Dois de Julho: Heroes of Bahian Independence

   

Dois de Julho (July 2nd) is a big holiday in the city of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. The center of the city shuts down to make room for a parade celebrating the Caboclo, street parties, and capoeira rodas. On this day in 1823, Brazilian troops definitively expelled Portuguese troops from the country.

The Bahian newspaper, O Correio, published a special edition to celebrate this special day. The edition included a section on the heroes of the battles for independence. Today, streets and neighborhood squares across the city are named after these baianos in honor of their patriotism.

Caboclo
Nobody defeats us: A symbol of the Brazilian people. The caboclo raises the country’s flag and combines all the cultures that make up the nation. He is a mix of the major ethnicities: blacks, whites and Indians, together in a single representation. It was the Caboclo who led and inspired the Bahians in the struggle to liberate their country: tyrants do not have Brazilian hearts!

Maria Felipa
Warrior lioness: Maria Felipa was a capoeirista and led a squadron of forty women on the Island of Itaparica. One of the leading soliders, she set fire to 42 Portuguese ships with her friends. A fearsome woman, she beat captured enemy soldiers. .

Maria Quitéria
A worthy woman: She dressed as a soldier so that she could go into battle. She fought at the Battle of the Parakeets on the Island of Maré, Pituba and Itapuã. In the battle at Pituba, she was one of the best on the battlefield: she attacked trenches and escorted prisoners to the camp.

Antonio Rebouças
Black leader: Antonio Pereira was an abolitionist. A warrior against racism. His favorite saying came to be on battlefield: “anyone brown or black can be a general”. In fact, commanding the battles were many afro-descendents, sertenejos, and even indigenous people.

Encourado de Pedrão
The claws of the sertão: Pedrão is a small city, located near Feira de Santana, that all Brazilians should visit. The warriors dressed in leather came from Pedrão, and are represented in the parade in Salvador every year in this traditional garb.

Corneterio Lopes
Vuvuzela of victory: In the Battle of Pirajá, the Brazilian troops were under pressure. In the kill-or-be-killed battle, the Commander Barros Falção ordered a retreat, but the coronet player Luís Lopes played the signal to advance and kill. It worked: we won!

Other heroes included in the commemoration are Joana Angélica, Lord Cochrane, João de Botas and many more.

Parabéns, Bahia!
   

Build Your Own Archive: Afro-Latin America, 1800 - 2000

  
The book "Afro-Latin America, 1800 -2000" by George Reid Andrews is an excellent overview of the history of the African Diaspora in Latin America, including the Caribbean. While it seems like an impossible task to succinctly cover such an immense subject, the author does a superb job examining and presenting major, overarching historical themes - such as the wars of independence, the institutional policy of “whitening” the population, and the oppression of blacks - and then applying specific examples from the different countries of Latin American and the Caribbean, comparing and contrasting results and consequences.

Brazil, with the largest population of African descendents in the area, gets much attention in the book, and the author talks about capoeira as well as other African traditions, including samba, that came to be defined as essential to the cultures of the countries of Latin America.

Here is a little of what Andrews has to say about capoeira:

This was the martial art of capoeira, a combination of dance and kick-boxing based on Angolan antecedents and developed into a distinctly New World discipline and aesthetic by African slaves. The term and the phenomenon first appeared in Brazilian documents in the 1770s. By the 1790s and early 1800s, capoeiristas were organizing themselves into the maltas, or gangs, that became as much a part of nineteenth-century urban life in Brazil…


… the capoeira gangs were entirely male and based on rigorous codes of secrecy and loyalty to the group. Betrayal of the code meant harsh punishment, up to and including death… capoeira was closely tied to seaports and the sea...


