Critique of Anthropology

http://coa.sagepub.com Sonic Supremacy: Sound, Space and Charisma in a Favela in Rio de Janeiro
Martijn Oosterbaan Critique of Anthropology 2009; 29; 81 DOI: 10.1177/0308275X08101028

The online version of this article can be found at: http://coa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/29/1/81

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Article

Sonic Supremacy
Sound, Space and Charisma in a Favela in Rio de Janeiro
Martijn Oosterbaan
University of Groningen/Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Abstract I This article discusses the soundscape of a favela in Rio de Janeiro. It argues that sounds, and music in particular, play an important part in the creation and maintenance of boundaries between groups in the dense urban space of the favela. The politics of presence excercised by different groups constitutes the sonic charisma of the favela. Especially in relation to Pentecostal faith, it becomes obvious how the charisma of the city and in the city are related. A focus on the soundscape of the favela highlights the fact that electronic media are woven into the fabric of its social life and are part and parcel of the production of locality. Yet the mass-mediated sounds, employed to mark space and identity also demonstrate that identity is not produced either locally or supralocally, but rather trans-locally and that electro-acoustic technology is essential to the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of religion. Keywords I Brazil I Christianity I city I media I music I religion

For the rst few nights in my small apartment in the favela,1 I could hardly sleep at all. It was very hot and humid but what mostly kept me awake those nights was the loud music and the noises coming from the festivities in the favela. I had moved to the favela during the week and the rst Friday evening I saw and heard the many different celebrations that mark the beginning of the weekend. The different Pentecostal churches of the Assemblia de Deus (Assemblies of God) had their doors open and I could hear their music and songs clearly. The little shop on the only paved road broad enough for cars and trucks had been playing pagode 2 music since the afternoon, while owners of the bars in the main street were playing mostly forr.3 That Friday night I could hear the sounds of funk 4 music all night long. The funk music was so loud one could hear its intrusive beat down in Copacabana. Tired as I was that Saturday, I was also quite excited: it appeared to me that life in the favela never stopped for one moment and that people celebrated the end of the work week together. I was soon disabused about the togetherness. The different music and sounds audible in the favela embodied an assertive identity politics and the preference for certain music was often indistinguishable from the musics ability to epitomize the socio-political position of the enthusiasts. Forr was commonly thought to belong to the nordestinos immigrants from the
Vol 29(1) 81104 [DOI:10.1177/0308275X08101028] Copyright 2009 SAGE Publications (London, Los Angeles, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC) www.sagepublications.com
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north-east of Brazil who had recently migrated, pagode to the so-called authentic inhabitants. Funk belonged to the youth, while gospel belonged to the evanglicos (evangelicals).5 Most people who frequented the Pentecostal churches were very keen to stay away from the little bar where the pagode music was playing, nor would they dance to that or other kinds of music in public. Conversely, the open doors of the Assemblia de Deus did not signify the great love of gospel music of a large proportion of the inhabitants.6 In this article I will relate the two modes of urban charisma that Hansen and Verkaaik have put forward in their introduction to the urban environment of the favela of my research.7 As Hansen and Verkaaik argue, one can distinguish between the charisma of the city and charisma in the city. The charisma of the city is co-produced by the rich sensory effect that architecture, technology and human behaviour create in its inhabitants and visitors, while charisma in the city deals with those people who seem best able to channel this energy, to reinforce and redirect it for different purposes. In this article I will relate the sonic charisma of the favela to the charisma of several prominent evangelicals in the favela, and show how the amplication of sound produces opportunities for specic religious styles and performances to blossom. This article starts with the premise that sound and music are essential to the constitution of identities, and powerful tools to exercise a politics of presence in the favela. In the density of the favela, different groups try to exercise a politics of presence through the sounds they produce. The attempt to conquer ones place in the urban setting by means of the (re)production of sound call for a better understanding of the relation between sensing and knowing the city as Blom Hansen and Verkaaik also argue in the introduction to this issue and urge us to pay attention to the relation between sound, territoriality, architecture and charisma. In the perspective of the adherents of the Pentecostal churches, their Godly sound and gospel music contrasts with the worldly sounds of their neighbours. One of the important counterpoints of gospel music in the ears of many evanglicos is the popular funk music that is played at parties in the favela. For the evanglicos, the association between the funk parties and the drug-trading gang enhances the experience that funk is incited by the devil. An analysis of the opposition between funk and gospel music as it is perceived by the evanglicos demonstrates the entanglement between territorial and ideological struggles, and exemplies the sonic charisma of the city. The sonic battles that are audible in the favela are also related to the charisma in the city in several ways. In this article I focus on pastors and musicians who preach and perform in the favela, and derive their status as important mediators of the powers of the Holy Spirit, among other ways, through their recorded and amplied prayer and music. Given the fact that church doors remain open during the loudly amplied services, pastors

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83 Oosterbaan: Sonic Supremacy

and musicians are audible beyond the connes of the church buildings. This enhances the possibilities of attaining charisma through performance within and beyond the church community, and thus directs our attention to the nexus between religion, technology and charisma at the grassroots level.

The favelas of Rio de Janeiro

The city of Rio de Janeiro has roughly 6 million inhabitants (Leal de Oliveira and Cavallieri, 2008). There are two important distinctions that form part of the cityscape of the cariocas,8 both of which are related to the social segregation in the city. The rst is the distinction between zona norte and zona sul, the North zone and the South zone. Zona sul, with its famous beaches and middle-class apartments, is generally considered the afuent part of town in comparison to zona norte, which largely consist of industry and large lower-class neighbourhoods. The second important socialgeographical dichotomy that cariocas use is the distinction morro (hill) and asfalto (asphalt). While both zona norte and zona sul have many favelas, the favelas of zona sul are built mostly on the hills in the city and they are therefore commonly referred to as morros.9 The favela of my research is located in zona sul and is surrounded by high-rise ats. There is only one paved road that enters the morro, the rest are small pathways springing up behind the high-rise apartment buildings. All entrances are guarded either by the police or by the tracantes, members of the gang of drug trafckers. At rst sight the favela appears to be a labyrinth. It is a complex of narrow alleys and small, concrete stairs leading to houses that are built close to or on top of each other. Although the infrastructure is not totally planned, the favela, like many of the favelas in zona sul, does have rudimentary sewers, running water, electricity and phone lines. In many cases the inhabitants have planned and built these facilities themselves, sometimes with the help of government institutions or private companies.10 The morro/asfalto dichotomy clearly entails much more than a geographical distinction between different areas in city. It is also an indicator of the socio-economic differences in the city and the ways in which people narrate these differences to one another.11 Such narratives are not devoid of fear, disgust and discrimination. Inhabitants of the favelas are often described as marginals by the well-to-do inhabitants of the city, despite the history of social scientic studies that prove otherwise.12 The stigmatization of favelados (favela inhabitants)13 is tightly connected to the existence of drug gangs and the crime rates in the city.14 The image of Rio de Janeiro as one of the most violent cities in the world is primarily related to the drugs trafc. The favelas of zona sul and zona norte in Rio de Janeiro are widely known for the violence that takes place as a result of their

