by Megan Mylan

In Brazil, a country synonymous with samba, children are using music – one of their country's greatest strengths – to fight their country's greatest shortcomings: poverty, racism and police violence.

The musicians are part of Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae, which empowers children from Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) through workshops in music and dance. The classes feed into a band with forty regular performers whose shows are an infectious combination of percussion, dance, rap and circus acts that make stereotypes crumble.

"We get people's attention with our music," explains Anderson Sá, 19, a performer and youth leader with Afro Reggae. "Then they start asking questions. They want to learn more about us and where we are from."

Anderson and the other musicians are from Vigário Geral, a favela on the northern edge of Rio de Janeiro with 8,000 residents that is infamous for intense drug trade and for a massacre in 1993 in which police killed 21 residents. Violence, a daily presence in Rio's 500 favelas, is the leading cause of death for young Brazilians. Through music, Afro Reggae tries to keep young people alive.

Before the massacre Jose Pereira (known as Júnior), at the time a 25-year-old taxi driver, was organizing reggae dance parties downtown and publishing a monthly newspaper, Afro Reggae News, with three friends. None had ever been to Vigário Geral, but they had all grown up in rough neighborhoods and were looking for a way to bring their work to the favelas.

Then the massacre happened, and they knew where they had to begin. They found two volunteer teachers and began offering classes in Afro-Brazilian dance and drumming in a small courtyard in the favela.

Today the group works in a new cultural center with more than 350 children and offers classes in everything from flamenco and ballroom dancing to public health and citizenship. Afro Reggae's ability to use culture to steer youths away from the drug trade and provide them with a way to communicate with society has captured the attention of national and international foundations, governments and the news media.

'It's Simple: The Drums Make Noise'

"Our initial goal was to give the kids something exciting to be involved in away from the drug trade," explains Júnior, now the executive coordinator. With the impatience of someone who wants to change the world before the sun goes down, Júnior talks a mile a minute and solves problems almost as fast. "It's simple: The drums make noise and catch the kids' attention."

The energy of the music gets children in the door; straight-talking respect and professionalism keep them participating.

The key is the dozens of educators who work with the group. "Most of our team lived through experiences like this, dealing with violence constantly," says Júnior. "I grew up in the center of the city in a prostitution area with relatives involved in drugs. Living in a violent area was my university, which prepared me for this work."

The educators' first-hand experience gives them a credibility that many well-intentioned outreach programs lack, an essential ingredient for success with children who have learned to be wary of outsiders.

"All anyone from outside knows about Vigário Geral is violence and death, like that's all that exists here," explains Vitor Onofre, a soft-spoken member of Afro Reggae, wise far beyond his 18 years. "So Afro Reggae can show the world that there are real people living here."

The group uses the band performances and media attention to change stereotypes. Júnior explains: "The music is a way to communicate the reality of the favelas to the rest of society. Only a tiny fraction of the population is directly involved (in the drug trade), but everyone suffers from it."

The Awful Demographics

A third of Rio's 5.5 million people live in favelas, and Brazil has one of the widest gaps between rich and poor. Armed drug mafias took over the favelas in the early 1980s, governing with automatic weapons, the promise of quick cash and a flair for public relations. The traffickers often supply services the state has failed to provide: sewage systems, roads, and soccer fields. Both boys and girls are recruited as bookkeepers, runners and lookouts.

When traffickers and the police clash, it's the Wild West. Anyone who runs is suspect and is often tried with a bullet in the back. With nearly complete impunity, Rio's military police kill an average of 14 civilians a month, according to Human Rights Watch, Americas. On a per-capita basis, that's as many as New York City police kill in a year.

Yet public opinion polls show that most Brazilians feel the police are justified in using violence to fight drug traffickers.

"Living outside is different," explains Vitor, whose family was able to leave their favela for a while when his mother held two jobs as a cleaning lady. "When you live in a place where the shooting isn't constant, you can sleep. And when you live in a favela, you can't sleep and folks say, `If you can't sleep, you must have something to hide.'

"But that's not it. It's because you're afraid. You can be sleeping and the police show up all of the sudden and start hitting you."

Vitor's younger brother was recently shot to death. The details are unclear, but he had become involved with drug trafficking. Deaths of favela teen-agers are rarely investigated.

'I Was Going to Explode'

Afro Reggae is determined that losing teen-agers should not be accepted as commonplace. Only one child in the band has died from involvement with trafficking, but all have lost a relative or friend to violence. The band's concerts are a vehicle of protest.