… capoeira gangs in Rio de Janeiro sought to acquire control over the hiring of dockworkers in the port. Frustrated in their effort, they turned to protection rackets and other forms of criminal activity, dividing the city into small fiefdoms and fighting violent turf wars against each other. The gangs somewhat rehabilitated their public image in 1828, when they joined forces with the army to defeat a mutiny by German and Irish mercenaries. During the second half of the century they sought to establish patron-client ties with powerful protectors by hiring themselves out as bodyguards and “enforcers” of important politicians and businessmen. But… the violence of the intergang struggles provoked intensifying police repression and the eventual outlawing in 1890 of “the exercise of agility and corporal dexterity known as capoeira.”

and later in the book:

Brazilian authorities undertook a similar war against capoeira, which was outlawed by federal statute in 1890. In Rio de Janeiro, police arrested more than 600 suspected capoeiristas and sent them to the penal colony on the far offshore island of Fernando de Noronha. Organized capoeira gangs were eliminated from the capital, and from all Brazilian cities except Salvador, where police repression continued through the 1920s and 1930s. According to elderly practitioners of the sport, the police would tie captured capoeiristas to horses and drag them through the streets at full gallop back to police headquarters. As a result, they jokingly recall, they always practiced near police stations so that, if arrested, they would be dragged a shorter distance.

This book is packed with interesting information. We will present more relevant finds in the future.

"Afro-Latin America 1800-2000" is available in the FICA-DC Archives library thanks to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
   

Exploring the History of Capoeira

   
In July 2008, the Brazilian magazine “Revista de História da Biblioteca Nacional” (History Magazine of the National Library) published the article “Berimbau Universal” by Lorenzo Aidé.

The article was published soon after Iphan recognized capoeira as a national patrimony in 2008. It reports that between 2007 and 2008, researchers produced an inventory of texts related to capoeira, including books, movies, and more. They also interviewed seventeen mestres, including Mestres João Pequeno, Russo, Leopoldina, Nestor and others. (Not for nothing, but only seventeen mestres? There are more than seventeen mestres in the city of Salvador alone.)

The article relates a bit of the history that the inventory revealed. And here, we present a little of that:

… The common sense, sacred origin myth associates the practice of capoeira with a rural environment: in the slave quarters, slaves demonstrated their resistance to captivity by training the marital arts inherited from their African ancestors, but they disguijavascript:void(0)sed these arts with dance and music so as not to spark the suspicion of the overseers and plantation owners. There is no documentation that confirms this theory. “There does not exist a single register of capoeira in Palmares, for example. It was more present in the port cities than in the quilombos”, explains Maurício Barros de Castro, Doctor of Social History from USP and assistant coordinator of the study.

Urban and marginal art. The oldest registration of capoeira that is known comes from Rio de Janeiro and dates to 1789. It is a document related to the liberation of a slave named Adão, who had been imprisoned for practicing “capoeiragem”. In the following century, “o capoeira”, in the masculine [the gender of the word], is already a figure recognized in the port cities. In these cities, the streets were areas of intense business, where those known as “escravos de ganho” [non-slaves who rented themselves out for work] dedicated themselves to sporadic work. In this atmosphere, people began to form groups, dispute territories, provoke fights and riots, and get in trouble with the police. The capoeira was the father of the malandro.

It is curious that in Salvador during almost all of the 19th century, the term “capoeira” does not appear. The art form was the same as that in Rio and Recife, but the press and the Salvadoran police used all sorts of synonyms to describe those marginal figures(“valentões”, “bambas”, “navalhistas”) and their crimes (“rabo de arraia”, cabeçada”, “rasteira”, “pontape”). Could it be that the word only came along later? Mauricio Barros de Castro doesn’t risk this conclusion, preferring to highlight another important point of the objective: that of stimulating new research. “Despite the work done by the researchers like Antonio Liberace, Fred Abreu, there is still much to be discovered in relation to 19th century Bahia, unlike Rio de Janeiro, about which we know very much,” he says.

In Recife, the study received much enthusiasm for the same reason – it is another city where there is not much documentation the subject. Known as the land of frevo, the capital city was also the place of much capoeiragem until police persecution reduced the presence of the practice, forcing practitioners to hide it within other popular manifestations. The steps of frevo were inspired by capoeira during Carnaval, pulling the cords with razors clenched in their fists, between twirls and pirouettes.

