Rio de Janeiro: City overview

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Rio has always been a symbol of the exotic, perched on the edge of a mythical continent amid crescents of sand and emerald seas, with tall rocks merging into lush rainforest. Famously friendly, the Brazilian city has welcomed all-comers, from Hollywood icons and European royalty to great train robbers and immigrants from every corner of the globe. Cariocas have generally been happy with their role as ambassadors for an exportable ideal of Brazil as an endless beach party, leaving politics and business to the bureaucrats of Brasilia and the industrialists of Sao Paulo. But the image has been shattered in recent years by the untrammelled expansion of the favelas which has brought the city of five-star hotels and luxury apartments face to face with a desperate mirror image of poverty and violence. Bizarrely, following the global success of "City of God" and its documentary successor "Favela Rising" -- both Oscar-nominated -- the city of bullets, beaches and bossa nova beats has never been hotter. It's undoubtedly dangerous to celebrate a way of life that has turned areas of the city into war zones. Anderson Sa, the subject of "Favela Rising," recalls falling asleep each night as a child to nightmarish lullabies of "gunshots and screaming." Yet perhaps the powerful cultural forces at work in the favelas could also be the key to their regeneration. As Seu Jorge says, "It's impossible to make enemies through music, only friends." And, like the Tropicalistas who triggered a Brazilian "revolution in sound" in the late 60s, favela musicians have found a way to tackle social problems that retains the freshness and optimism that characterize so much of Brazilian culture.

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