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84 Critique of Anthropology 29(1)

function as local centres of narco-trco, the sale of cocaine and marihuana. In many favelas, tracantes police their territory thoroughly to defend it in case of an attack by the police or other gangs. The threat of armed violence puts a great strain on the inhabitants, who unfortunately do not have many possibilities to move to safer places in the city. The work of several scholars has contributed to a shift in the characterization of favelas as enclosed, homogeneous communities. Favelas display internal forms of order and government that are entwined with supra-local structures and institutions, as amply described in the work of Marcus Alvito (2001), Desmond Arias (2006), Donna Goldstein (2003) and Alba Zaluar (1998). In general, the inhabitants earn considerably less than the people in the surrounding neighbourhoods, and they often have to deal with the presence of the drug gangs and police brutality. The number of Pentecostal churches has grown substantially in the last decades, but specically in the favelas they have claimed more space alongside other popular religious institutions such as Catholic parishes and temples for Afro-Brazilian religious worship.15

Sound, space and identication

One of the questions most inhabitants asked me when I had just moved in was if I had heard gunshots and if so, was I scared? After some time I began to understand the question as an introduction to the place. Living in the morro meant being confronted with the sound of shootings, understanding the background and coping with the danger involved. Sometimes I thought I had heard gunshots, but when I asked others they would assure me that what I had heard were reworks. Fireworks were often used by olheiros (watchers) to warn other tracantes that policemen were entering particular parts of the morro and signalled that it was wise to be cautious. These are important experiences that inhabitants of the morro share with one another. My focus on the soundscape (see Schfer, 1994) of the morro is strongly related to a growing body of literature that aims to complement the occularcentric representation of place with a description of sounds. Sound is an important indicator of place, as Steven Feld has forcefully argued (1996: 97).16 According to Feld, the rich and multi-sensory experience of place should lead us to formulate a multi-sensory conceptualization of place. This article is an attempt to contribute to such a conceptualization. The soundscape of the favela acquires its distinctive character in relation to its architecture and social geography. The favela consists of small houses with poorly insulated walls that are built on top of one another. The houses are often populated by many people who thus have to share very little space. As a result, social life in the morro could well be characterized by the tension between proximity and the search for (dis)sociation. On the

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one hand, people live close to each other and are often dependent on the solidarity of their relatives and neighbours. On the other hand, many take great care with whom they engage in public and try hard to remain independent. To be identied as member of a certain group can often result in strong moral judgements from the neighbours. Some people feel severely criticized by the crentes (believers) next door, who claim they are living immorally because they like to listen to pagode and drink a beer or two in the evening.17 Sound is part and parcel of the consolidation of social categories, especially in the dense social space of the favela. People know exactly what others listen to because they are often confronted with their music. While the meaning of music cannot be taken at face value, the ability of sound to traverse space does indicate its unique capability to establish the presence of certain groups in the maze-like architecture of the favela. As such, the soundscape forms an important element of the public space of the favela and reveals many of its power relations. This is in accordance with the work of Jacques Attali, who stresses the dialectical relation between sound and power. According to him, sound and music in particular is a tool for the creation or consolidation of a community, of a totality, it is what links a power center to its subjects, and thus, more generally, it is an attribute of power in all its forms (1985: 6).18 In this article I am mostly concerned with the ability of music to communicate group identity and to reproduce boundaries between different groups in relation to the cityscape of the favela.19 In another article I have demonstrated more specically how electro-acoustic technology and Pentecostalism inuence each other by discussing the place of evangelical radio in the favela (Oosterbaan, 2008). Nevertheless, to explain how electro-acoustic technology is related to the production of locality and to urban charisma I will repeat some of what I have written on the importance of style and the opposition between funk and gospel music. As several scholars have shown, preferences for certain music styles can be crucial to identity politics and the creation and maintenance of boundaries between groups (Keil and Feld, 1994; Stokes, 1997).20 Style can be dened as a deeply satisfying distillation of the way a very well integrated human group likes to do things (Keil and Feld, 1994: 202). According to Keil and Feld, music style can create such an intense sociability within a community over time that any innovation has to be made in accordance with that shaping continuum and no other (1994: 202). In the morro, social categories were often based upon the differences between certain music styles. According to their taste, people were identied as pagodeiro, sambista or funkeiro, for example (see also Sansone, 2001).21 Similarly, crentes and nordestinos22 were often recognized by the music they played in public.23 While in many instances the inhabitants treated such identities as essentially different, it is clear that these group identities, mediated by electro-acoustic technology, involve contextual

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identity performances that imply multiple parties in a eld of power relations.24 Clearly, some of these group identities overlap and/or portray both dominant and demotic discourses of and within communities (Baumann, 1996). Following the work of Bruno Latour (2005), among others, I am thus interested in understanding how these groups are formed performatively, in this particular case in relation to both the urban and technological environment. This allows us to see in what ways architecture and media contribute to the creation (and dissolution) of groups and communities in different spaces on a permanent basis. Besides enhancing feelings of unity among the admirers of certain music, electro-acoustic technology also allows for the representatives of these groups to claim space in the urban density of the morro.25 As people loudly amplied their own music, they temporarily seized hold of the soundscape of the entire favela. Such a seizure of the soundscape demonstrates how electro-acoustic technology can be used to privatize public space in (and beyond) an urban context like that of a favela.26 Furthermore, it also demonstrates what I would here like to refer to as the sonic charisma of the city. Though sound is part and parcel of the material surroundings of the inhabitants of the favela, it has a eeting nature. It echoes, reverberates and disappears. As such, it not only marks the uidity of social boundaries, it also forms part of the sensual knowledge of the city that is much more difcult to grasp and x than those visual, symbolic representations of the city that we are accustomed to.27 Nevertheless, particular urban sounds have a rhythm of their own, a way of repeating and attaching themselves to specic moments of the day or the week, fusing temporal notions and bodily sensations. One could think of Christian church bells (Corbin, 2000) or the Islamic call to prayer. In the case of the morro, the funk and pagode parties on Fridays marked the end of the working week, the way the amplied nightly church service marked the end of the working day. This sonic charisma of the city, co-produced by the nexus of (mediated) sounds and the architexture of the built environment, leaves its traces on human bodies, as Hansen and Verkaaik argue in the introduction to this volume. In the following section, we will take a closer look at the sonic charisma of morro through a discussion of the way in which the adherents of the Pentecostal churches generally conceptualized funk music. Within the Pentecostal discourse, gospel and funk were often presented as opposites. The Christian division between worldly and Godly music, which the adherents employ, allows for a particular understanding of the soundscape of the morro and the place of gospel music in it.