… It would not be an exaggeration to say that capoeira influenced the formation of our urban popular culture. Capoeiristas made up maltas, and they were also present in Brazil’s most significant conflict – capoeiras enlisted (and were enlisted) heavily in the War of Paraguay (1864-1870). In the political sphere, they created the Guarda Negra (1888), in defense of the monarchy and abolition, and served in three cities as political thugs – protecting both republicans and conservatives. In exchange, the authorities turned a blind eye to their street-fighting games…

Overall, this is an informative article and the inventory is an exciting project that may change the way we think about capoeira, but it raises important concerns about relying heavily on documented materials in re-constructing a history of a phenomenon that has largely been preserved orally.

This problem is further highlighted by the incredible fact that only seventeen mestres were interviewed. Police and war records are given priority over the knowledge of mestres. Surely there is much more important information left to be collected from the many mestres and long-time capoeiristas who were not interviewed.

Here is a link to the entire article (in Portuguese).

The “Revista de História da Biblioteca Nacional” is an excellent magazine, and each month it almost always includes an article pertaining to capoeira or some similar subject. And of course, it includes many other interesting historical topics including an article on the King of Belguim’s 1920 visit, when he scandalized Rio de Janeiro’s high society and drew crowds of carioca spectators as he took his morning bath at Copabana beach. O la la!
   

Eparrei!!: celebration in Pelourinho

 

Today in Salvador, hundreds of people will pour into Pelourinho to pay hommage to Santa Bárbara, who is syncretized with Iansã in many terreiros. Here are some pictures from the festival last year, courtesy of Fabricio and some other folks.

Enjoy!

By the way, its probably not a good day to go shopping for those capoeira pants you saw in Pelourinho...
 

Not a Woman or Priest Among Them

Long before youtube, great capoeira memories were remembered. In a few rare instances, games were put to paper, and the below is a good example, from the book City of Women by Ruth Landes. The book is a spectacular primary resource about Salvador, Bahia in the 1930s. The language and some of the ideas are dated, but it gives excellent descriptions of Salvador, its people, and the way life was back in the day.

Here is a bit about a capoeira roda that Landes saw in the street with her friend and companion, the anthropolgist and intellectual, Edison Carneiro:

We arrived at the spot where the men were forming for capoeira. Watchers were crowded four deep around a wide circle, and there was not a women or priest among them. To one side of the innermost ring stood three tall Negroes, each holding a berimbau with one end resting on the ground. Two more musicians soon came- one with a chocalho, or metal rattle, and the other with a pandeiro or tambourine. Edison and the others helped push me front, and we were glad of the diversion.

Two capoeirists were squatting there, facing the musicians. One was the champion Querido de Deus (Beloved of God), with the Christian name of Samuel. He was tall, black, middle-aged and muscular, a fisherman by trade. His challenger was the Black Leopard, a younger man, shorter and fatter. They were barefooted, wearing striped cotton jersey shirts, one with white trousers, the other with dark, one with a felt hat, the other with a cap which he later changed to a hard straw hat. Squatting in their hats and bare feet, one had his left arm on his left thigh, the other had his right arm on his right thigh, and the stared straight, resting. It was required of them to keep silent, and the requirement carried over to the audience.

The orchestra opened the events by strumming an invocation, and this monotonous accompaniment too was essential to the occasion. It was a sort of whining, nasal-toned framework within which the men executed acrobatic marvels, always to the correct beat, while the musicians chanted mocking verses:

I stood at the foot of the cross
Saying my prayer
When there arrived Catherine
The very image of the Devil.

Eh, eh, Ah-Rhuanda!
Missy, let's go away!
To beyond the sea!

It's a sharp knife,
Missy, it's for piercing
Missy, throw it to this side
Missy, throw it to that side.

Eh, eh, long live my master
And my mistress, who taught me!
Mester, leave me to the vagrant life!
Missy, to the capoeira life!

Missy, may the earth revole!
Master, may the world go on!"

It was song of challenge and hope and resignation, containing fragments of rebellious thoughts. It did not possess a simple theme well worked out, but it summarized a type of life and of protest, And it opened the fight.

