Reversing the rite: Music, dance, and rites of passage among street children and youth in Recife, Brazil

This article is based on fieldwork in marginalized neighborhoods of Recife and Olinda, Brazil, in 2004 and 2005. It analyzes children's artistic performances as rites of passage, seeing them as spaces where children and adolescents call test and express their competence and creativity, while at the same time creating an identity far from the common association of poverty with drug-based criminality. Significantly, in these rites, children and adolescents do not only play the role of neophytes, but also that of educators, teaching each other, the local society, and regional and national actors about conditions in the impoverished communities of Brazil's Northeast.