The sound of funk versus the sound of gospel

Funk was denitively the loudest music in the soundscape of the morro.28 When the parties began, the electronic beat of the music was heard inside

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each and every house in the entire favela. Mostly on Fridays, two enormous walls of professional loudspeakers were set up in one of the squares in the morro and the rst sounds usually roared through the community around midnight.29 During the parties, armed men of the Comando Vermelho (Red Command) would patrol the vicinity of the baile in order to protect it against invasions of the police or other gangs. As such, the sound of the baile reected and constituted the power relations in the morro.30 Though I agree with Sansone, who warns us about an a priori direct link between rage, revolt, violence, gangs and funk (2001: 143) because many young people he interviewed in the favela loved funk and did not identify themselves as funkeiro nor were they associated with the trco the funk parties I visited in the morro were related to the local drug gang. This does not imply that all the attendees approved or supported the power of the trco, rather that the message of funk is polyvalent and intricately related to socio-economic inequality and power. The contradiction between the critical lyrics of some funk songs, in which police violence and injustice is narrated, and the violence employed by the gangs themselves, demonstrates but one of the ambiguities of life in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The sound of the bailes was not entirely uncontested. The funk parties in the morro could be heard in the adjacent neighbourhoods as well. The sound not only transcended the different areas within the favela but also the socio-geographical distinction between morro and asfalto. One inhabitant told me that the residents of the neighbourhoods had demanded that the municipal government end their disturbance and, as a result, the police had forbidden the bailes. Nonetheless, during the period of my research the bailes thrived. Only once I was also told that tracantes had pressured people of the local government to convince the police that a party should continue after the police had ended it. During the parties that I frequented, armed men entered the dance oor and paraded through the dancing crowd with their rearms held high. Songs that praised the power of the Comando Vermelho accompanied their entrance and were often met with cheers. In general, the lyrics recount the lives of bandidos in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and often they conrm the status of tracantes. Take, for example these lyrics that come from a tape of funk recordings I copied from a girl in the morro:
Agora chapa quente eu vou no bonde ja t bolado t maluco t chapado o maluco vem neste bonde guerreiros esto voltando ser bandido facil dicil ser do Comando The heat is on I am part of the gang I am loaded, I am crazy, I am stoned The crazy man is part of this gang The warriors are returning To be a bandit is easy To be of the Comando, thats difcult

These lyrics celebrate the warrior status of the tracantes of the Comando Vermelho. Many of the funk lyrics are a reection of the violent living conditions experienced by the young people who are involved in the trco in the favelas, as well as a demonstration of the territorial power of the

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trco. Take, for example, the lyrics below that were a parody of a very popular song performed by the Brazilian singer/celebrity Ivete Sangolo. The original text was:
Avisou, Avisou, Avisou, Avisou Que vai rolar a festa Vai rolar O povo do gueto Mandou avisar They have warned, they have warned, they have warned The party will begin It will begin The people of the ghetto They have called for a warning

Instead of an upcoming party, the trco version warns of the war that is about to commence. This version I heard often during the bailes in the morro, and also on other occasions, for example, when people played the tapes at home. The song starts with the sound of shots from an automatic rie after which the following lyrics are sung:
uniao todas (que) mandam estavam la It is union, everyone who rules was there Comando Comando Its Comando its Comando [Vermelho] nao podemos estranhar We cannot estrange ourselves O pt do Vidigal, da Jacare, da It is the pt31 from Vidigal, of Jacar, Mangueira etc. etc. [all favelas of the Comando Vermelho] esse bonde faz amor e f This gang brings love and faith Avisou, Avisou, Avisou, Avisou They have warned, they have warned, they have warned Que vai rolar a guerra War will come O bonde do B mandou avisar The gang of B has called for a warning32

As the lyrics also conrm, tracantes used the parties to communicate that this morro, like other morros, was controlled by the Comando Vermelho. The extremely loud music veried the power of the tracantes to challenge the police and the other drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro. Even though many young people loved the bailes and explained me they were accustomed to the ries and guns on the dance oor, most of my evangelical friends did not go to the bailes in the morro and some also warned me of the dangers involved. Roberto, a young man who had recently converted to a local Assemblia de Deus, told me he had been at a baile once when the police came and started shooting. Several people continued dancing while the police was shooting at the tracantes and vice versa. Another friend of mine tried to prevent me from going to a baile. Her best friend had been shot when she was in the line of re, and the father of one of her children had been killed near a baile during a confrontation between tracantes and the police.33 The Pentecostal adherents strongly disliked the baile funk parties. For them, going to a baile was seen as walking the caminho errado (wrong way),

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leading one straight into the arms of the devil. Many crentes told me the lyrics of the funk music exhibited too much palavro (profanity) and only told of prostitution, drug abuse and violence. This does not necessarily mean these people never went to bailes. Many of the young people who had joined the Assemblia de Deus had been to the bailes prior to their conversion, including one pastor who grew up in the morro. Some of them still went occasionally. The rst time I went to take a look at a baile, I did so against the advice of one of my friends of the Assemblia de Deus. She warned me that if I kept attending the funk parties, the members of the small church where I was playing the drums in the church band would begin to doubt my spiritual state of mind and surely would not allow me to play any more. The oppositions between crentes and funkeiros which play themselves out in the daily life of the morro should be seen as attempts to demarcate clear lines between moral and immoral behaviour from the perspective of the people who attend Pentecostal churches. In the media of the Assemblia de Deus the lifestyle of the pagodeiros and funkeiros is presented as irreconcilable with an evangelical lifestyle. In these media, samba, pagode and funk were almost invariably associated with the forbidden fruits of carnal pleasure. The music and lifestyle therefore functioned as an important counterpoint to the gospel music, which most evanglicos experience as a pure and Godly force that conrms their separate position in the morro (Oosterbaan, 2008).34 Beside the numerous doctrines and practices, music is a very important aspect of Pentecostalism in the morro and in Brazil at large. Most, if not all, of the church services start with music. The hymns (louvores)35 are accompanied by music from a tape recording or a single synthesizer, but many churches also have their own band of musicians. Occasionally, church leaders invite guest musicians. The popularity of the Pentecostal music must be understood against the background of the strict (discursive) separation between musica do mundo (music of the world) and musica evanglica (evangelical music). By and large, people criticized popular Brazilian music on the basis of its lyrics. Many people explained me that if the lyrics contained non-biblical, blasphemous or heretical content, the songs should not be listened to, let alone be played. It was very clear to most evanglicos that one should not listen to ordinary funk music voluntarily because it was so closely associated to the immoral lifestyle of the baile funk participants. For some people, conversion to Pentecostalism implied an alteration of their music taste. Consider the words of Paula, a young woman, who had joined the local Assemblia de Deus not long before the interview:
Your vision changes after you are in the church. You look at things differently, you see the world in a different light, totally different, from one minute to the other you change your personality. I adored funk, I loved funk, pagode all these things, I did not miss one baile funk, I adored it. I lost the desire, I cant even sing the music, many things I did, I dont do any more.

