Landfillharmonic: Paraguayan Orchestra Made Out of Trash

I feel inspired and humbled at the same time:

NYT: Japan's Capsule Hotels Become Homes in Recession

NYT
January 2, 2010
For Some in Japan, Home Is a Tiny Plastic Bunk
By HIROKO TABUCHI

TOKYO — For Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas, home is a cubicle barely bigger than a coffin — one of dozens of berths stacked two units high in one of central Tokyo’s decrepit “capsule” hotels.

“It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep,” he said, rolling his neck and stroking his black suit — one of just two he owns after discarding the rest of his wardrobe for lack of space. “You get used to it.”

When Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 opened nearly two decades ago, Japan was just beginning to pull back from its bubble economy, and the hotel’s tiny plastic cubicles offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home.

Now, Hotel Shinjuku 510’s capsules, no larger than 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide, and not tall enough to stand up in, have become an affordable option for some people with nowhere else to go as Japan endures its worst recession since World War II.

Once-booming exporters laid off workers en masse in 2009 as the global economic crisis pushed down demand. Many of the newly unemployed, forced from their company-sponsored housing or unable to make rent, have become homeless.

The country’s woes have led the government to open emergency shelters over the New Year holiday in a nationwide drive to help the homeless. The Democratic Party, which swept to power in September, wants to avoid the fate of the previous pro-business government, which was caught off-guard when unemployed workers pitched tents near public offices last year to call attention to their plight.

....

Mr. Nakanishi considers himself relatively lucky. After working odd jobs on an Isuzu assembly line, at pachinko parlors and as a security guard, Mr. Nakanishi, 40, moved into the capsule hotel in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district in April to save on rent while he worked night shifts at a delivery company.

Mr. Nakanishi, who studied economics at a regional university, dreams of becoming a lawyer and pores over legal manuals during the day. But with no job since Christmas, he does not know how much longer he can afford a capsule bed.

The rent is surprisingly high for such a small space: 59,000 yen a month, or about $640, for an upper bunk. But with no upfront deposit or extra utility charges, and basic amenities like fresh linens and free use of a communal bath and sauna, the cost is far less than renting an apartment in Tokyo, Mr. Nakanishi says.

Still, it is a bleak world where deep sleep is rare. The capsules do not have doors, only screens that pull down. Every bump of the shoulder on the plastic walls, every muffled cough, echoes loudly through the rows.

Each capsule is furnished only with a light, a small TV with earphones, coat hooks, a thin blanket and a hard pillow of rice husks.

Most possessions, from shirts to shaving cream, must be kept in lockers. There is a common room with old couches, a dining area and rows of sinks. Cigarette smoke is everywhere, as are security cameras. But the hotel staff does its best to put guests at ease: “Welcome home,” employees say at the entrance.

“Our main clients used to be salarymen who were out drinking and missed the last train,” said Tetsuya Akasako, head manager at the hotel.

But about two years ago, the hotel started to notice that guests were staying weeks, then months, he said. This year, it introduced a reduced rent for dwellers of a month or longer; now, about 100 of the hotel’s 300 capsules are rented out by the month.

After requests from its long-term dwellers, the hotel received special government permission to let them register their capsules as their official abode; that made it easier to land job interviews.

Read the full story and view accompanying photo essay HERE.

Indians don't feel good about 'Slumdog Millionaire'

LAT
Indians don't feel good about 'Slumdog Millionaire'
The story of an impoverished street child in Mumbai, which has won 10 Oscar nods, is a stereotypical Western portrayal, Indians say, that ignores the wealth and progress their country has seen.
By Mark Magnier

4:03 PM PST, January 23, 2009

Reporting from Mumbai, India — Even as American audiences gush over " Slumdog Millionaire," some Indians are groaning over what they see as yet another stereotypical foreign depiction of their nation, accentuating squalor, corruption and resilient-if-impoverished natives.

"Slumdog," which earned 10 Oscar nominations this week, including one for Best Picture, is set in Mumbai, is based on an Indian novel and features many Indian actors. Yet the sensibility is anything but Indian, some critics argue. They attribute the film's sweeping international success in large part to its timing and themes that touch a chord with Western audiences.

