06036A10

Vol. 50, No. 2 Ethnomusicology Spring/Summer 2006

Conflict and Violence as Theoretical

Tools in Present-Day Ethnomusicology:
Notes on a Dialogic Ethnography of
Sound Practices in Rio de Janeiro1

Samuel Ara?jo and members

of the Grupo Musicultura2 / Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

to do with the 2005 SEM Conference's attempt to come to terms

Having with important, albeit not largely acknowledged, non-hegemonic tradi
tions, this paper could take many different angles, one of which being in
dividual contributions by Brazilian scholars largely unknown to ethnomu
sicologists around theworld. Their lack of international visibility obscures
their relatively original insights. One may take for granted the acknowledge
ment of Mario de Andrade and his critical and thoroughly poetical search
for Brazil's musical fabric from the mid-1920s until his death in 1945, and
his creative assimilation of both German comparative musicology andWorld
War II U.S. Pan-Americanism cementing his pioneer folk music documen
tation initiatives. Alternatively one might focus on Luiz Heitor Correa de
Azevedo's close interaction with both Charles Seeger and Alan Lomax at the
Library of Congress in 1941, his continuation of Mario de Andrade's work
between 1942 and 1945,and his later appointment as Secretary of UNESCO's
Music Tribune, a job he held from 1948 nearly until his death in 1992. And
the story could go on and on as one surveyed composer and musicologist
Guerra Peixe's work in the state of Pernambuco, from 1950 to 1952, which
anticipated field procedures such as bi-musical research strategies or draw
ing attention to musical metaphors that have currency in aspects of daily
life far removed frommusical goals. One should by no means forget either
that both Mario de Andrade and Luiz Heitor had their initiatives furthered
by other eminent scholars such as Oneyda Alvarenga and Dulce Lamas who
not only gave their predecessors' work a public face in the form of publica
tions,but also went on in their own way to pave the roads theirmentors had

? 2006 by the Society for Ethnomusicology

287

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opened by doing fieldwork themselves and training subsequent generations

of researchers.

Coming from training in distinct academic traditions, a younger genera

tion of Brazilian scholars has been carrying forward thework undertaken
by these pioneering scholars, and a few of itsmore representative names
have presented papers at the 2005 SEM conference. No matter what specific
generation one may be considering here, placing its contribution within a
larger socio-historical picture would certainly show us the constraints of
nation-building debates, as the vast majority of these scholars deal with as
pects of a rather complex social problem called Brazil, in its continuities and
discontinuities.

Another temptingway of celebrating the obscure side of ethnomusicol

ogy's histories from a Brazilian viewpoint would be to trace one or more
institutions thatprovided, directly or indirectly, the immersion of scholars in
what one might term the academic gaze. One might also take as an example
the oldest institution dedicated to public musical instruction in the country,
the Imperial Academy of Music, founded in 1846, which was transformed
into the National Institute ofMusic under the newly born republic in 1889,
becoming theNational School ofMusic under the nationalistic ideology of the
1937-45 populist dictatorship, and finally the School ofMusic of the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro under themilitary regime from 1964-85. The list
of people at least indirectly relevant to ethnomusicological concerns in this

institutional saga is both long and illuminating: beginning with Guilherme

de Mel?, librarian and author of the first history of music in Brazil (1908),
who found itnecessary to dedicate chapters to oral traditions towhich he
had been exposed as a youngster back in his home state of Bahia; his suc
cessor as the school's librarian, the aforementioned Luiz Heitor, an art music

scholar who would later become the first professor of the newly created
discipline National Brazilian Musical Folklore (1939), who at one time had
Gerard B?hague as a student.One might also remember nationalist composers
of different generations, such as Luciano Gallet, Helza Cameu, Guerra Peixe
or Batista Siqueira, who devoted themselves to studies of both folk and in
digenous musics, and folklore scholars such as Dulce Lamas and Rosa Zamith
(the latter having her master's thesis advised in its early stages by Anthony
Seeger in the early 1980s), and finallyone of the authors (Araujo), who went
through the first public examination for an ethnomusicology position in the
country in 1994 (as the practice until thenwas to open positions formusical
folklore). The creation of the ethnomusicology lab in 2000 and the hosting
of the 36th ICTMWorld Congress in 2001 helped to establish solid grounds
for the discipline in that particular institution,mirroring its simultaneous
consolidation in other university contexts throughout the country.
But thiswould still leave us in the dark as towhether or not this un

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equivocal growth, both in quantitative and qualitative terms,might posit

a significant contribution to the equation of that complex problem called
Brazil. From a particularly located observation post, one could?and perhaps
should?also tackle issues thathave surely gone beyond national boundaries,
such as the politics of difference, the inequalities of difference, the physical
and symbolic violence of groups against other groups, of nations against other
nations?aren't all these issues ethnomusicological ones? Is ethnomusicol
ogy helping?or should ithelp?to disentangle them in anyway? Itwould
surely be wrong to deny the possibility. After all, issues of power asymmetry
have been identified and contextualized through recent ethnographies of
music making, through the critique and application of up-to-date theoretical
approaches to notions ofmusical authenticity, national heritages, and race-,
class- and gender-centered values. But is this satisfactory? Ifnot,what might
be missing in the history of ethnomusicologies?
Far from attempting to provide any convincing answers here, Iwill just
propose that a potential alternative seems to be emerging in a type of schol
arship that asks apparently simple questions. And such questions are just
apparently simple ifone considers that they open an unprecedented dialogue
with "the people we work with" and entirely new issues and directions, as
theymove the field to consider the sharing of its time and investment in seem
inglyprosaic but, in fact, intellectually challenging and politically explosive
directions.

Understanding this academic forum as one to assess the state of eth

nomusicology somehow from a socio-historically located perspective, the
authors intend to discuss first the notions of conflict and violence as largely
neglected (though they are potentially effective theoretical tools at this very
stage of the field), by locating their relevance to recent Brazilian history.We
then unveil a few methodological responses to the implications of this ap
proach, based on recent fieldwork experience, hopefully bringing to debate
ethnomusicologists' institutional practices and the knowledge produced by
their discipline in general.
To highlight conflict and violence as neglected categories in the field
of ethnomusicology is of course a dangerous operation, since references to
the conflictive settings inwhich music works abound in ethnomusicologi
cal literature and, for thatmatter, inmusicological literature as well. In both
traditions, however, the terms conflict and violence very often signal either
a social or personal disturbance of an implicit regular order, or an eventual
denial of a given order that produces effects on music makers and themusic
they produce. The path we are suggesting here is a different one. It entails
taking both conflict and, to a certain extent, violence as central conditions of
knowledge production, which includes the production ofmusical knowledge
and cultural analyses of music and music-making.

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In saying sowe will refer and pay tribute to, among others, thework of a
Brazilian pedagogue, the late Paulo Freir?, author of books thathave achieved
international resonance, such as Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Educational
Action as a Liberating Practice, both written in the conflictive 1960s and
inspirational to a small but selective number of ethnomusicologists, from
Catherine Ellis inAustralia (Ellis 1994) toAngela Impey in South Africa (Impey
2002). In Freire's work conflict and violence are already inscribed in all sorts
of oppressive social relations which make knowledge not only hostage to
dominant groups, including the dominants among their own kind, but also
unviable a priori once any truly theoretical treatment of conflict as a socially
produced fact renders impossible the perpetuation of dominance itself.Ifwe
dare to summarize Freire's postulates in a single sentence, we perhaps should
say thatwithout a radical reconfiguration of the community of knowledge
producers in a veritable horizontal fashion one can only hope that conflict
and may not stomp onto one's own front at any minute?a
hostility yard

realitywhich has grown in people's awareness throughout the globe due to

the recent disturbances in Europe's "thirdworld" neighborhoods.
Surely these considerations will bring promptly to our minds, among
other more dramatic events, the discussions of the crisis of representation, the
repositioning of native voices in research texts, the place of native authorship,
and the legitimacy ofWestern-type academic research?discussions which
were all raised more than twenty years ago in the field of anthropology, and
which were soon taken up in the field of ethnomusicology aswell (e.g., in the
collective work edited in 1997 by Gregory Barz andTimothy Cooley, Shadows
in the Field). Even at the risk of boring readers to dismay, one might recall a
few of the seemingly old questions asked at the time: To what extent could
an academic discipline remain standing after that provocative interrogation
of academic authority?As rational non-believers in the supernatural or in the
supremacy of culture-specific convictions, cultivated by many of the peoples
we work with, canWe continue to represent Others' social practices, and if
we can claim to do so, on what grounds? What to do thenwith the scholar
ship accumulated through colonialism, dominance, and exploitation? Can it
really be put into a comparative or relational perspective with a trulyOther
interpretation by those whose voices have not yet been given real autonomy?
These remain disturbing, but largely silenced questions, since they arguably
have the potential toweaken the social sciences in the sense of a self-repro
ductive practice, with established rules of conduct, ethical codes, etc., etc.