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Paulas words indicate that the distinction between the old and new self, as many attendees of Pentecostal churches call it, is strongly related to the personal experience of music. Yet, in the morro, the signicance of the gospel music in opposition to funk is not only formed by the discursive separation between musica do mundo and musica evanglica, but also by their amplied presence in the public domain. On most nights of the week, I could hear the loud amplied voice of pastor Marcus of the Assemblia de Deus during the culto (church service). At rst, when I heard him shout the word satans (Satan) with enormous enthusiasm, I often looked out my window to see what was happening. Later, I became used to the screams and the shouting coming from the church. The church of the Assemblia de Deus was built strategically at the corner of the paved road, opposite the samba school, where many funk parties were held. Because of its central location, the church was very visible and extremely audible to many people living in that part of the morro. The loud, amplied voice of the pastor, alternated with shouts of the audience, followed by the music and the singing that mark the particular style of Pentecostalism. In one of my interviews, one of the elder congregants, Linda (a woman of 60 years) remembered what it was like when the church had been recently established, approximately 40 years before.
I was not a crente, I was of the escola de samba, a sambista. . . . When we passed the church on our way to the samba practice, Joo, the doorman of the church stood in the threshold and said to us Jesus loves you and calls for you and invited us to come in. I replied: Joo, one of these days I will enter and see this shouting of yours. The Pentecostals in these days were Gloria, Gloria [imitates the sound of high-pitched screaming people], that noise, it was louder than today. It was a kind of shouting, so different from us Catholics, us Catholics [she starts whispering] we would sit in church, in that silence, that reverence, even when we prayed. In the Pentecostal church it was Senhor Jesus, my Father, bless, do this . . . [she speaks out loud]. So it was that noise, everyone praying out loud, we in the morro had never seen before. So I said Joo, one of these days I will enter and see what this shouting inside is about. He replied: Come and see. We had this concept that when these crentes began to shout, that screaming, the praying, everything, the baptism in the Holy Spirit, us who were not crente we said: That is when the men are grabbing the women, that is why they are screaming. . . . One day, I said, I will go in and you [her friends] have to remain outside and wait for me. If they start to grab me or if I see the men grab the women, I will call you and you will come and we will get him off.

As we see, the emotional shouting and praying formed part of the attraction for Linda to enter the church.36 As with the other churches of the Assemblia de Deus in the morro, the music and praying were loudly amplied so participants inside were rmly surrounded by the sound.37 Nevertheless, the amplication of sound carried the Pentecostal presence well beyond the church walls and most people were well aware of this. As I have also described elsewhere (Oosterbaan, 2008), pastors and church musicians were aware of the fact that the sounds emanating from

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their churches were audible by the other inhabitants and they perceived this as an important element of their evangelical efforts. Furthermore, their adoption of electro-acoustic technology to spread the message allowed for a particular conceptualization of the transmission of the Holy Spirit via and as amplied sound.38 As I have argued in relation to evangelical radio programmes, the elective afnity between Pentecostalism and electroacoustic technology is sustained by the idea that the gifts of the Holy Spirit (charismata) are conveyed directly to the believer without mediation, much in the same way music and sound in general is experienced as an immediate force that touches us profoundly (Oosterbaan, 2008). We will return to the role of pastors and musicians in the mediation of the charismata, and their relation to the (sonic) charisma in and of the city. At this point I would like to call attention to the (re)territorialization of religion in relation to electronic mass media and the effects it has on conceptualizations of locality.

Sound, space and religion in the morro

The Pentecostal presence in the soundscape of the morro and its part in the sonic charisma of the city prompt us to evaluate the relationship between religion and territoriality in the age of electronic mass media. Danile Hervieu-Lger (2002) distinguishes three registers of religious territoriality in modernity: the territorial modalities of the communalization of religion; the geopolitics of the religious; and religious symbolizations of space. Although Hervieu-Lger recognizes an in-built tension between the territorialization of religion its embeddedness in local communities and its claims to universal signicance, she argues that modernity has brought a signicant shift in the relationship between religion and territoriality. According to her, the dismantling of traditional bonds of belief and belonging to a local community, reinforced by the intensive moving around of individuals and the explosion of various means of worldwide communication is leading to the emergence, through novel forms of sociability, of new congurations of this tension between the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of religion (2002: 103). Hervieu-Lger (2002) mentions three important dynamics in the relationship between religion and territoriality, which are fundamental to what I think is happening in the morros of Rio de Janeiro at present. First, she mentions the particularity of a situation of denominational pluralism. In a situation of denominational pluralism different religious institutions attempt to sacralize space in order to attract and retain believers, however none of them can claim a territory exclusively. Second, she mentions the competition for presence in space in situations in which pluralism is no longer merely religious, but also ideological. Following Alain Corbin (2000), who demonstrated that the confrontation between the Roman

