About angels and brothers: fifty years of political expression of “crime” in the musical tradition of the peripheries

Abstract

The literature on urban peripheries, especially in São Paulo, successively
emphasized the political action of workers’ movement (years 1970-1980) and the “urban violence” (years 1990-2000). The relationship between “politics” and “violence” was, however, hardly discussed, as if “workers” and “outlaws” did not coexist in time and space and did not mutually construct their life stories. This essay is dedicated to think about this relationship, taking as heuristic object the fragment recovery of song lyrics “Charles Junior” by Jorge Ben (1970), in the opening of the album Nada como um dia após o outro dia (Nothing like a day after another day) of Racionais MC’s (2002). Studying the expressive tradition condensed in this quotation, I discuss the last five decades of social construction of “crime” as legitimized guardian of political values such as peace, justice, freedom and equality in territories of urban peripheries.