and police, together-trying to get to the bottom of the matter and find the culprits. Had the guilty parties been found within the favela, they would likely have been executed, as a means of keeping the rules and affirming the authority of the boca. Such would have been the case even if the gang had caught the bank robbers in the most commercially developed areas of Rocinha.

A good deal of the energy in the funk dance came from the music itself, not only rhythmically or even emotionally but also from a sonic standpoint. In the music, the constant chaotic and individual sounds of the city and the favela were drowned out by the music blaring from the wall of speakers and replaced by a restful and harmonious flow of pulsing music. It energized the crowd, as fans were filled with its rhythms and melodies, lifted up and swept away in the flood of throbbing bass pouring out of the subwoofers. That blanket of sound covered the fans with an irresistibly invigorating collective heartbeat.