Querido de Deus swayed on his haunches while he faced his opponent with a grin and gauged his chances. The fight involved all parts of the body except the hands, a precaution demanded by the police to obviate harm. As the movement followed the musical accompaniment, they flowed into a slow-motion, dream-like sequence that was more a dancing than a wrestling. As the law stipulated that capoeirists must not hurt each other, blows become acrobatic stances whose balancing scored in the final check-up, and were named and classified. Various types of capoeira had evolved, with subtleties in the forms and sequences of the blows and in the styles of playing ther berimbau.

Querido de Deus was prodigiously agile in the difficult formal encounters with his adversary, and he smiled constantly while the ritual songs droned on:

They told me wife
That a capoeira man had conquered me,
The woman swore, and stamped her foot dowm firm
That this could not have been.

And the berimbaus changed again:

There was I. Oh! There was my brother,
There was my brother and I.
My brother rented a house
But neither he paid, nor I!

Impertintently, with slow, calculated, beautiful movements, Querido de Deus butted his adversary with his hated head, catching him lightly in the pit of the stomach, upsetting his so that he fell on his head. Thereupon the orchestra struck up triumphantly:

Zum-zum-zum
Capoeira kills one!

The cutting knife is bad
Prepare your stomach to catch it

The challenging echoes silenced, the round was over, the two men walked and trotted restfully in a counter-clockwise circle, one behind the other, the champion leading with his arms high in the air, the other grasping his wrists from behind while the orchestra played and sang teasingly:

In the days when I had money
My comrade called me kin
After my money was gone
My comrade scorned me as bold.

Gradually, having rested, the one in the front wheeled to face the other one behind, and they parried to the beat of the songs, never still, balancing from one foot to the other, watching for openings.

Comrade, attention!
Capoeira goes at you!

warned the berimbaus. The two faced each other, Querido de Deus swaying, Leopard backing away, always rhythmically. As Querido de Deus advanced, bending from the waist, lowering his head for the telling blow at the other's middle, Leopard curved forward intending to evade him.

Actually he created an opening into which Querido de Deus charged with his right leg, his left one stretched parallel with the ground supporting him. Leopard's arm swung back loosely, and he fell forward over the butting head in a clean arc. Laughing quietly in appreciation, the two rose, loping in circles to relax while the orchestra applauded:

Lo, is a messenger from the king!
He is from Ruanda!
What can one do with capoeira?
He is an African sorcerer
And he knows how to play.

They sparred again, and again Querido de Deus was the one to attack, half squatting as in a Russian dance, swaying, arms curved forward for balance. Instead of following through with his head as before, he worked to one side and suddenly raised up his body. Leopard bent to charge, but Querido de Deus swung his weight to his right leg and cleared his opponent's head with his left, causing him once more to fall sprawling!

Now another insisted upon entering the ring. He had attempted to do so earlier but he had been ignored. Impatiently he pushed Leopard aside, pointing indignantly to the corner where scorekeepers were chalking the points on the ground, points Leopard failed to make. And sulkily Leopard yielded his place.

The hero Querido de Deus wiped his streaming face and back, and bared his head to cool it. Through everything the onlookers remained silent, only shuffling to ease their positions and inner excitement. Soon the bows whined in invocation for the new round:

Who taught thee this good magic?
It was the mistress' boy.
The the boy costs good money.
Good money needs to be earned.

Fall, fall Catarina,
Rise from the sea, come see Dalina.

Tomorrow is a holy day,
Day of Corpus Christi.
He who has clothes goes to mass.
He who has none does- as I do!

Fall, fall
Catarina…

To me this was a performance incongruous and wonderful; to the others it was wonderful and completely absorbing. To then it was right. But the phrases startled me into conjectures about slavery, rebellion and mockery, and I was astounded most at the manner of the performance, which robbed capoeira of its original sting. The police had removed the sting, and the blacks had converted the remains into a weird, poignant dance. Did the songs carry meaning to the people now? Did they recall the struggles that inspired them, or did they merely dramatize black men, as candomblé dramatized black women? The rows of watchers were still, their faces were impassive.