The late Pierre Bourdieu, just tomention an illustrious name often cited in
this very journal, has tackled this issue many times in his work, including
his posthumous book (Bourdieu 2005), inwhich he reflects upon his own
improbable academic career, being a son of a provincial clerk in intellectually
aristocratic France.

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Summarizing one of themajor arguments to be developed here, the state

of the discipline?reflecting a generalized trend in the humanities?seems
to be less and less related to its social relevance, and very much anchored in
its self-reproductive capacity?a capacity that forbetter orworse has proved
to be an enduring one.
Given the premises very roughly sketched above, and in order not to
be overcome by a depressive mood, we will consider positing alternatives.
One area of ethnomusicology and social research in general thathas invested
in thinking over the establishment of different-natured relations between
scholars and the peoples theywork with has been now and then defined
as "applied," perhaps self-protectively denoting that its aim is not truly the
production of knowledge but its diffusion or application outside academia,
and eventually its repatriation to its real originators. This term,"applied eth
nomusicology," encompasses today an organized interest group within SEM
and has raised interest all over the globe, as could be observed in recent
conference programs of two major international conferences, one of them
being SEM 2005, and the other being the 36th ICTM Conference held in Rio
de Janeiro, inwhich new forms of relations between researchers and com
munities they studywas one of the fourmajor topics, and among them the
one which received the largest number of proposals.
A more socially engaged?and, in our viewpoint potentially transform
ing?variant of this tendency has been investing in natives' formation in
and conduction of research activities such as discussions, readings, docu
mentation, and the production and diffusion of texts, quite often in joint
collaboration with native organizations. Paulo Freire's pedagogy has been
here a very effective tool, as we can draw from Catherine Ellis's introduction

to a collaborative issue of the world of music (1994) which discusses hori

zontal exchanges between aboriginal and academic researchers, and Angela
Impey's article on her participatory experience inmediating the formation
of a native research group to both conceive and execute a project on mu
sic, culture, and ecology in the Dukuduku Forest, near Lake Victoria (Impey
2002). In the latter stance researchers have employed alternative terms such
as "advocacy" or action" research, refusing a defensive
"participatory position

regarding the production of knowledge, since the insertion of community

members within a stable and mutually reflexive dialogue with academia has
potential to transform profoundly the epistemological product of this new
relationship, as stressed by both Ellis and Impey So, the issue at stake here
is not quite simply returning something to a community with which one
works, out of respectable ethical considerations, but moreover the opening
of a possibility of a new kind of knowledge about social forms such as music
and music-making?one thatmay even subvert academic knowledge as it
has been traditionally legitimated.

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We will attempt to explain this statement furtherwith reference to a

collaborative effortbetween the Ethnomusicology Laboratory of the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro and a non-governmental organization founded by
residents fromMar?,Rio's second Xmgestfavela (slum?a term itself embed
ded in symbolic conflict, as we will examine further in this paper), which
adopts a participatory strategy based on Paulo Freire's concept of dialogic
research. To exemplify the potentials of such perspective, a research team
formed byMar?'s residents, the self-denominated Grupo Musicultura, analyzes
funkproibid?o, one of themusical styles,which, in theirperception, conveys
the often contradictory social perceptions, within and outside their own
residential space, of conflict and violence in socio-politically disenfranchised
urban areas.

One asks, in conclusion, about the significance of dialogic ethnographies

of sound practices in refrainingviolence from a socio-scientific point of view
(i.e., as a socially produced phenomenon), the alternatives opened by the use
of Freire's methodology in terms of ethnomusicological research (e.g., how it
confronts persisting dichotomies between Us and the Others, or how itmay
or may not displace dichotomies between applied and scientific research),
and, last but not least, towhat extent the problems exposed through this
approach are confinable to situations socially perceived as violent.

Conflict and Violence in Recent Brazilian History:

A Summary

Any observer of Brazilian socio-political history will certainly have no

ticed the progressive transformation of urban criminal violence into one of
the major concerns in national public debates. Recent enquiries3 have de
tected strong indicators that ithas already become the fourthmost important
electoral issue?after unemployment, health care, and in that order?in
drugs,
the perception of voters in general but mainly among city dwellers. Infor
mal street conversations, press news and editorials, and political speeches
will hardly be able to avoid the subject, and the extent towhich daily life in
themore densely populated cities may seem to be liable to violence at any
minute. While a prestigious institute for socio-economic research devised,4
under arather sophisticated methodology, the "fear index"?a social indicator
unprecedented in theworld?a national referendum on disarmament took
place inOctober 2005.5
Since the late 1970s and '80s, under a largely justifiable perception that
organized crime inurban settings (principally in themetropolitan areas of S?o
Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) was assuming new forms and huger proportions,
the social sciences in Brazil have dedicated a growing and more systematic

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attention to criminal violence as an object of study6 Although other forms

of criminal organizations?including certain white-collar enterprises?may
arguably be identified as active during this period, drug traffic activity in
particular appeared to the public-at-large as the main originator and per
petrator of whatever since then came to be characterized as crime-related
urban violence. The initially advanced explanations (for a detailed historical
comment on this literature, see Misse 1995) often had an economic basis and
tended to politicize the issue at a time inwhich a military dictatorship had
apparently defeated all sorts of socialist alternatives and had succeeded in
imposing, so to speak, a dependant capitalist insertion inworld geopolitics.
The eventual and problematic "return to democracy," through the elec
tion of the first civilian president in 1985 after twenty-one years ofmilitary
dictatorial rule,was concurrent with the reconstruction of free socio-po
litical activity on various fronts. These frontsranged frommilitancy in the
wider spectrum of political parties thenmade available (only two ofwhich
had been legally admitted during the dictatorship) to participation in new
organizations of civil society focused on what one might label "newly visible
issues," such as movements for rights ofwomen, and of gays and lesbians,
along with "recently re-emerging" issues, such as, by the end of the 1970s,
newly created, proactive organizations against racial discrimination and in
equality. This strengthening of political activity also had to do, of course,
with the largely shared perception?or, one might surely say,evidence?that
many obstacles persisted on theway to the reestablishment of amore stable
democracy. These obstacles, just tomention a few, included socio-economic
inequalities, racial inequalities, and one of themost dramatic national income
concentration patterns in the world.

A mirroring phenomenon emerging from virtually the same sources was

the progressive outspread inBrazil of non-governmental organizations which
sought to provide more immediate answers in areas perceived as liable to
questionable performance and/or relatively little investment on the part of
state and other public agencies in general. The more visible among these
areas have probably been ecological issues and social actions toward the
poor?e.g., drug and AIDS prevention, employment agencies, sports, educa

tional opportunities for social mobility, and arts programs, all ofwhich are
perceived as alternatives to social disenfranchisement and violence.
The election of Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva, formermetal workers union
leader, founder of theWorker's Party, and imprisoned political leader under
military rule, forpresident of Brazil in 2002 can be?and indeed has been?
seen as a symbol of the emergence and self-awareness of social movements
in the country's recent history.Not by chance did his major campaign slogan
read "May hope win over fear."