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Catholic Church and the republic in 19th-century France was played out through sonic competition (the battle of the bells), Hervieu-Lger argues that the struggles over mastery of space can also occur between religious and ideological parties and often involve struggles for mastery of the soundscape (2002: 101). Third, she mentions the importance of the mobilization of the most modern communication technologies . . . which is weaving new patterns of religion in space (2002: 104).39 While each of these three dynamics of religion and spatiality provides insights regarding the current spatialization of religion, much more could be said about their interrelations. In particular, the recognition of the importance of sound in relation to religion and territory is important when discussing the morro. The struggle over the control over the morro and its inhabitants is played out both in the landscape and the soundscape. Only by taking the three dynamics together is it possible to understand that, in the morro, territorial struggles involve both denominational and ideological institutions that employ communication technologies in their politics of presence. The ideological/ religious opposition between crentes and tracantes, and their quest for sonic supremacy through gospel and funk music, is especially indicative of the current situation. Besides the amplied prayers originating from the churches, there were many biroshkas (little shops) owned by evangelicals, who played gospel music or evangelical radio to accompany them during their work, to evangelize and to demonstrate their religious afliation to their customers. For obvious reasons, most biroshkas are located there where many people pass by and consequently many people were confronted with the evangelical presence. In the case of the favela called Acari, Christina Cunha (2002) noted an increase in the number of local shops and biroshkas owned by evanglicos. This increase in churches and shops has led to what she calls the evangelical occupation of space in the favela:
The social space is permeated with their ever-growing presence. There are many crentes who circulate in the streets and alleys with their distinctive clothes and their Bibles in their hands. They are easily identied in public by their clothing (above all the believers of the conservative churches such as the Assemblia de Deus) and they move around in groups. They hold their feasts and cultos throughout the day and invite their neighbors to participate, not sparing them or passers-by from the religious proselytism which is so characteristic for believers of this religion, pronounced loud and clear. Some of these encounters rely on speakers, microphones and musical instruments like the guitar and tambourine to encourage the cnticos. Concluding, the evanglicos have inltrated distinct spheres of life in Acari and in this context, the occupation of physical and social space is just one of the many facets of this phenomenon. (Cunha, 2002: 92 [authors translation])

This vivid description of the evangelical occupation of space in Acari is very similar to the situation in the favela of my research. Unfortunately, Cunha

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does not further explore the importance of electro-acoustic technology, which allows for this idea of the spiritual occupation of space. The Pentecostal appropriation of electro-acoustic media demands that we rethink our conceptualizations of locality. As Arjun Appadurai has argued strongly, the production of locality is heavily inuenced by the current form and force of electronic mediation (1996: 189).40 Taking neighbourhood as the existing social form in which locality is realized, Appadurai, underscores the current tensions between different forces acting in and upon the life-world of the neighbourhood. One of the important struggles is shaped by the opposition between the neighbourhood and the nation-state, the latter of which seeks to produce compliant national citizens, bypassing or, rather, overriding specic local forms of knowledge and subject positions. Another important tension is caused by the (global) ows of electronic media that present and sustain new ideas and experiences of community, often exceeding local forms of collectivity. While Appadurai focuses mostly on visual media, I would like to take up some his insights regarding the (global) production of locality in relation to electronic media, by focusing briey on the electro-acoustic technology in the favela. The morro is often described as one complexo (complex). Nevertheless, the inhabitants also make distinctions between many different smaller areas: Quebra Brao, Buraco Quente, Nova Brasilia or Igrejinha, to name but a few. In much of the literature on favelas, scholars stress the tensions between the internal and external boundaries of the favelas (Alvito, 2001; Zaluar, 1985). Though on the outside, the favelas are often represented as one bounded space, on the inside there are many very important divisions. Marcos Alvito (2001: 73), for example, describes the favela Acari in terms of a continuum from micro-areas to supra-local institutions. Likewise, Alba Zaluar, who did research in the favela Cidade de Deus41 in Rio de Janeiro, writes:
The representation of locality is one of the most important in the ideology of the poor urban [subject] in this city. And this locality has territorial divisions and sub-divisions, and the more there are of these, the more there have to be organizations that unite, mobilize and create the identity of the local people. (1985: 175 [authors translation])

Locality is often dened by the relations people maintain with other inhabitants. As both authors acknowledge, the proximity between the inhabitants calls for an understanding of the importance of neighbourliness (vizinhana). Neighbours who occupy the same little space (pedao) in the morro often form solidarity networks that strengthen their sense of locality, for example, their sense of territory.42 Yet, neighbourhood is not the sole determinant of identity in the morro nor is vizinhana the sole determinant of sociability. Most inhabitants also identied themselves with supra-territorial institutions that spoke in the name of a larger collective in

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94 Critique of Anthropology 29(1)

the morro, such as the associaco de moradores (association of inhabitants), the escola de samba (the samba school), the Assemblia de Deus or the Comando Vermelho. In some cases, internal divisions and external unity were not considered problematic. People in the morro could easily identify themselves with certain local and supra-local identities simultaneously, for example, when they identied themselves as morador (inhabitant) and carioca. However, in other instances, different identications and solidarities were not easily reconcilable, not even within a given micro-area. People who attended Pentecostal churches often expressed tension with non-converted neighbours or with non-evangelical institutions, for example.43 Since the sonic charisma of the morro exemplies its internal divisions, as I have argued above, we are pressed to rethink our notions of locality in relation to the macro- and the micro-level. The conceptualization of locality that Alvito presents, for example, has quite a strong visual component. He denes the micro-level mostly in terms of space and territory, and the macro-level as structures that are linked to that space, for example the state, the media or the churches. Supra-local institutions, such as the churches or the state, are described as institutions that somehow stand above locality. In my opinion, such a description downplays the importance of sounds in the movement between micro-area and the macro-level and underestimates the fact that many of the institutions can make themselves physically present by means of electronic media, for example through sound. I think it is fruitful to describe the institutions as trans-local instead of supra-local. Many sounds of the morro represent and constitute groups that form part of larger imagined collectivities that transcend the limits of the morro. Both the local churches of the Assemblia de Deus and the local drug gang are part of bigger networks and institutions that connect different neighbourhoods to each other. While the sound of these groups marks their place in the favela, the sounds themselves were often transmitted from other places, or came from discs or a cassettes that were produced somewhere else. People who turn up the volume of their radio and amplify gospel music broadcast from somewhere else partake in a complex chain of re-mediations that connect people in different places to one another (often simultaneously).44 In the case of the morro, such a re-mediation exemplies one particular form of the reterritorialization of religion. Furthermore, since the amplied sound transcends the limits of particular micro-areas, it momentarily overcomes territorial divisions while enforcing religious and ideological boundaries within the favela or between the favela and the adjacent neighbourhoods. Thus far I have focused mostly on the sound itself and less on the people who play an important part in its (re-)mediations. In the remaining section of this article I want to devote attention to the charisma in the city and describe how we can relate the sonic charisma of the favela to the charisma ascribed to Pentecostal pastors, missionaries and musicians.