"It's a white man's imagined India," said Shyamal Sengupta, a film professor at the Whistling Woods International institute in Mumbai. "It's not quite snake charmers, but it's close. It's a poverty tour."

The story of an orphaned street urchin, Jamal Malik, overcoming hardship to win a fortune on a game show and walk away with his childhood sweetheart -- capped by a Bollywood ending of dance, song, love and fame -- provides a salve for a world beset by collapsing banks, jobs and nest eggs, some here say.

The film, which bagged four Golden Globe awards this month, was released in the United States days before Mumbai came under attack by a team of militants. That may have strengthened its connection with foreign viewers, analysts said.

Mumbai was an ideal backdrop for the international production, wrote Vikram Doctor, a columnist in India's Economic Times, since it is a "cutting edge, if rather crummy, place" that has slums along with the sort of posh restaurants favored by the global glitterati. "Who after all is interested in unremitting squalor, sameness and sadness?" the column said.

"Slumdog's" mix of Indian and foreign talent, and English and Hindi dialogue, has sparked a debate here over whether it's an Indian or foreign film. It was based on a novel by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, directed by Briton Danny Boyle, best known for "Trainspotting," adapted by British screenwriter Simon Beaufoy of "Full Monty" fame, and acted by Indians and foreigners of Indian descent. Fox Searchlight and Warner Bros. are handling distribution in India.

"These ideas, that there are still moments of joy in the slum, appeal to Western critics," said Aseem Chhabra, an Asia Foundation associate fellow and culture critic.

Others, such as Shekhar Kapur, who directed "Elizabeth" (1998), argue that for all intent and purposes it's Indian. "What's most relevant is that 'Slumdog' is the most successful Indian film ever," he said. "It was directed by a British director and funded by a European company but so what?. . . . Foreign crews are very common in Indian films now."

"Slumdog" cost $15 million to produce but has already earned more than $50 million in the U.S. and other countries abroad. It saw its Indian premiere Thursday, in Mumbai, and began screening in English and Hindi [dubbed] on Friday in 400 theaters in 81 cities.

At the star-studded premiere Boyle responded to criticism here that the film focused too much on prostitution, crime and organized begging rackets, saying that he sought to depict the "breathtaking resilience" of Mumbai and the "joy of people despite their circumstances, that lust for life."

For some, the underdog theme is not so much irrelevant as passe. Rags-to-riches tales dominated Bollywood from the late 1950s through the early 1980s as India worked to lift itself from hunger and poverty.

With India's rising standard of living and greater exposure to foreign culture, Bollywood has increasingly turned its attention to relationships and other middle class concerns.

"Within the film world, there's a desire to move beyond the working class and lower sectors of society," said Tejaswini Ganti, an anthropologist and Bollywood expert at New York University.

The ambivalence some Indians feel toward the movie doesn't preclude it from becoming a roaring commercial success in India, experts said. "There is still a fascination with seeing how we are perceived by white Westerners," said Sengupta, the Mumbai film professor. "It's a kind of voyeurism."

Many in Bollywood also have transferred onto "Slumdog" their hopes for an "Indian" Oscar after homegrown favorite "Taare Zameen Par" failed to garner a nomination. "Taare," about a dyslexic child who finds an outlet through art, was the latest in a string of Oscar letdowns dating to 2002.

Between rolls of their eyes, critics here point to other foreign depictions over the years they consider inaccurate, distorted or obsessed with poverty and squalor, including "Phantom India," "Salaam Bombay" and "City of Joy," in which a Western doctor played by Patrick Swayze arrives to save India.

Some add that the criticism of "Slumdog" may be less about getting it wrong than its focus on issues some in India would rather downplay.

The world's second-most populous country after China has seen enormous benefits from globalization. But "Slumdog" raises questions about the price paid by those left behind and the cost in eroding morality, seen in the portrayal of Salim, Jamal's gangster-in-training brother. For India, this hits a nerve, after a top Indian IT outsourcing firm, Satyam, reported this month that it had faked profits.