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On Violence and Culture: Selected Theoretical Perspectives

Analyzing the culture of violence in a state-bound society, such as the cul

ture emerging during the last three decades inRio de Janeiro,many analysts
agree (e.g.,Zaluar 2004;Misse 1995;Machado da Silva 1999) that the growth
of indicators and predominant representations of violence?invariably as
sociated with the hegemony of the drug traffic in the city's underprivileged
areas?together configured a new situation in Rio over the last decades,
leading to alarming references to the existence of a criminal or extra-legal
state-within-the-state or, in daily conversation, Estado paralelo (a parallel
state). Socio-scientific studies have somehow deconstructed this ideologi
cally charged, demonizing image that expressed primarily the generalized
fear among the middle and upper strata (even though the more dramatic
violent events still take place within the poorest residential areas), pointing
instead toward an interaction of social factors,which include: extreme pov
erty and inequality; structural unemployment; relatively unstructured, though
organized, factions recklessly controlling drug retail points and opening new
ones; ^discriminate police violence against the non-criminal poor; strongly
organized, international drug and arms trade; social complicity, through state
corruption and civilian self-consumption?all ofwhich make up a very com
plex puzzle with no easy solution (Misse 1995).
The more visible signs of violence, claim analysts, have more to do with
the small-scale, relatively autonomous and precariously structured?although

deadly predatory?organizations, each ofwhich is identifiedwith one of the

more encompassing penitentiary protection schemes known as comandos?
prison inmates who run organized actions outside penitentiaries through
go-betweens, cell phones, etc.7 These retail understructures provide the local
links to themore elaborately structured international arms and drugs trade,
which is tied to larger schemes of state corruption. The comandos, through
their small-scale local organizations in the poorest and more disenfranchised
residential areas, such as the so-called favelas, self-define real and imaginary
boundaries for circulation and sociability within an area officially defined as a
residential unit (i.e., a neighborhood or administrative region). An individual
who crosses these boundaries risks his or her life,as happens when a resi
dent who lives in a sub-area controlled by a given comando goes to a party
in a neighboring place under another one's control, or when relatives are
separated simply by living in areas controlled by different organizations.8
In such a framework, the emergence of a warrior culture among young
favela dwellers exhibits some of the characteristics highlighted by Clastres
(2004) within certain "societies-against-state," among whose members vio

lence isperceived as a condition for self-protection against theOther and thus

for freedom. As specialized warrior groups emerge within this type of social

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 Ara?jo: Conflict and Violence as Theoretical Tools 295

formation, displays of bravery, cruelty,and audacity transformpoor young traf

fic "soldiers" (as they are often called within a faction) into "beings-for-death"
(Clastres 2004) whose average lifespan barely surpasses twenty-six years
(Zaluar 2004). In contrast with societies-against-state, however, their capac

ity to frighten civil society, including "their own communities,"9 is no doubt

enormous, and quite often these soldiers may also count on sensationalistic
media coverage able to transform an isolated and relatively inarticulate retail
point controller into a powerful capo. This allows an important distinction:
a foreign social body that concentrates real destructive power, and is thus
potentially able to claim control, exists within a state-bound society as a sort
of state co-extension (see Machado da Silva 1999)Clastres's characterization
ofwarriors, however, also rings true in this case, since any supposed capo's
killing by the police or a rival faction?usually boosted as a major event by
all parties involved?only means his substitution by another being-for-death
as temporarily powerful and fragile as his predecessor.
Another important dimension of this violent escalation over the control
of drug trafficretail points is,as Misse (1995) points out, the degree towhich
itplays a role in socially orchestrated and long-lasting patterns of underpay
ment of the Brazilian labor force and of society's very selective assimilation of
individuals to citizenship. This situation means thatprofitable illicit activities,
whatever their nature (drug-traf?ickingmay even prove to be an ephemeral
phenomenon here, as bootlegging once was in theU.S.),present a permanent
possibility of increasing levels of criminal violence. Reading it differently,
itwould be just too simplistic to believe, as many political interests often
insist, that curtailing or even eradicating the drug traffic
would mean either
controlling or eliminating violence. In this sense, it isworth Clastres'
recalling
premonition: that knowing violence badly?i.e., assuming it can be erased
from human experience?means knowing society in the same manner.

One of themore evident results of these accumulating inequalities has

been the emergence of socially disenfranchised residential areas in virtually
every Brazilian metropolis, many ofwhich have been labeled as favelas after
one specific settlement in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro. Throughout
their century-old history favelas have been subject to dominant elites' simulta
neous representations of fear (of the "dangerous classes") and admiration (for
their vigorous and singular culture, and theirmusic in particular), leading to
policies of (failed) eradication and (relatively effective) relocation (see Zaluar
and Alvito 2000). Different terms have been developed to define such urban
areas, none of which, however, are upon residents
consensually agreed by
or outsiders. The formermay use, alternatively, favela or comunidade (com
munity) to designate their living area, the police prefer the military term
"complexo" (e.g., Complexo da Mar?), while recent technocratic jargon has
produced a hybrid, favela-bairro (slum-neighborhood), perhaps more in

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linewith the English term "inner city."According toWacquant (2003), this

term emerged in the second half of the twentieth century as a euphemistic
alternative to the term "ghetto,"but in tune with the latter as a sociological
category constructed around "stigma, constraint, confinement, and
spatial
institutional encasement." (Of these factors, perhaps only the first, stigma,
would be entirely applicable to present-day favelas, as we shall see further
in this paper). In the neo-liberal 1990s, still followingWacquant, deindustri
alization and the consequent deterioration of ghetto-based, post-World-War
institutional nets led to the hegemony of drug-dealing as an institution in
such areas.

A wordshould also be said here on the history of NGOs inRio de Janeiro

and Brazil. The NGOs, which have been active since the early twentieth
century, at first usually consisted of philanthropic societies run by foreign
religious institutions. They are seen as performing functions in areas passed
over or badly attended to by the state. AfterWorld War II, several Brazilian
organizations followed thismodel of a non-profit society centered on assis
tance to the "more pressing" (one may ask inwhose perception?) needs of the
poor, mainly through the provision of housing, health care, and professional
education. It is only in the 1980s thatNGOs with widely diversified focuses
(ecology, self-sustainability, cultural survival, arts, etc.) and not necessarily
directed to the poor, spread throughout Brazil. A more recent development
in the last ten years or so has been the emergence of differently focused com
munity-based NGOs?i.e.,founded by residents and having theirheadquarters
located within the community?in rural settings, inner-city residential areas,
and other contexts (see Carvalho 2003).
One relevant development pertaining to the particular case discussed
herein is the emphasis of various so-called "social projects" for the arts (mu
sic included), which are usually sponsored by businesses and run by NGOs.
They are aimed primarily at offering alternatives to violence and exclusion
through activities which are conceived as both meaningful and self-fulfill
ing, and eventually at opening windows to artistic professions.10 Exceptions
notwithstanding,11 they are often proposed to the NGO by an outside artist
or artistic collective, with credibility becoming a major asset in the search
for funding. It isworth noticing that the social projection of the proponent
artistmay often help even more to open the right doors, thus empowering
the proponent vis-?-vis the host NGO or the community itself.
These arts programs (or projetos in daily talk) in general, and themusi
cal ones in particular, encompass various focuses, from basic music reading
notions to flute ensemble formation or percussion classes. They are typically
isolated, self-contained actions, since their sources are too diversified and
each NGO has difficulties in keeping up with the contents of each program,
which are often devised by outsiders on the premise that the community

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lacks them. From this results a certain disconnection and, not rarely, profound
contradictions between the several simultaneous experiences.12

