Neate, Patrick & Damian Platt. Culture Is Our Weapon: Making Music and Changing Lives in Rio de Janeiro.(Brief article)(Book review)

Neate, Patrick & Damian Platt. Culture Is Our Weapon: Making Music and Changing Lives in Rio de Janeiro. Penguin. Mar. 2010. c.224p. ISBN 978-0-14-311674-5. pap. $14. SOC SCI

Novelist Neate (City of Tiny Lights; Where You're At: Notes from the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet) and Platt, who has worked with such social justice organizations as Amnesty International and Grupo Cultural AfroReggae in Brazil, survey the nongovernmental organization AfroReggae, a band producing a type of music akin to hip-hop to combat the crushing poverty and violent atmosphere of Rio de Janeiro's notorious favelas (shantytowns). Amid …