"A lot of people felt it was bashing India, but I disagree," said Rochona Majumdar, an Indian film expert at the University of Chicago. "We're too quick to celebrate 'Incredible India,' she said, referring to an Indian tourism slogan. "But there is an underbelly. To say we don't have problems is absurd."

Salman Ali, 12, lives those problems. He's been on his own as long as he can remember, he said. Dressed in a ragged T-shirt, filthy pants and bare feet, he sleeps under Mumbai's Mahim pipeline, a local landmark featured in "Slumdog" amid the Technicolor water, toxic electronic waste and petroleum sludge. He earns a few dollars a week recycling garbage or begging from cars on the nearby overpass.

Sometimes police beat him up, he said. And several times gangs have attacked him and stolen what little he has. Sure, he'd love to appear on a game show like Jamal did in the film and become a millionaire.

But however hard he tries to make money, Salman said, he never gets ahead. His dream is to become a Bollywood star one day. And whenever a film crew shows up to shoot amid the squalor, he tries to get their attention. But he said they never pick him. "Who wouldn't want to be a millionaire?" he said.

A few miles away, in the maze of alleys that make up Dharavi, Asia's largest slum and another backdrop for the film, some said the plot sounded too close to real life and therefore not interesting while others said they wanted to see how it depicted their neighborhood.

Housewife Lakshmi Nagaraj Iyer, 26, said that she had troubles with the get-rich quick premise. "I feel it's a wrong route," she declared. "We barely get by, but the answer is education and hard work, not a quick fix."

Brazilian Government Invests in Culture of Hip-Hop

NYT
March 14, 2007
Brazilian Government Invests in Culture of Hip-Hop
By LARRY ROHTER

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — In a classroom at a community center near a slum here, a street-smart teacher offers a dozen young students tips on how to improve their graffiti techniques. One floor below, in a small soundproof studio, another instructor is teaching a youthful group of would-be rappers how to operate digital recording and video equipment.

This is one of Brazil’s Culture Points, fruit of an official government program that is helping to spread hip-hop culture across a vast nation of 185 million people. With small grants of $60,000 or so to scores of community groups on the outskirts of Brazil’s cities, the Ministry of Culture hopes to channel what it sees as the latent creativity of the country’s poor into new forms of expression.

The program, conceived in 2003, is an initiative of Brazil’s minister of culture, Gilberto Gil, who will be speaking on digital culture and related topics on Wednesday at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Tex. Though today one of the country’s most revered pop stars, Mr. Gil, 64, was often ostracized at the start of his own career and so feels a certain affinity with the hip-hop culture emerging here.

“These phenomena cannot be regarded negatively, because they encompass huge contingents of the population for whom they are the only connection to the larger world,” he said in a February interview. “A government that can’t perceive this won’t have the capacity to formulate policies that are sufficiently inclusive to keep young people from being diverted to criminality or consigned to social isolation.”

As a result of the Culture Points and similar programs, Mr. Gil said, “you’ve now got young people who are becoming designers, who are making it into media and being used more and more by television and samba schools and revitalizing degraded neighborhoods.” He added, “It’s a different vision of the role of government, a new role.”

As the ministry sees it, hip-hop culture consists of four elements: M.C.’s (rappers), D.J.’s, break dancers and graffiti artists. At the Projeto Casulo, a community center here on a narrow, winding street at the foot of a favela, or squatter slum, all four art forms are being taught to dozens of young residents.

“This program has really democratized culture,” Guiné Silva, a 32-year-old rapper who is the director of the center, said during a tour of its simple concrete building. “We’ve become a multimedia laboratory. Getting that seed money and that studio equipment has enabled us to become a kind of hip-hop factory.”

Though links to music run strong and deep in Brazilian culture, the notion of using taxpayers’ money to encourage rap and graffiti art is not universally accepted. But because Mr. Gil’s musical judgment is widely respected, the level of skepticism and resistance is lower than might be expected.

“Gil still has to fight against other parts of the government in favor of things that everyone else there thinks are alienating junk, but he’s willing to do that, whether it’s on behalf of rap or funk or brega,” another style of music considered vulgar and lower class, said Hermano Vianna, a writer and anthropologist who works in digital culture programs. “He looks at that sort of thing not with prejudice, but rather as a business opportunity.”