Uneasy Steps: Dialogues between Academia

and its "Internal Others"

The first research initiatives leading to the collaboration between the

LE-UFRJ and CEASM involved a series of discussions among teachers and
studentswithin a university-based ethnomusicology program, reflecting upon
critical debates in anthropology and ethnomusicology. These issues included
the crisis of representation (see Clifford and Marcus 1986,Marcus and Fischer
1986), the place and value of native discourses and of field experience in
theory (Barz and Cooley 1996), and other topics. The initiatives sought to
devise experimental research directions and methodologies. Small-scale stud
iesmainly conducted by students resulted in theses (Cambria 2002, Marques
2003) that attempted to combine more conventional participant observation
and dialogical forms of ethnography with careful negotiation of research focus
and of forms of diffusion. As such discussions became more solid and partial
results became visible, several community-based NGOs in Rio looked to the
university's ethnomusicology lab, in search of partnerships in establishing
local databases on musical practices, perhaps themore palpable product of
previous projects.13
For a variety of reasons, the firstpartnership inRio was established with
CEASM (Center for the Study and Solidarity Actions of Mare), an NGO born
within one Rio de Janeiro residential area highly stigmatized by the favela
exclusion-traffic-violence equation. A conglomerate of at least eleven distinct

sub-areas, comprising significant social, economic and demographic distinc

tions (ranging in size from 8,000 to 25,000 people each), Mare as awhole is
home to about 135,000 people: relocated slum populations of Rio, unskilled
migrant labor (mostly from northeastern Brazil), and even a population of
about a thousand young Angolan students and middle-aged war refugees.
High rates of unemployment and the profitability of drug-trafficking delin
eate the broader social contours in theMar? area, leading to a harsh routine
of intermittent police raids, drug wars on territories between factions, and
traffic-dictated curfews.
CEASM has been one of themost visible community-based NGOs inRio,
with a considerable infrastructure (classrooms, well-equipped administra
tive offices, computer rooms, library,and various types of databases) and a
strong focus on the preparation ofMar? youngsters for the yearly admission
exam forpublic universities (reputedly the best in Brazil and free of charge).
Itsmain focus requires, in its representatives' perception (middle-aged, uni
versity-trained residents or former residents of Mar?), that exam-centered

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skills be complemented with other skills thatmay enrich the experience of

youngsters.
What CEASM expects from our joint project, which is aimed at the cre
ation of a database of theMar?'s musical output, may perhaps be summarized
as the development of a new program thatmight reinforce the subjects' self
esteem and further their experience in another musical program or in other
related areas such as dance, etc.
history, story-telling,
Intense discussions with NGO representatives (educators, historians, and
administrative personnel) led to the development of a one-year research proj
ect restricted to two sub-areas ofMar? and involving three basic stages. The
first stage consisted of twice-a-week encounters with a group of twenty-four
Mar?resident youngsters (twenty high-school students and four university
students), aimed at the development of a conceptual basis as well as of re
search focuses and tools. Following participatory action models, particularly
the one proposed by Paulo Freir? which is examined below inmore detail,
the university researchers would act as mediators of discussions among the
youngsters on relevant musical and categories, as well as on strate
subjects
gies formusic research, would indicate relevant readings upon the group's
request, and would facilitate the actual documentation through the use of
digital technology. The second stage involved the building of a public data
base within Mar?, located at theNGO headquarters. The third stage involved
the development of outreach programs and individual presentations aimed at
its residents and at the general public. This stage involved certain specificities
such as questions about therange and type of diffusion.

On Freire's
Dialogical Pedagogy and Reflexive
Ethnomusicology
In common sense, ethnomusicological research has been con
generally
ceived as the study of amusical culture foreign to the researcher's experience.
The phenomena, knowledge, agreements, and disagreements which consti
tute a culture will be difficult for a researcher, so biased, to comprehend, as
will the practices(s)he will be observing, the language used to perpetuate
culture-specific knowledge, and the discourses over issues pertinent to the
culture in question. The research itselfwould thus require the researcher's
observation and participation, as much as possible in the researched culture,
obtaining in the field various types of records (e.g., field notes, audiovisual),
and interpretation ofwhat was lived, observed, and recorded in terms of an
academic discussion, quite often made public inwritten form.
Therefore one could safely state that this research procedure initially
takes up a verymodest and unpretentious posture before a seemingly strange

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 Ara?jo: Conflict and Violence as Theoretical Tools 299

and challenging native knowledge. The latter is taken as already constituted

(or so imagines the researcher) in the universe to be researched, through
a progressive initiation process, until the point atwhich a certain cultural
competence?or, in other terms, a capacity foroperating within the conduct
codes "internal to the observed cultures"? is acquired, allowing the produc
tion of a more reflexive discourse on the culture. The degree towhich this
discourse will be able to speak authoritatively about the observed culture and
the excellence of its interpretationwill depend on many factors, such as the
legitimacy of the research in its respective field of knowledge, the researcher's
reputation, his/her institutional affiliations,or the amount of research-related
publications. The repercussions of the findings will be, no doubt, wide and
strong insofar as the researched culture is seen as exotic in the perception of
an academic field thatvalues reason and science, in accordance with the extent
of the interpretive challenge supposedly faced by the researcher, and, finally,
in accordance with the researched people's acknowledgement of "something
good" the research may have returned them.When, however, an interpretation
(or "knowledge") leads to the identification of a form of distortion, stereo
typing, or stigma attributed to the culture being studied?or, worse, to be
publicly contested by the researched?not only the specific research work
under criticism but the entire area it represents may fall under suspicion.
On another key,when one confronts commonsensical perceptions of
educational processes (including musical education)?perceptions thatquite
often are embedded in concrete educational practices?a similarly elusive
margin will be noticed between the proposed ways of building knowledge,
the active role exclusively attributed to educators, and the experience of the
ideal subjects of such process, the students.

These educational practices have been termed "banking" ones by Freir?,

implying that they reduce the experience and cognitive world of students
to a sort of latency state, "waiting for" knowledge pre-formatted in socially
distant contexts and, in many instances (e.g., among the socio-economically
underprivileged) contrary to the enhancement of the students' autonomy. It
isperhaps unnecessary to restate here themany paradoxes of such a charade,
but perhaps one example would suffice: Inmany countries, such as in Brazil,
the relative decrease of illiteracy,instead of contributing to better educational
levels or social mobility, has mainly contributed to the increase of so-called
"functional illiteracy" inwhich the use of reading and writing does not go
much beyond turning printed letters into sounds or signing an ID card.
So one should notice here the almost absolute symmetry between the
two cognitive processes briefly commented on above. In the first one?that
is, ethnomusicological research?"native" knowledge (a "strange" musical
culture) is given as already pre-existing before an external agent's (the re

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searcher's) intervention. The researcher will initiallymake a great effort to

encode it in terms simultaneously intelligible to the respective cultures of
both the researched (to the extent possible, their "nativemusical theory") and
the researcher (the so-called "theory ofmusic," almost always on the axis of
Western concert music), in order to finallybe able to decode itsmeaning in
terms exclusively intelligible to the researcher's own culture (the producer
of the only "true" theory,or theory as such), since the researched will hardly
have access to, or interest in, the final research product.
In the second process?educative action?knowledge (in the particular
case under study, "music" also approached as something strange to the stu
dents' experience) is also understood as an entity pre-encoded in terms of
the external agent's (the educator's) culture (in our specific case, music with
"educational content" endorsed by a school system),which will supposedly
have to decode it in terms intelligible to the student-objects (supposedly
lacking "musical knowledge"). It isworth noticing here that this is precisely
the basic premise on which themajority of arts programs are conceived as
tools for social inclusion and as alternatives to violence.
Therefore, in both situations, common sense would see the external
agent as the active term of a desirable cognitive equation: either between re
searcher-produced and researched-produced knowledge, or between knowl
edge already deposited in the educator and knowledge to be deposited in
the student. As stressed by Freir? as well as by critical anthropology and
ethnomusicology, both equations will tend to fail insofar as the gap between
the experience and vocalizing power of the different cultures impedes de
veloping a real dialogue, or as insofar as the research subject or the student
is denied a more active role.
At this point, the following issues are timely:what would happen ifwe
could foresee another world inwhich both research and educational action
reserved a more active role for both the researched and the students? (No
one educates anyone, insists Freir? in several contexts.) Could one imagine
the production of another kind of knowledge in such a transformed world,
perhaps qualitatively superior to traditional (in the sense of disciplinary tradi
tions) modes of knowledge-building, the ones Freir? terms "banking"modes?
In this case, would distinctions between research and education?between
scientific and applied research?dissolve?

