Instruments of Change

"I started to ask why we wanted to kill each other. How do I end the violence? How do I...? Can I use music as an instrument of change?...For every kid our movement attracts to percussion class 5, are waiting to join the drug army. We are happy to have that one kid. Yet..." says Anderson Sá in Favela Rising, a documentary about a man in Vigário Geral, a favela in Rio de Janeiro, on a mission to change his community from the inside out through music.

In 1993, the movement, including a successful band called AfroReggae, became the non-profit Grupo Cultural AfroReggae, whose mission is to promote social justice through programs for youth in art, Afro-Brazilian culture and education. The documentary does much more justice to how inspiring this group is than I can in this blog entry. It shows how a community can take charge of its destiny and begin changing its narrative - both how it views itself and how it wants to be perceived by the outside world.

I watched this documentary (shedding a tear or two) about a year ago when I was beginning the process of trying to get my Brazilian internship set up. There was a line that hit a core with me from one of the AfroReggae band members. He describes touring the world with the band. People, inspired by their performances, would come up to him and want to donate money to his cause. He told them to save their money for their own communities, that problems existed everywhere and we should work to effect change in our own backyards first.

This sent me into a state of existential questioning. "Really?!" I asked myself, "What are you thinking? Who are you to fly to another continent to try to help Brazilian kids when there are plenty of youth here that you might be able to assist in some way? And anyway, speaking of which, why are you in Texas? Why didn't you stay in Massachusetts where you grew up and do some good there? And while we're on the topic, do you really think a 4-month internship is long enough for you to do anything of use?"

So, I beat myself up with these kinds of questions. It mollified me when I eventually realized, thanks to logic presented to me by my boyfriend, that no matter where I did my final internship, it would still only be 4 months. And that I was a student. The point being: this was also about me and my learning experience.

In many ways - beyond the grander points I could make about social issues transcending national boundaries - leaving my comfort zone entirely behind will put me in the perfect position for learning. I may have a grasp of the Portuguese language, but I don't know it as spoken by youth in conflict with the law in Porto Alegre. I may have an idea what juvenile justice and poverty and teens killing teens for pointless reasons looks like in Austin, Texas, but not in Brazil. I have no idea what social work looks like in another country. I can only hope that being ready to learn and simply being there will mean something. These kids may even enjoy teaching me by sharing the narrative of who they are and how they see their world with me.

How does this tie into AfroReggae? It's a reminder to learn and observe what beautiful strengths already exist within an individual and within a community. If they're not being tapped, could they be? Or, say, if I happen to teach yoga and the kids like it, are there yoga instructors in the community that would want to sustain this sort of thing? Or, if yoga is not happening, what is?