On the other hand, some important exponents of hip-hop culture in Brazil, like the rapper Manu Brown and the writer Ferréz, remain skeptical and have chosen to keep their distance from the government program. Others are participating but complain of the bureaucracy involved.

“The idea is great because it has brought about a level of recognition we didn’t have before,” said the rapper Aliado G., president of an entity called Hip Hop Nation Brazil. “But people get frustrated when a project of theirs is approved, and they can’t get the money because they don’t know how to do all the paperwork.”

Brazilian rap, at least as it has developed in poor neighborhoods here in the country’s largest city, tends to be highly politicized and scornful of lyrics that boast about wealth or sexual conquests. In contrast, the funk movement in Brazil, also imported from the United States but centered in Rio de Janeiro, is unabashedly about celebrating sex, bling and violence.

“When U.S. rap groups come here and try to be ostentatious or do the gangster thing, they get booed off the stage,” Mr. Silva said. “We feel a kinship with Chuck D and Public Enemy” — known for their political commentary — “but we don’t have any respect for people like Snoop Dogg and Puff Daddy.”

Since established commercial radio stations and publishing houses have shown minimal interest in the music and poetry that new hip-hop artists are producing, or want to impose contract terms that are too stringent, rappers have developed their own channels to distribute their work. These range from selling their discs and books themselves on the streets and at shows to having the works played on a network of low-power but linked community radio stations.

“There is an entire industry being built in the informal sector,” Mr. Vianna said. “If you were to apply all the laws in place today, no producer can release a record from a favela. So you have to create a new model, and Gil is willing to do that.”

At the Projeto Casulo, the Culture Points program has produced a pair of documentaries about housing problems, complete with a rap accompaniment, that were broadcast on commercial television. The center has also generated a radionovela, a fanzine and a community newspaper and plans next to set up an online radio station to broadcast the rap songs that its musicians and those at similar community centers here have composed and recorded.

In addition, a Culture Ministry grant enabled Hip Hop Nation Brazil to publish a book called “Hip Hop in Pencil,” a collection of rap lyrics. After a first edition of 2,000 copies quickly sold out in 2005 and was nominated for a literary prize, a conventional publishing house was interested enough to negotiate a deal to publish subsequent editions.

“We had never before seen our story told in a book, and at first the publishing houses didn’t take us seriously,” said Toni C, one of the editors and authors of the collection. “Books had always been used as a weapon against us, and people didn’t know that such a thing as hip-hop literature existed. Now they do.”

Brazilian law also offers tax breaks to companies that contribute to cultural endeavors like films, ballet and art exhibitions. Rap music has now been granted similar standing, and as a result, some of the country’s largest corporations have begun underwriting hip-hop records and shows.

At a recent event in Campinas, a city of one million an hour’s drive from here, the sponsors included a power company, a bank, a construction business and an industrial conglomerate. As a troupe of break dancers strutted their most flashy moves, D.J.’s and M.C.’s railed against social, economic and racial inequality with lyrics like “Reality is always hard/for those who have dark skin/if you don’t watch out/you’ll end up in the paddy wagon.”

“It took a while for companies to wake up to the potential this offers,” said Augusto Rodrigues, an executive of the power company and the director of the cultural center where the show was held. “But there’s a hunger for cultural programs like this, in which for the first time in 20 years, the ideology of the periphery can express itself.”

Slum Tourism in Kenya

Reuters
"Slum tourism" stirs controversy in Kenya

By Andrew CawthorneFri Feb 9, 7:51 AM ET

It's the de rigueur stop off for caring foreign dignitaries. It reached a worldwide audience as a backdrop to the British blockbuster "The Constant Gardener."

Any journalist wanting a quick Africa poverty story can find it there in half an hour. And now at least one travel agency offers tours round Kenya's Kibera slum, one of Africa's largest.

"People are getting tired of the Maasai Mara and wildlife. No one is enlightening us about other issues. So I've come up with a new thing -- slum tours," enthused James Asudi, general manager of Kenyan-based Victoria Safaris.