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Charisma in the city

Most of the pastors of the local churches of the Assemblia de Deus were regarded as important leaders of the comunidade (the favela community). Some were directly involved in the association of inhabitants and others operated as part of the general liderana (leaders) of the favela. This authority was clearly based on their exemplary lives as good Christians and their abilities to direct the churches in such a way that their members were satised. Yet most of the pastors and missionaries had also acquired authority because they were competent performers who could deliver a powerful sermon. A convincing sermon is not merely dependent on the choice of the right topic, biblical reference or narrative frame. Equally important are the style, the force and timbre of the pastor. Furthermore, especially in local Pentecostal churches, the proof of ones sanctied (charismatic) position is demonstrated when one starts to speak in tongues (glossalalia) during a church service or sermon. Quentin Schultze (1994) has argued that the popularity of Pentecostalism in Latin America cannot be explained merely in terms of economical or sociological factors, we should also include the cultural forces that re-assert orality as an important feature of religion. Pentecostalism is very successful in Latin America, among other reasons, because it allows for an emphasis on performance and playfulness, which many religious practices that are highly text-centred lack (Schultze, 1994: 78). In Brazil, the emphasis on the oral communication of the message and its truth that is demonstrated in glossalalia produces an immediacy and presentness that contemplative religious practices, particularly those in mainstream Protestant churches, do not offer. In the morro, many people were more concerned with the direct experience of the divine through sound than with the rather abstract notions of the divine provided by literary practices.45 The status of the pastors and other people within the Assemblia de Deus depended by and large on their personal charisma. Personal charisma can best be understood as the common acceptance of the extraordinary capabilities of specic people to mediate between supernatural powers and an audience as a result of the performances of these people, as Thomas Csordas (1997) has argued. While the possession of charisma is imagined as something that is beyond human agency, such imagination is in fact the result of a skilled performance. Where Csordas focuses on the rhetorical features and ritual language of such performances, Marleen de Witte (2008) convincingly demonstrates that charisma is often produced through mass media and relies upon the carefully crafted (and edited) image of a religious leader/celebrity.46 Taking up her insightful claim that charisma operates at the interface between the technological and the religious (de Witte, 2008: 88), I think it is worthwhile to take a closer look at the nexus of electro-acoustic technology and charisma at the grassroots level of the favela and to pay

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96 Critique of Anthropology 29(1)

attention to the way in which small media can be used to co-produce charisma.47 Many people in the churches developed their skills as public speakers and performers gradually, from the rst time they picked up a microphone to address the audience to the moment they were invited as guest preachers or guest musicians by other congregations. Some of the people in the morro were even considered local celebrities, who travelled from congregation to congregation. Young people imitated famous gospel musicians and pastors, knowing well that the ability to draw people to the churches depended on the aesthetic dimensions of their performances within the soundscape of the morro. Besides the noted value of ampliers, I discovered the importance of other small media when I was regularly asked to reproduce a copy of the testimony or sermon that I had recorded on my mini-disc. Most people of the Assemblia de Deus exchanged tapes of recorded conversion testimonies of preachers and missionaries and they were eager to hear their own voice and style of preaching on disc so as to improve their skills or redistribute the disc to others. Testimonies often contained spectacular stories of violence in the city and the moments at which God had intervened in a time of despair. As such, these testimonies connected the urban experiences of the inhabitants to a Pentecostal perception of the world, but also made it possible to develop and reproduce a charismatic style of preaching that was audible within and beyond the churches.

Conclusion
As I have tried to demonstrate, the cacophony in the favela is an essential part of the charisma of the city. This sonic charisma reects and constitutes the power struggles in the morro and the position that different groups occupy in it. Music plays an important part in the creation and maintenance of boundaries between groups. In the dense urban space, characterized by proximity, it is not only through visual displays of style that groups and individuals try to maintain their positions vis-a-vis each other, it is also through sounds that people exercise a politics of presence. Especially in funk and gospel music one can discern an attempt to create a sense of belonging for the people who are attracted to these ideologies one the one hand, while on the other hand the music serves as a powerful instrument to privatize public space and to claim territory. The sonic battles between funk and gospel music signal power struggles and are interwoven with larger socio-economic inequalities in the urban context of Rio de Janeiro. While funk music is a powerful instrument of the youthful inhabitants of the favela to demonstrate they have a voice and want to talk about insecurity and injustice, it is also used as a tool by the tracantes to exercise a politics of presence both within the morro and in the wider urban domain. Similarly, evanglicos feel the need to let the world outside the morro hear that the favela is not made up of criminals, but of hard-working citizens who

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follow the word of God, which, in their eyes and ears, offers the only solution to the violence and injustice (Oosterbaan, 2006). Many evanglicos also regard gospel music as an ideal medium to transmit the Holy Spirit to non-converted neighbours. A focus on the soundscape of the morro also highlights the fact that electronic media are woven into the fabric of its social life. Almost all the sounds that one hears in the morro are technically mediated in one way or another. The sounds are picked up by microphone, recorded, transmitted, bought, copied and amplied. Mass-mediated sounds employed to mark space and identity also demonstrate that identity is not produced either locally or supra-locally, but rather trans-locally. It is increasingly hard to pin down the production of identity in one specic place, as evanglicos dene their local position in the morro through the amplication of broadcast music that is produced and transmitted somewhere else. And vice versa, this music can only attain its specic meaning in the local experience of other amplied sounds, such as the funk music that is being taped, mixed and re-taped throughout favelas in Rio de Janeiro. This development indicates the complexity of life in favela-like neighbourhoods. While favela inhabitants are often described as one homogeneous group, they are is in fact made up of many different social groups. Though neighbourliness within certain micro-areas is indeed very important, it is certainly not always a binding element. The music that people play, and reactions to it, are indicative of both the solidarity and the tensions between next-door neighbours. The attention that people (have to) learn to give to certain sounds and the sonic struggles that take place, compels us to give more attention to the sensual characteristics of city life and their complex relation to knowledge and power.

Notes
This article is based upon research conducted in Rio de Janeiro in 20023 as part of the NWO/Pionier project: Modern Mass Media, Religion and the Imagination of Communities. I wish to thank NWO (De Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek/The Netherlands Organization for Scientic Research) and the ASSR (Amsterdam School for Social Science Research) for making this research possible. I wish to thank the members of the project for their insights and inspiration, and Oskar Verkaaik for his comments on an early draft of this article. Parts of this article also appear in my article: Spiritual Attunement: Pentecostal Radio in the Soundscape of a Favela in Rio de Janeiro (Oosterbaan, 2008). 1 Favelas can be translated as urban slums, shantytowns or squatter settlements, depending on the various discourses that are related to these mostly illegally occupied areas. It is very hard to dene these settlements without associating oneself with some kind of political position. Names such as: aglomerado subnormal (subnormal agglomerate), comunidade carente (destitute community), comunidade de baixa renda (low-income community), comunidade (community) or morro (hill), to name some examples, all point to different