Sound Sociability at Mar?: Relocating Ethnomusicology

in the "Field"

Two years after itsbeginning, a retrospective synthesis of the project of

fers a provocative frame to relocate ethnomusicology and its contemporary
dilemmas in another key.

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 Ara?jo: Conflict and Violence as Theoretical Tools 301

Differences inmusical backgrounds and experience were among the

most immediately self-perceived traitswithin the group, revealing from the
start a quite significant feature of Mar?: itswidely diversified soundscape
(to use once more composer Murray Schaffer'swell-known metaphor), cor
responding not only to its diversified socialscape but also to the concur
rent transit ofmedia through its social space. The preferred genres initially
emerging in the discussions may be generally described as Brazilian popular
musics (mainly samba and its derived stylepagode, and Northeasternyorrd)
and internationally popular trends in both Brazilian-made and foreign ver
sions (rap, rock, and reggae), but also include clusters ofAfrican pop (among
Angolans), Brazilian-made evangelical gospel songs, or the local equivalent to
"gangsta rap," the so-called "proibid?o" (i.e., highly forbidden). It is probably
redundant to say that each of these genres may be "the" exclusive preference
of a given individual's particular choice repertoire, intersecting with other
musics. The main sources formusical experiences encompass jukebox, radio
and TV airplay,music recordings from both licit and illicit sources, public
performances (e.g., religious services, bailes funk14) and private ones (rock
rehearsals, private parties), and indoor and outdoor events. Taste distinctions
can be seen to correlate with age, religious affiliations, schooling, occupation,
the proximity of the drug business, and also to the period of residence within
Mar?.

It is also relevant to notice that the initial revelation of such differences,

as might be expected, provoked much meaningful silence during the first
encounters. Little by little,however, a number of interaction strategies pro
posed by the university team (such as showing documentary videotapes
recording different sound practices within theMar? area and simulated life
history interviews with project participants) led the student researchers to
increase their awareness of the content of each other's preferred styles. Just
recently, new kinds of interaction (including musical ones) between these
youngsters have started to develop, including the organization of a Carnival
group which made its debut in 2005. This is particularly significant since
it followed debates about the relative reduction of public samba activities
within Mar? in recent years on account of exposure to violence.15
Another issue emerging strongly in the firstdiscussions has been the im
pact of violence (much more than hunger, or the lack of either job or leisure
opportunities, which isnot to say that these are not strong concerns) on social
life in general, but particularly on musical ones. Violence, in the discussions
among youngsters, is often understood as a sub-product of drug-trafficking
and/or police action. But their reactions to its symptoms may open profound
impasses in their daily experiences, which could eventually be spotted in the
discussions. The following transcription ofmy own field notes will perhaps
illustrate better both the research process and its contents. Time indexes in

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theMD recording of the discussion session are provided,16 so that the reader
may note the not always immediate response of subjects to themediators'
suggestions:
At a previous meeting, reacting to a video on violence in favelas, one of the Mar?

youngsters (Erica) reported she had said no to one of her dance teachers in

college who asked a choreography

her to create based on her daily experience
with violence, arguing that she wouldn't like to be represented by violent im
ages. Therefore she wouldn't be willing to record images and sounds of violence
[in the ethnomusicology project] as representatives of her community either.
-
(Fieldnotes, CEASM 5/31/2004)

One mediator (Vincenzo) recalls this fact (00'00"-02'10"), relating her po

sition against that specific representation as an important research topic,
leading to a critique of external stereotyping of the favelas. He stresses the
importance of the issue and asks whether the group would like to continue
the discussion (some people had been absent in the last session). An initial
silence leads themediator to go on exploring the significance of representa
tions for the social sciences and philosophy, and also the academic critique of
univocal interpretations of social identities. He uses as an example the term
favela as a representation thatmay embody prejudice and misconceptions,
including equivocal labels and identification of social identities. He stresses
thatmisconceived and conflicting representations may generate an obstacle
to dialogue. Two terms in particular, he suggests, should be used carefully:
identity and diversity.One participant (Helaine, university student) asks,what
about unity. This is the first oral participation of a Mar? resident (25'10")
Oefferson, idem, 28'30").
But I think there are also...
positive?I am not sure if it is correct to say that?ex
otic stereotypes. For instance, to deconstruct this narrative that the favela is a
violent place, where the drug traffic reigns, where you find this and that, and you
begin to say that the favela iswonderful... I think this is a problem. I think it is
exotic, the image of a favela as something exotic. And this is to me problematic
when I start to adopt postures before, for instance, state actions within favelas.

They [state authorities] usually say:"Look they have natural talents, give them a
little soccer project, or upandeiro and a cu?ca [respectively a hand-held drum
and a friction drum used in samba] and they will begin to swing \j? saem gin
gando]. It is an exotic, stereotyped image of what to Uve in a favela is like. So I
don't know what is the best discourse to be constructed to talk about this place.
But at the same time I question ways of defining the favela as a violent place
only, I am concerned with this other discourse which is constructed [sic] one:
'Violence? [mockingly] I never saw it. It is the best place in the world for one to
live'. So I also keep thinking about this.

The mediator seeks to motivate the rest of the group and gives other ex
amples: e.g., himself as a native Sicilian, being discriminated for stereotypes
but also using them to his best interests. At some point he recalls (42'40"),

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 Ara?jo: Conflict and Violence as Theoretical Tools 303

"In the interviews we did to select you to participate in this project we

asked what were the major problems youngsters faced within the com
munity and almost all of you answered 'violence' and lack of security to
move about.' So my question is:Do you thinkwe can eliminate this from our
work here?" Helaine intervenes (43'20"): "Before we answer you, I tliink it
is interesting that you are proposing thatwe ourselves also start to propose
... Looking atmy friend's [Jefferson's]
example. When we are asked where
we livewe answer Bonsucesso [awider neighborhood towhich jurisdic
tion theMar? area is officially subordinated] not Mar?.We should sayMar?.
Then you will be proposing a different discourse. This is the beginning, the
acknowledgement..." The mediator cautions, however, that he didn't mean
to turn automatically positive something that is not usually understood as
such. Another mediator (Virginia) intervenes, positing that, in fieldwork, the
researchers will already findmany representations of practices ready-made,
and they should not have pre-determined ideas about their "righteousness."
They should be open to other voices, to polyphony within the community.
She gives a musical example: You may have a critical view ofwhat a pagode
[samba related style] is,butwe will have to listen towhat the playing musician
has to say about it,no matter how distant his interpretation may be of our
own. Helaine asks back (49:30): "Butwhat should we do when we see that
he/she is complying with what themedia imposes on him/her?" The media
tor exemplifies with her own master's thesis on maracatu (an Afro-Brazilian
music-and-dance processional form) inwhich this type of polyphony was
chosen as narrative form. She also talks about the provisional aspect of any
research when it attempts to typifymusical or other social forms. The initial
mediator takes the opportunity to recall their first discussions on the crisis
of representation (using a few synthetic texts), inwhich they had seen that
one of the solutions devised by post-modern anthropology was precisely an
emphasis on dialogic research strategies, substituting a dialogue between
different voices for the ethnographer's exclusive authority.
Quite significantly, instances of violence in the youngsters' accounts
are frequently illustratedwith significant sounds as the events are typically
characterized by terrifyingnoise. On the other hand, the term "sound" allows
the description of local practices thatmight otherwise be deemed "musical,"
which has led us (university and Mar? researchers) to reflect on the continu
ityof the sound spectrum inMar?, recalling Schaffer's soundscape (1977a,
1977b) but alsoAraujo's acoustic labor concept (1992),from gunfire,church
loudspeakers, and war commands to everyday speech and more or less ritual
ized sound performances.
Physical violence and terror notwithstanding, violence appears more
often in the form of symbolic violence (Bourdieu andWacquant 2001). This
formwas superficially spotted, and only recently acknowledged by the young

