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Brazil: outcry after funk singer arrested for allegedly inciting crime in lyrics

Artists and legal experts are outraged over MC Poze do Rodo’s detention over supposed non-violent offences

In an interview with TV Globo last year, he admitted that as a teenager, he had worked for the drug trade: “I’ve been in shootouts, I was shot, and I was arrested too.” But he insisted he had left that life behind and that his goal was to send young people the message that “crime doesn’t lead anywhere”. Last Thursday, police justified his arrest by claiming he was “clearly glorifying drug trafficking and the illegal use of firearms” in his lyrics, and that his concerts were being financed by one of Brazil’s two main criminal gangs, the Comando Vermelho (Red Command). The lawyer Joel Luiz Costa, executive director of the Black Population Defence Institute, said: “The criminalisation of funk is part of a long historical process that began after the abolition of slavery and previously targeted samba, capoeira and afro-Brazilian religions.

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