But not everyone in Kenya is waxing so lyrical about the trail of one-day visitors treading the rubbish-strewn paths, sampling the sewage smell, and photographing the tin-roof shacks that house 800,000 of the nation's poorest in a Nairobi valley.

Indeed, the recent well-meaning visit of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon -- coming hard on the heels of other foreign celebrities including even U.S. comedian Chris Rock -- drew a stern editorial from Kenya's leading newspaper.

"What is this fascination with Kibera among people who do not know what real poverty means?" asked the Daily Nation.

"More to the point, how do Kenyans themselves feel about this back-handed compliment as the custodians of backwardness, filth, misery and absolute deprivation?"

Answer: Not a lot, at least according to an informal, random survey by this correspondent in Kibera itself.

While all recognize the potential for good from such attention, plus the pressure it puts on the government and others to help slum-dwellers, most said tangible benefits so far were few, while the embarrassment factor was growing every day.

"They see us like puppets, they want to come and take pictures, have a little walk, tell their friends they've been to the worst slum in Africa," said car-wash worker David Kabala.

"But nothing changes for us. If someone comes, let him do something for us. Or if they really want to know how we think and feel, come and spend a night, or walk round when it's pouring with rain here and the paths are like rivers."

"PITY TOURS"

Even groups working day-in, day-out in Kibera -- and dependent on foreign funding -- are getting weary.

Salim Mohamed, project director for the Carolina for Kibera charity, said the stream of high-profile visits to the 3 km-long (1.8 mile) corridor was raising expectations among residents which, when not quickly fulfilled, fueled frustration with the appalling living conditions.

Visits by tourists, which reached a crescendo during the recent anti-capitalist World Social Forum in Nairobi, were testing the local hospitality culture to the limit, he added.

"It's getting out of control. And if it's not done in a way the community appreciates, it's insulting to them," said Mohamed, who was born in another major Nairobi slum, Mathare.

"I think this concept started in Soweto (in South Africa). ... Kibera does not need pity tours, it needs action."

Echoing a constant complaint by Africans of Western media, office administrator Christine Ochieng, 20, said the image of unmitigated misery in Kibera was not fair to her community.

"I can see how visiting the largest slum in Africa is very attractive to people, but there are so many untold stories here," she said, rattling off ideas she and friends would like to include in a local magazine they want to start.

Firstly, there is Kibera's hidden middle-class -- the people who have enough money to move out, but choose to stay because they can't bear the relative solitude of posher neighbors.

Then there's the plethora of self-help, art, dance, drama, and sports projects going on in Kibera. "But people just want to talk about poverty, poverty, poverty all the time," she said.

Victoria Safaris' manager Asudi, from the same Luo tribe which constitutes the majority of Kibera residents, insists the tour he offers of Kibera and other slums in Nairobi and Kisumu in west Kenya, are beneficial to locals.

"RAVE SPOT"

They raise awareness, and he hands his tourists back a percentage of their payment to donate to a cause they have seen on their walkabout, he says, such as a health or school project.

His publicity, however, has ruffled feathers. "After lunch, proceed to the Korokocho slum where you will be amazed with the number of roaming children," reads a typical paragraph.

Nairobi's chattering-classes are not amused.

"Kibera is the rave spot in Kenya," wrote one columnist sarcastically. "For where else can one see it all in one simple stop? The AIDS victims dying slowly on a cold, cardboard bed. The breastless teenager. ... Plastic-eating goats fighting small children ... and -- ah yes -- the famous 'shit-rolls-downhill-flying-toilets'. It is unbeatable."

Government spokesman Alfred Mutua has led a campaign to promote the bright side of Kenya and clean up its cities. He shakes his head when asked about the Kibera phenomenon.

"It is very sad that when dignitaries come here, the first place they run to is Kibera, the residents are getting tired of people coming and giving lip-service," he told Reuters.

"Kibera is the 'in' place everybody wants be associated with, whether they are doing anything about it or not. ... People look at others who are poor and destitute and get a 'feel good' attitude about themselves, that they are above that."

(Additional reporting by Wangui Kanina)