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98 Critique of Anthropology 29(1) positions that people and organizations take in the struggle over meaning and power both inside and outside the favela. Pagode is a type of popular music that developed from samba music. Forr is a type of music that is popular in the north-east of Brazil. The carioca funk that I refer to here differs from the style commonly referred as funk in the Europe and in the United States. Carioca funk bears some similarities to electronic dance music and hip-hop music. People who frequent Protestant and Pentecostal churches are often described as evanglicos. In the following months I learned that boundaries between different Pentecostal churches were drawn quite sharply at times, and one of the ways to accomplish this was along the lines of musical preference. Many people from the Igreja Universal, a large Neo-Pentecostal church, said they preferred to play music from their own gospel-singing pastors than from the pastors of other churches. This is conrmed by the quantitative research of Alexandre Fonseca (1997), who showed that the people from the Igreja Universal mostly tuned in to the radio channel owned by their church, instead of those of others. In my research I focused on the role of mass media in contemporary Pentecostal movements in Brazil. Since many adherents of the Pentecostal churches in Rio de Janeiro live in favelas, I chose to live in a one for almost a year. Besides anthropological research methods, such as participant observation and semistructured interviewing, I analysed the form and content of the mass media with which people engaged. Such an approach follows the work of Ginsburg et al. (2002), Birgit Meyer (2004) and Mattijs van de Port (2006), who have done and/or advocated ethnographic research in relation to mass media. Cariocas is the Brazilian term to describe the people of Rio de Janeiro. It is also used locally to describe Rio de Janeiro as place of birth or of identity vis-a-vis other regions or cities in Brazil. The census of 2000 showed that Rio de Janeiro had 513 favelas (Leal de Oliveira and Cavallieri, 2008). It was also estimated that 18.7 percent of the population of the city of Rio de Janeiro lives in favelas (O Globo, 28 April 2001). This does not mean that these works are all completed not to mention the lack of maintenance. While there are still many wooden shacks, the number of houses made of brick and cement keeps growing as does the number of inhabitants. The upshot is that more people are using the same facilities, which is why repairs are necessary. Unquestionably the relationship between the morro and the asfalto is much more complex than the rigid dichotomy seems to assume. Although there seems to be a mutual construction of otherness based on many categories, such as, wealth, religion, violence and security, civil rights and duties, inhabitants of morro and asfalto in fact share much more than they often presume. Although the socio-economic differences between the asfalto and the morro are considerable, there is a risk of exaggerating the differences. This might not only give a wrong impression of the circumstances of the people who live in favelas, but also stigmatize them as one homogeneous group by continuously describing them in the same interconnected terms of underdevelopment, poverty, lack of education and so on without demonstrating what daily life in the favelas might actually look like, and to describe which social groups are distinguished within the favela itself and how this is related to broader societal transformations. As early as 1977, for example, Janice Perlman published her inuential study in which she dislodged many of the presuppositions that were used to explain the relative poverty of favela inhabitants. Many theories were based upon

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99 Oosterbaan: Sonic Supremacy presupposed cultural and individual traits of the inhabitants, as well as on their presumed social behaviour. Perlman showed that, contrary to what most people thought, these people had work outside the favela, produced and consumed at the same level as non-favelados, and participated in local and supra-local organizations and associations (Perlman, 1977). Later, Perlman herself wrote about her book: The book argues that the existing myths about the social, cultural, political and economic marginality were empirically false, analytically wrong and devastating in their implications for public policy directed at favelas. I concluded that the favelados were not economically or politically marginal, but exploited and repressed; were not socially or culturally marginal but stigmatized and excluded from a closed social system. (2003: 2) 13 The inhabitants of the favelas are often pejoratively called favelados. 14 The statistics on crime and violence in Rio de Janeiro are terrifying. In a recent study, Luke Dowdney compared the homicides committed with rearms between different urban regions worldwide. The index for 1999 showed that Rio de Janeiro suffered 41.5 homicides by rearms in a population of 100,000 (the state of Rio de Janeiro 46.5), while the state of New York had 5.6 and the state of Washington 10.2 in a population of 100,000. (Dowdney, 2003: 96). Both Dowdney and Waiselsz (2004) conrm that organized crime greatly affects young people in the urban areas of Brazil. According to UNESCO, the index of homicides among young people (Waiselsz, 2004: 1524) in Brazil rose from 30 in a population of 100,000 in 1980 to 54.4 in 2002. 15 Extensive research done in Rio de Janeiro in 1994 showed that of all the people who frequented Protestant/Pentecostal churches in Rio de Janeiro, those who attended the Pentecostal churches of the Assemblia de Deus and the Igreja Universal generally earned the lowest incomes in the city. Both of them attracted around 62 percent people whose families generally earned only twice the minimum income and who had jobs with lowest incomes, for example domestic workers (see Fernandes et al., 1998). 16 Steven Feld argues for the use of acoustemology in the description of place (1996: 97). In a broad sense, his arguments are in line with those of authors such as Veit Erlmann (2004), Steven Connor (2004) and Charles Hirschkind (2001), who all strive to pay more attention to sound and the faculty of hearing/listening in the constitution of modern subjectivity (Erlmann, 2004). 17 The term crente is often used to (self-)describe adherents of the Pentecostal churches. 18 Although Attali often equates sound with noise in order to stress the violence of sound, I would like to maintain distinctions between sound, noise and music. 19 While music is a means of understanding people and behaviour, as Alan Merriam stated some time ago (1964: 13), the ethnomusicologist John Blacking has argued forcefully that musical performance is only able to communicate meaning because people have learned to make links between different kinds of knowledge and experience. Music has power in itself. It has no consequences for social action unless it can be related to a coherent set of ideas about self and other bodily feelings (Blacking,, 1987: 35). 20 Sounds can evoke a sense of social boundaries that are not merely symbolic but also physical. Daniel Putman (1985) argued that touch, rather than sight, gives us insight into the specic way the musical experience teaches us something. According to Putman, experience in life teaches us that tactile sensations of music are expressive of certain meanings (1985: 60; see also Oosterbaan, 2008).