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researchers, inMar? residents' downplaying of their own cultural output,

perhaps as a result of years of actions aimed atwhat "the community lacks."
Symbolic violence, however, appears more often in the form of concepts
made up from outside perceptions that "freeze," so to speak, social practices,
failing to recognize or, in Bourdieu's terms (2001), misrecognizing practical
strategies as categories thatmake no sense in the realworld. This has serious
implications, since the ongoing discussions have revealed different internal
uses within Mar? for established categories used in academia, side by sidewith
frequently used, socially pertinent local categories which remain absolutely
absent in scholarly studies of the masses or of the poor. That should leave
us wondering about the relative innocuousness of many labels and object
centered approaches that pervade the literature on popular music cultures
in Brazil vis-?-vis a highly significant,while largely ignored, praxis emanating
from stigmatized daily struggles forphysical and emotional survival.

A Sound Ethnography by Mar? Residents

It isvery common to use the term "popular" to classify or qualify different
musical manifestations. In Brazil, the termMPB, or Brazilian popular music,
has been used to lump together styleswhich, perhaps, in other contexts and
moments, would not be grouped so closely However, even after this particu
lar use and its derivatives, the idea of "popular" remains an of intense
object
debates and controversies. For example, should theproibid?es (funk songs
praising the drug trafficand its factions) be considered "popular"?
Before even trying to answer the question, it seems necessary to examine
a little bit further the concept of "popular." Looking atmore familiar uses of
it,we perceive three ideas associated with the term. The first one associ
ates the "popular" with poverty or, ifyou like,marginality. The second one
associates the term with market success. In other words, the larger are sales,
the more popular the manifestation or product will be. Under this reason
ing,popularity is directly proportional to the financial return a product may
render. The third usual meaning is related to its revolutionary potential, i.e.,
to the capacity of popular manifestations for social transformation, aside from
stylistic and aesthetic innovation. Noting this,we shall return to the initial
question in an attempt to answer it.

For allwe have observed atMar? in our research work, funkwould fit the
majority of the above definitions, in the senses that: (1) it is a phenomenon
created and recreated in contexts of poverty; (2) from its growing condem
nation it becomesunanimous; and (3) it has demonstrated an enormous
potential for innovation, with many other musical styles having borrowed
many of its constituent signs and practices. Nevertheless, when considering
the proibid?es (highly forbidden), a new question becomes inevitable: could

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 Ara?jo: Conflict and Violence as Theoretical Tools 305

funk be a possible catalyzing factor in significantly transforming the living

conditions of those people portrayed in its lyrics?
In Brazil, music coming from the favelas and other peripheral areas has
always been seen, at first, as something deprived of any cultural or artistic
value. Such was the case with samba and several other cultural practices.
Lately,what best exemplifies this reaction is the so-called funk-proibidao, or
funk do mal (evil funk),which have been constantly demonized because of
their alleged praising (fazer apologia) of drugs and violence.17
Funk culture in Brazil is customarily associated with the drug traffic,
dispensing in general a critical examination of both phenomena. But how is
violence produced? Why is it so present in favelas? How does society-at-large
contribute to this situation?
The absence of the state in the promotion and support of cultural events
in favelas allows drug trafficking to play a fundamental role in the financing
of parties, as well as in the creation of new economic opportunities in poor
communities. Funk proibidao is somehow a product of this imbalance. Itsvery
name derives from its dealing with the day-to-day reality of the drug traffic
in low-income communities, approaching themes which relate favelas to the
traffic,and expressing the daily life of organized criminal factions?or "life
in crime." In thismusic, local drugs are highlighted alongside descriptions of
local gun power, and the praising of courageous criminals and drug types.
These songs are, in general, textual parodies of well-known songs in
other popular styles, and of other funk songs not associated with stigmatized
themes. At the dances where they are played, the sound is often extremely
loud and even aggressive. The vocal range of the singers?who are also al
most invariably themakers of the parodies sung? is usually high, and male
singers are as women are excluded.
predominant, largely
Most proibid?es are recorded live at funk balls, dispensing with many
technical features common in studio productions, in a way which usually
compromises the final recording quality. The CDs are immediately pressed,
thus guaranteeing the currency of the transmitted information.One may take
up for instance the proibidao transcribed below, a parody of the ax? (highly
popular style from the state of Bahia) song "Carro Velho," made successful
through Banian singer Ivete Sangalo's voice in the 2002 Carnival.
Cheiro de U? queimado Smells likeburned U?
Caf? foi espancado Caf? was spanked
E o Robertinho ? um viado Robertinho is a faggot
O Celsinho ? um medroso Celsinho is a sissy
Tomou coca na cadeia He was beaten in jail
O Beira-Mar dedo nervoso Beira-Mar's easy fingers
Eu vou I'm going

Quern for "disp?" que venha Whoever feels like should come
E se bater de frente com nos And if anyone faces us

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?lenha It's going to betough

O JorgeTurco j? ? nosso We've already got Jorge Turco
Foi o bonde que tomou Our "tram" has taken it

Que lindo! Beautiful!

At? o bonde do mineiro A? And also Mineiro's ""tram," dig it,
Mineiro, ? o bonde do Mineiro Mineiro, it's Mineiro's "tram"
E o bonde do Gorra And Gorra 's "tram" too

The song (of unidentified title and author) is sung by MC G? and is part
of theProibidao 15 CD, probably recorded in 2002, judging from the narrated
facts. Itdescribes the rebellion at amaximum securitypenitentiary, Bangu I, that
took place on 11 September 2002. That day, inmates linked to the Comando
Vermelho (Red Commando) assassinated four other inmates from the rival
factionAmigos dos Amigos (Friends' Friends), also known as ADA.
Among the dead were Ernaldo Pinto de Medeiros, nicknamed U? (who
was killed by being immolated and was one of Comando Vermelho's main
rivals in the control of the traffic),Wanderley Soares, a.k.a. Orelha, Carlos Ro
berto da Costa, Robertinho fromAdeus (a hillside slum of Rio) and Marcelo
Lucas da Silva, a.k.a. Caf?. According to the press, Celsinho fromVila Vint?m
(another marginalized area of Rio) would have cried, surrendered, and handed
the control of the drug trafficto Luiz Fernando da Costa, a.k.a Fernandinho
Beira-Mar, Comando Vermelho's leader at the time and the one who headed
the rebellion.
It isworth noticing in this context that proibid?es do not obtain any
space in the formally constituted media, allegedly due to their praise of vio
lence and drugs. By contrast, other Brazilian and foreignmusicians who deal
with the same themes do manage to record inmajor labels and occupy a
huge space in themedia.Such is the case with the song'Fazendo a Cabe?a"
(Getting High), authored by Formiga,Marcelo D 2, and Bacalhau, and recorded
by Planet Hemp, amusical group signed by Sony Music which enjoys awide
reputation in the national recording business, above all in Rio de Janeiro:
Fazendo a sua cabe?a Getting you high/Makingup yourmind
No Rio de Janeiro, praia, favela, In Rio de Janeiro, beaches, slums Ma?onna,

bebida, puteiro, tiroteio, Pot, booze, whorehouses, gunfire,

Arrast?o j? est?
aceso o pavio Violent raids, the "lighter" is on
E como diz o black future: As black future [?] says:
"Eu sou do Rio" "I'm from Rio"