"One day I was mad at the world," recalls Anderson. "I had just had a fight with my mom, one with my girl friend the night before, and then I got to rehearsal and Júnior starts drilling me about things that had gone wrong at the cultural center.

"I was going to explode. So when rehearsal got going, I started yelling. `To bolado! To bolado!' (I'm pissed off!) Then, instead of adding stuff about being mad at my mom, I started thinking about what goes on here: the massacre, losing our friends. And so I put that in and now the song is part of our normal 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!

Anderson recalls that of the teen-agers he hung with two years ago, four are dead and another three are in jail. "And I'm talking about guys who aren't even 20."

Fighting the Lure of What Looks Like Easy Money

Periodically the band marches through the community to lure new young members with the sound of the drums. "Everyone thinks it's cool, but some guys just want to hang at home on the couch and others are already involved in the trade. When you can spend three hours on a street corner and make a bunch of money, it's hard to give up. But we are training a whole group of kids who will be following a different path from the start."

Today Anderson is the director of the new cultural center. With his easy smile and booming voice, he is responsible for maintaining the building, scheduling instructors and sharing the staff's decisions with the community.

The group works in Vigário Geral and Cantagalo, a favela in the heart of Ipanema, one of Rio's wealthiest beachfront neighborhoods. When they have a solid base, they plan to move into other communities.

While Júnior is a central figure, a pied piper with children, it is not a one-man show. Decisions are made by five outside educators and two youth leaders from Vigário. Ideas are tested instead of imposed.

Many of the older band members teach the younger children, for which they get small stipends. One of the most successful workshops is capoeira, a dance and martial art created by Brazilian slaves. The flips, spins and kicks connect the teen-agers to their cultural heritage.

Drawing on the African Diaspora

The band's music combines traditional Afro-Brazilian percussion with music and dance inspired in the African Diaspora, including rap, hip-hop and street dance. Brazil has the second-largest black population after Nigeria, and though close to half of the country's 160 million people are of African descent, only 1 percent of the university population is black, and television and movies are dominated by lighter skinned Brazilians. Afro Reggae builds pride in Afro-Brazilian culture.

Afro Reggae has collaborated with Brazilian and international artists from every genre and recently worked with Cirque du Soleil of Canada to integrate circus acts into the shows.

Júnior believes that the model can be effective in any culture. "Drums work here; somewhere else it might be classical music or karate," he says. "The key is getting the kid's attention and convincing them they can create their own future."

This June, 41 children are embarking for Paris to perform at the World Cup Soccer festivities and then travel Europe on a month-long tour sponsored by several European and Brazilian foundations and the Rio city government.

Afro Reggae's work has been on an accelerated growth pattern from Day 1. In 1996, after years of operating out of Júnior's small apartment, the group rented a downtown office. Their first funds came from the owner of a large silk-screening factory near Vigário Geral, followed by Júnior's selection for a fellowship from Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. Today the group gets funds from the Government's Solidaridade program, the Ford Foundation and the Inter-American Development Bank, among others.

Last year they replaced the band's tiny house in Vigário with the new cultural center, a two-story stucco building with an open-air top floor for dance classes and a facade with a captivating mural painted by a local artist.

An inauguration celebration attracted well-known Brazilian musicians and hundreds of fans from inside and outside Vigário. Afro Reggae uses these occasions to capitalize on the media attention they attract.

"People come here now who would never have set foot in Vigário," says Anderson. "They see all of these big-name artists and politicians and they start thinking, `What are those people doing in Vigário Geral?' And so they want to come check it out."

A Wise Clown on Stilts

To further combat social divisions, several young members work as community health educators in an exchange with ABIA, an NGO working on AIDS awareness. Vitor began working with ABIA two years ago under the guidance of Jóse Marmo, an Ashoka Fellow working with AIDS prevention among Afro-Brazilian youth, a group rarely reached through public health campaigns. Together they have built a citywide campaign with posters and conferences and started the Health Troupe, a circus group with a safe-sex message. Vitor is a wise clown who sends a potent message while walking on stilts.

"Each time you discover each new thing," he says, "you are gaining more creativity to make you a stronger person who can do all sorts of things."

More than four years have passed since the police massacre in Vigário. No one has been convicted – and no one is surprised at that. Justice in Brazil is slow and uncertain. But while the legal system drags on, Afro Reggae is building an army of politicized performers who are sending a strong message to Brazilian society that they expect more for their future.