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100 Critique of Anthropology 29(1) 21 A sambista is someone who is involved with others who like samba or are involved in the samba school. A funkeiro is someone who is involved with the baile funk parties and a pagodeiro is someone who is a fan of pagode. These are all emic categories employed in the day-to-day performance of identity in the morro. 22 Nordestino, which means north-easterner, is a term many inhabitants use to describe the group of people who have migrated to Rio de Janeiro from the north-east of Brazil. It is sometimes used scornfully. 23 Because music styles so often constitute strong feelings of communality and can express the uniqueness of a particular social group, they are often described as authentic to such a group. However, to avoid essentialism, peoples presentations of so-called authentic styles might better be described as performances that seek to create boundaries between groups. Following Stokes, we should not search for the essential and authentic traces of identity in music (Stokes, 1997: 6), but rather try to understand how music is used by social actors in specic local situations to erect boundaries, to maintain distinctions between us and them, and how terms such as authenticity are used to justify these boundaries (1997: 6). 24 Such an approach is clearly indebted to the work of Judith Butler (1999 [1990]). According to Butler, gender identity should not be regarded as the expression of an inner truth, but rather as the appearance of substance, which is the result of the performance of certain stylized acts (1999 [1990]: 17380). Her approach owes much to the work of Michel Foucault, whose work I also discuss in relation to evangelical conversions in my dissertation (Oosterbaan, 2006). For a discussion on the relation between religion, media, style and embodiment see also the inaugural lecture of Birgit Meyer Religious Sensations: Why Media, Aesthetics and Power Matter in the Study of Contemporary Religion (2006). 25 Such a claim is facilitated by the political structures in the morro. The local leaders of some groups can potentially participate in local governance when they are recognized as mediators between the members of the group and other authorities, such as the political representatives of the city council. 26 While Bulls (2004: 181) discussion on mobile privatization focuses on the privatization of space through private electro-acoustic technology such as the walkman, sound in the geography of the favela shows a different kind of transgression, namely the privatization of public space through public electroacoustic technology, e.g. a sound-system with loudspeakers. 27 I owe this insight to the marvellous essay on walking in the city by Michel de Certeau (1984). 28 This is not a recent phenomenon. Livio Sansone, who carried out research in the favela in 1991 writes: In this community it seemed that funk music had, as it were, saturated the soundscape, and that musical genres other than funk had a hard time nding their way into public spaces (Sansone, 2001: 140). During my research, more than ten years later, funk was still very present, however pagode, samba and gospel also found their way in the public spaces quite easily. 29 In general, people showed diverse reactions to the parties. Some complained, damned or accepted them, while others simply enjoyed the parties very much. However, by and large, everyone acknowledged the powerful presence of the sound of the funk music, and the fact that most of the parties were organized or supported by tracantes meant that the loud music had to be accepted. 30 The baile funk parties in the morro are typied as baile de comunidade (community baile) in contrast to baile de corredor (gallery baile), at which gangs meet each other in semi-organized ghts (Cecchetto, 1998).

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101 Oosterbaan: Sonic Supremacy 31 The pt refers to the separate local gangs from each favela that form the Comando Vermelho. 32 These lyrics appear in different versions. See also Uma viagem ao inferno (A Trip to Hell) by Luiz Eduardo Soares (n.d.), who analysed several forbidden funk recordings. One told of the murder of Tim Lopes, a popular crime journalist, using the same popular rhythm/melody. 33 Both of them held ambivalent positions concerning the dangers and attractions of the bailes. A couple of months after her warning she was dancing at the bailes and so was Roberto, not long after he had stopped attending church. 34 While I agree with Sansone that there is circumstantial use of music as divider and, occasionally, ethnic marker in particular moments and people indeed know how to move across different styles and genres (2001: 150), the successful attempts to demonize lifestyles associated with pagode and funk by members of the Pentecostal churches especially by the elders made certain movements between styles and genres easier than others. 35 Louvor could be translated as worship, musical praise of the Lord. 36 Interestingly, Linda described herself as a sambista before her conversion to the Assemblia de Deus and associates Catholicism with silence. Her self-described transformation from a sambista to a crente demonstrates the importance of music in the formation of identities. 37 In my dissertation I described the importance people ascribe to Pentecostal music for their individual sacred experiences (Oosterbaan, 2006). 38 My approach to the relation between religion and media, which is the result of the widespread adoption of communication technology by religious movements, is inspired by several authors who were afliated to the research programme of which I was part. See, for instance, the work of Birgit Meyer (2006), Jeremy Stolow (2005) and Charles Hirschkind (2001). 39 These sounds are in many ways related to global forms of technology and mass media, or what Appadurai (1996) calls technoscape and mediascape. 40 Appadurai does not rigidly oppose current forms of locality to historical forms. According to Appadurai, the production of locality always involved certain technologies of localization house building, garden cultivation. Furthermore, a historical-anthropological view on the production of locality shows that it was never stable but involved constant struggles to dene social, material and cosmological boundaries (Appadurai, 1996: 180). 41 Cidade de Deus can be translated as City of God. This is the favela, which is the location of the award-winning movie: City of God (2000), directed by Fernando Meirelles and Ktia Lund. 42 In the morro I often witnessed the interdependence of and care of neighbours. People would share food or lend each other certain appliances and as such maintain a minimum of internal solidarity. 43 For a more detailed discussion of the tensions between self-declared evangelicals and other inhabitants see Oosterbaan (2006). 44 Shaun Moores argues that he prefers to use the concept trans-localized when speaking of the effects of broadcast media on our experiences of simultaneity and immediacy (2004: 22). 45 For general discussions on the popularity of Protestant and Pentecostal churches in Latin America see, for example, the work of Boudewijnse et al. (1998), Garrard-Burnett and Stoll (1993), Martin (1990) and Stoll (1990). 46 In another article I have focused on pastor-politicians and their visual representation as charismatic leaders in churches and in politics (Oosterbaan, 2005).

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102 Critique of Anthropology 29(1) 47 My insistence on the importance of the relations between funk and gospel stems from my conviction that so called religious and secular styles coconstitute each other and are the result of the contextual reworking of boundaries between them (see Oosterbaan, 2006). Furthermore, I do not mean to limit the use of personal charisma to the adherents of Pentecostal churches.

References
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I Martijn Oosterbaan studied Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. From 2000 till 2005 he was PhD student at the Amsterdam School of Social Science Research (ASSR), University of Amsterdam. His PhD dissertation titled: Divine Mediations: Pentecostalism, Politics and Mass Media in a Favela in Rio de Janeiro formed part of the project Modern Mass Media, Religion and the Imagination of Communities. Different Postcolonial Trajectories in West Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean and India, headed by Prof. dr. Birgit Meyer. Currently he is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University and Postdoc at the department of Practical Philosophy at the University of Groningen. He is a member of the research project New Media, Public Sphere and Urban Culture, headed by Prof. dr. Ren Boomkens. His current research, titled: European Brazilians: a diasporic/virtual community, examines the virtual networks of Brazilian migrants in Amsterdam and Barcelona. He has published in Material Religion, Social Text and in Religio e Sociedade.

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