1,2,3, pra voce levar um tiro 1,2,3 for getting shot

Eu termo pena de voce, I pity you, fool,

Otario, se cruzar corrugo If you come across me

A erva nao ? perigosa, Grass isn't dangerous
Mas eu ofere?o perigo But I offer you danger
Se eu te pego te dou um sacode If I catch you, you're gonna get whupped

Depois te jogo no lixo And then I throw you in the garbage

Planet Hemp, merm?o "? o bicho" Planet Hemp ismean, brother,

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 Ara?jo: Conflict and Violence as Theoretical Tools 307

a tua cabe?a There are people

Tem gente fazendo manipulating you
E te jogando no buraco And putting you down
Com preconceito Out of prejudice
Nao d? mole, tome cuidado, Watch your back, take care,
Pense duas vezes Think twice
Pra nao acabar ajoelhado Before you end up on your knees
Passa a bola, nao enrola, Pass it on, don't hesitate
De urna goma, nao se esque?a Give it a shot, don't forget
Planet Hemp fazendo a sua cabe?a Planet Hemp gettingyou high/Making up
your mind
Eies querem a sua cabe?a They want your head
E querem "nao" They want to say "no"
que voce diga you
Fa?a voce a sua cabe?a
You shouldmake up yourmind/get high
E pense um pouco meu irmao Think a littlebit,brother,
Nao falo so da ma?onna I'm not only speaking of pot
Eu tenho muito pra dizer I have a lot to say

Ou?a Planet Hemp Listen to Planet Hemp

Pra depois ce nao se fuder Or you're gonna get fucked
Falo e voce vai ter que me escutar, I say and you're gonna have to listen

Porque ma?onna, meu irm?o, Because pot, brother,

Nao lhe prejudicar, Cannot hurt you
pode
Ent?o ? bom ce se ligar So you'd better dig itup
Cuidado vacil?o, Take care, fool,
sen?o vou te apagar Otherwise I'm gonna shut you down
Porque
de onde eu vim Because where I come from
Porque
Eu sei o gatuno ? a lei The triggeris the law
Ent?o nao se esque?a So don't forget
Planet Hemp fazendo sua cabe?a, Planet Hemp gettingyou high/makingup
your mind
Com a cultura do arrast?o With the raid culture
Pra voce sobreviver So that you can survive
poder
Ce tem que ter boa educa?ao You must have a good education
Boa educa?ao que eu t? falando The good education I'm talking about
N?o sao boas maneiras Is not about good manners
? saber distinguir Is about knowing to distinguish
O p? da poeira "Coke" from dust
malandro Because a hustler
Porque
t? na pior sabe sair de l? Knows how to get out of dead ends
Quando
De l? o ?nico barulho From there the only noise

Que eu escuto r?-t?-t? r?-ta-t? I hear is ra-ta-ta ra-ta-ta

Ce tem que fazer a sua cabe?a You've got to make up your mind/get high
Com que voce bem quiser With anythingyouwish
No one can
Ningu?m pode impedir stop you
Se voce sabe o que quer If you know what you want
Chega de hipocrisia, Enough with hypocrisy
Pare antes que eu enlouque?a Stop before I go mad
Ent?o n?o esque?a So don't forget
Fazendo a sua cabe?a. Getting high/Makingup yourmind

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As we can perceive, the above song talks about drug use and violence, show
ing off Rio's hustler who "offersdanger" and smokes pot. The obvious ques
tion then is: Isn't this song referring to the same characters depicted by funk
proibidao? Why, then, does the latter not deserve a similar treatment by the
media and particularly the largest recording companies?
Through the analyses above, looking at these issues from a point of view
of class relationships seems to us much more significant, since the fact that
proibidao does not manage to find space in themedia is clearly attributable
to factors beyond the criminal contents of their lyrics or their oft-cited prais
ing of the traffic.Besides, we see that inmany cases there are no conflicts
of interestwhen the subject matter involves contracts between artists and
companies, oftentimes millionaire ones, or when songs are so successful
among the popular classes that shall not be ignored. So we have today in
Brazil (and now being exported to the U.S. and other countries in Europe)
the prestige of other types of funk, such as the erotic type,for instance,which
was strongly condemned by themedia in the beginning, but today iswidely
acclaimed and played intensively inmiddle-class dance clubs.
It is timely, then, to ask: If going to a funk ball means praising the drug
lords and the traffic, whom orwhat is one praising when one goes to a dance
club?
One can deduce then that themedia are highly prejudicial against funk,
forever on its constant reference to drugs and violence, and always
harping
ignoring the specificity of its diverse manifestations. Moreover, the media
describe funkeiros (participants, enthusiasts) generically as poor slum resi
dents, blacks (as if to be black were a degrading factor), and drug dealers,
who build up a negative stereotype of a lost youth which, because it is poor,
expresses its revolt through violence.

Mar? Cultural Links: Funk, Circulation, and Civil Rights

Located between some of the main access arteries to the so-called "Won

derful City,"Mar? holds a highly visible status among Rio's hundreds of favelas.
It has been center stage for "success" stories in areas such as culture and
education, with or without governmental support. It is also well known for
drug trafficking, which regularly appears in the police reports. Today both
terror and fear have secure places and addresses in favelas.
In a context assailed by drug wars, the fragmentary logics of drug lords
have played an increasingly relevant role in constructing social identities
within Mar?. There, free circulation rights, as well as other citizenship pre
rogatives, are unequally exercised by local dwellers. In other words, violence
has to be placed as one among several important factors affecting that specific
place, taking into account the links (or obstacles) among its dwellers.

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 Ara?jo: Conflict and Violence as Theoretical Tools 309

Thus one may perceive how difficultRio's poor have found it to circulate
among their neighboring communities, due to contingencies that go beyond
economic aspects. These circumstances worsen insofar as the
seemingly
characters involved are youngsters, men, and/or people linked to given cul
tural expressions. These are the social segments which apparently suffer the
biggest burden due to unofficially imposed "divides" under criminal power.
No matter how invisible and arbitrary, these barriers define where, when,
and who may cross them.

Assaulted by fear, the dwellers facing it?including the youngest ones

do not circulate freely,but instead use themost circuitous paths to their rou
tine destinations, when not remaining confined in their own neighborhoods,
which then become like open-air prisons. A terror state is thus internalized,
leading everyone to follow certain rules of conduct even when there is no
clear evidence of danger, no matter how absurd these rules might be from a
human rights point of view.
The activity of coming and going is thus carefully calculated. This cau
tion, embedded in peoples' lives, emerges from the sensation?sometimes
exaggerated, other times very real?of being constantly under surveillance.
When in doubt, conformist self-regulation seems sensible. These are then
ways bywhich people, subtly and tragically,learn to act according to a power
code that imposes rules and limits.
This power code, however, may eventually be broken by socio-cultural
neighborhood projects, which oftentimes become the only way for one to
circulate more freely in one's own neighborhood, as theymay supply a form of
"identification" for those who participate in them. This can make circulation
safer since there seems to exist some respect for people involved in groups
not associated with the drug traffic.Conversely, people associated with funk
music, for instance, face difficulties in circulating among communities that are
perceived as rivals and use funk (a style strongly identifiedwith youth) as a
type of confrontation. This situation produces more obstacles forfunkeiros
than for rockeiros, the former being restrained from taking part in balls at
tended by rival factions, even when theymean only to enjoy the beat and
have fun.

