It was 4am on a Monday and most of Rio de Janeiro was asleep. But in the Morro do 77, a favela on the gritty westside of town, the party was just getting under way as hundreds of revellers packed the community’s main thoroughfare to strut their stuff before a three-metre (10ft) wall of sound.
Speakers and subwoofers pumped ear-shattering favela funk music into the dawn air. Partygoers drank pint-sized cups of whiskey and frozen coconut water. And as heads bobbed, bodies twerked and window panes shook, the rave’s unexpected name flashed up on a screen above the dancefloor in a distinctly British blaze of red, blue and white. “The Baile de Londres,” it said. “The Party of London.”