Challenges to an Ethnomusicology of Conflict and Violence

We should not end this paper without making clear a few basic points:

(1) Inmaking a claim for the importance of an ethnography of sound?

i.e., something beyond an anthropology of music (Merriam 1964)
or,with Seeger (1987), a musical anthropology?in contemporary
studies of society,we attempt to stress the high socio-cultural sig
nificance of a continuum ofmeaning from isolated sounds tomore

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310 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 2006

formalized sound forms such as speech, music, and other types of

sound-structured events. This may be?and certainly is?just as im
portant in the study of other social configurations, but thiswould
reinforce our argument.
only
(2) Conditions for the appearance and predominance of physical or
materialized forms of conflict and violence (e.g., economic hardships
leading to drug-trafficking as an economic alternative and criminal
violence as a "natural" state of affairs)may be more ephemeral than
the ones for symbolic violence (increasing socio-economic inequali
ties amidst increasing material wealth in global scale).
(3) Assuming the ethnography of sound practices in today's world may
require repositioning seemingly ageless theoretical, methodological
and conceptual guideposts (perhaps the easiest part) while simulta
neously (the toughest part) finding sense in symbolic agency under
the apparently irresistible hegemony of the commodity form.

Notes
l.This paper results from a two-year (10/03-9/05) research project titled "Samba e coex
istencia; um estudo etnomusicol?gico da circula?ao do samba no Rio de Janeiro" (Samba and
coexistence; an ethnomusicological study of samba diffusion in Rio de Janeiro) sponsored by
CNPq (National Council for Research), the NGO Centro de Estudos e A?oes Solidarias da Mar?
(CEASM), through its Social Memory Network, and the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
(UFRJ). An ongoing development (from January 2004 through December 2006) is the project
titled "M?sica, memoria e sociabilidade na Mar?," funded by FAPERJ (Rio State Foundation for
Research). It is also necessary to acknowledge the participation as research assistants of both

formerly and currently enrolled graduate students at UFRJ's School of Music, Vincenzo Cambria
and Virginia Barbosa among the former, and Eduardo Antonio Duque and Yahn Wagner F.M. Pinto
among the latter.
2.Thistextwas collectively produced. For the UFRJ Ethnomusicology Lab, it is signed by
the project coordinator, Samuel Ara?jo. For Grupo Musicultura, it is signed by Geandra N. do
Nascimentojaqueline Souza de Andrade, Leonardo dos Santos Marques, Monique de Lima Pureza,
Nath?lia Faustino Pereira, Aline Cristina Souza, Vanessa Pereira de Mor?is, Jessica A. de Macedo,
Sinesio Jefferson Andrade Silva, Mariluci Correia do Nascimento,Alexandre Dias da Silva, Helaine
Christian Alves, Gilmar Santos da Cunha, Rosana Lisboa Lima, Otac?lia dos S. Silva, Bruna Pereira
da Silva, Jana?na da S. Lima, Marcos Diniz Jr.,Fernanda Santiago Franca, Jefferson L. P Barcelos,
and Adriana Freires da Rocha.
3SeeIBOPE2002.
4. See Funda?aoGet?lio Vargas 2002.
5. A proposed ban on the arms trade in Brazil?the new proposal under scrutiny defended

by the federal government and several NGOs?was blatantly defeated by about sixty percent
of the voters, thus maintaining legal sales to private owners.
6. One indicator is the creation of research groups on violence at major universities, such
as the Universidade de S?o Paulo (1987), and the proliferation of sociological studies which
would soon rival and perhaps outnumber studiesin fields more"traditionally" concerned with
that issue, such as psychology and education (Misse 1995). Misse notes the contrast between
sociological traditions in Brazil and in the U.S., where criminal violence has been a stable theme
for the so-called Chicago school since the 1920s. It is also worth noticing that a National Security

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 Ara?jo: Conflict and Violence as Theoretical Tools 311

Act has been in place in Brazil since 1934?edited under a bourgeois revolutionary government
and constitutionally ratified after its downfall until the present?which equates "violent" and
"disorderly" (i.e., perceived as firmly contesting) political action with "crime," making of the
latter a rather suspicious socio-scientific theme from a dominant point of view.
7. At least three comandos are recognized by the police and criminals alike: the Comando
Vermelho (Red Commando), theTerceiro Comando (Third Command) and the Amigos dos Ami
gos (Friends' Friends) or ADA. The specialized literature also indicates that the name comando
itselfwas first used by the police during themilitary dictatorship, a time inwhich "regular" and

"political" prisoners had regular interactions in the penitentiary system (see Misse 1995).
8. In an alert against a "drug traffic dictatorship," one Brazilian newspaper of nationwide
circulation reported in 2002 that 1,092,783 people living in Rio's 605 favelas, i.e., 18.6% of the
population or one in five of the city dwellers, feel obliged to respect the drug dealers' laws (see
O Globo, Rio de Janeiro, 2/20/2005, p. 18).
9The term "community" is often used by residents to refer to the areas inwhich they live
but it is far from being a workable sociological entity, as we will see further in this paper. Its
use by criminal individuals is usually related to their respective faction's control over one area,
and only circumstantially?but not necessarily?to having a steady involvement there through
their life history.
10. It isworthnoticing too that there is a long-standing tradition in Brazil, traceable to
eighteenth-century religious musical institutions (see, for instance, Lange 1979), and still verifi
able in public conservatories and university programs nowadays (Silva 2005), of music serving
as a means of professionalization and upward social mobility for the poor.
11. Onesignificant exception, Grupo Cultural Afro-Reggae, was founded in 1993, after the
massacre of twenty-one residents of Vig?rio Geral (another favela) in a police raid; this Grupo
was founded by a group of community youngsters interested inmusics of the African diaspora.
It defines itsmission as "to promote social inclusion, using the arts, Afro-Brazilian culture and
education as tools to create bridges to unite differences and serve as foundations to sustainability
and to exercising citizenship" (http://www.afroreggae.org.br/sec_missao.php).
12. In a 2003 seminar on NGO-run arts programs at Rio de Janeiro's Industry Federation,
a representative of one of the largest of the city's NGOs, Viva Rio, expressed her organization's
concern with the problem. The NGO had even chosen the integration of its supposed nine
hundred simultaneous projects as a priority theme for a seminar the following year.
13.This also has to do with the financing agencies' growing demands for external qualita
tive evaluation as an indispensable part of any application for funding.
14. Literally, funk balls, dance parties held in social clubs, gymnasiums and samba schools
rehearsal yards, which have been very popular among Rio's predominantly black lower-class
youngsters since the 1970s (Vianna 1988). Through a combination of real facts with sensa
tionalistic media coverage, bailes funk became seen as central contexts of violence?or the
dangerous Other?in middle- and upper-class perceptions. Laws to prevent violence in bailes
funkwere passed in the city representatives council and in the State House of Representatives.
The latter (Lei Estadual 3410,29 May 2000) states, "The Police Force will be able to shut down
clubs/places inwhich induced acts of violence, eroticism and pornography may occur, as well
as those where one can verify that the so-called corredor da morte [lit.death corridor, mostly
symbolic, but also physical confrontation between factions disposed in two opposing rows]
occurs" (5th Art.) and "Remaining forbidden shall be the playing of music and procedures of
crime praises in places where social and sports events of any sort may occur" (6th Art.).
15 The name of the group (Se Benze Que D?,or Bless Yourself And Move) is equally relevant
since it is an allusion to the tension around its parading through the tight community streets.
16.All formative sessions have been recorded as a means to allow the group to go back to
certain issues and concepts in order to inform their future reflections on the topics theywill
be covering. Copies of the MDs inmp3 audio files, made by resident researchers, are stored
on disks in the group's room in one of CEASM's facilities. The room also houses a computer

equipped tomake a variety of audio and video conversions.

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 312 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 2006

17."The police cited thirteen funkeiros (funk ball singers) who give shows in balls in the
poor communities of Rio, under accusations of praising the drug traffic.According to the police,
all of them sing songs praising drug consumption, drug factions or criminal acts" ("Funkeiros
sao acusados de exaltar trunco,"Folha de S.Paulo, 04/10/05). It is also common for Rio's police
to use illegal proibid?es CDs in investigative operations and legal procedures.

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