Again, the challenger and the champion began to trot with knees bent, arms swinging loose, Querido de Deus amusing himself with intricate little movements of his feet. Suddenly a boy jumped into the center of the ring flourishing a pot of money. He had just made the rounds with his hat requesting contributions for the fighters; and the orchestra, which rules the occasion, has deiced that instead of apportioning the money, it should be left to a new pair to try for with their mouths, each fending off the other à la capoeira. The boy announced this decision and placed the pot on the ground while the berimbaus teased:

Would you play with a capoeira?
He is a tricky devil…

And Querido de Deus won! But with the heart of a champion he returned the pot to open the struggle again:

Now you can play!

This time the newcomer won. The crowd broke up, painfully uncomfortable under the blistering two o'clock sun…

Learn more about Ruth Landes here.

Have you come across something that you would like to share with the capoeira community? Send it to us: ficadcarchives (at) gmail (dot) com.

Sarapatel with Samuel Querido de Deus

In 1944, the famous Bahian author Jorge Amado wrote a guidebook to the city of Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos. Not your ordinary guidebook with hotel ratings and maps, this guidebook focuses on the soul of the city. Amado writes about the streets, neighborhoods, mysteries, and characters that give life to the wonderful city that Amado loved. The book was published a year later.

In the chapter, "Personagens" (characters), Amado writes about some of the capoeiristas who roamed the city and the bay, including Samuel Querido de Deus. This capoeirista is a favorite of Amado’s (as was Mestre Pastinha), and appears in other books by the author, including "Capitães de Areia".


The Capoeirista

White hairs are already appearing in the hair of Samuel Querido de Deus. His color is undefined. Mulatto, certainly. But dark-skinned or light-skinned, tanned by an indigenous lineage or with traces of Italian in his angular face. Who knows?

The ocean winds that blow on his fishing trips have given Querido de Deus this color that is different than any known color, new for all artists. He departs in his boat for the waters of Southern Bahia where there are plenty of fish. How old would he be?

It is impossible to know on these docks in Bahia, but many years have passed since Samuel’s boat crossed the breakwater to return, days later, with fish for his stand in the Mercado Modelo. But the old boatmen can tell you that more than sixty winters have passed since Samuel was born. But are those white hairs on his head that always looks like it is wet with sea water? More than sixty years, certainly.

However, even still, there is no better capoeirista than Querido de Deus at the Festa da Nossa Senhora da Conceição da Praia, during the first week of December. Here comes Juvenal, a young man of twenty years, the most celebrated of all, the most daring, the most agile, the most technical. Whoever comes, Samuel, the darling of god, still can show that he is the king of capoeira in Bahia de Todos os Santos. The rest are his followers and still look frightened when he throws a rabo de arraia because they have never seen such elegance. And he already has white hairs.

There are many stories about Samuel Querido de Deus. Many stories that are told at the Mercado Modelo and the docks. North Americans have already come to watch him fight. And they pay a lot to see the old fighter.

Once, his friend was looking for him. Two filmmakers wanted to film a capoeira game. Samuel had just arrived from ten days on the ocean, fishing, and he still had a bit of blue in his eyes and on his face a bit of the south winds. He got ready. We went to find Juvenal. And with the sound and film equipment, we went off to the Feira de Água dos Meninos. The fight started and it was superb. The filmmakers went around with their equipment. When it was over, Juvenal was laid out on the sand. Samuel was smiling, the oldest filmmaker asked how much they owed. Samuel told them a ridiculous sum in his confusing way of speaking. It was what the Americans had paid to watch him fight. The writer explained then that these were Brazilian filmmakers, poor folks. Samuel Querido opened his mouth in a big smile. He told them that it was nothing and invited everyone to a meal of sarapatel in the bar at the front.

You can see him from time to time at the docks. Returning from a fishing trip on his boat. But certainly at the Festa da Conceição da Feira knocking down other capoeiristas, because he is the best of them all. His name is Samuel Querido de Deus.

Passages and stories like this, about the velha guarda da capoeira, are wonderful. It is imperative for younger generations to preserve them as best we are able and pass them on, especially today, as capoeira spreads rapidly around the world and not all groups have a mestre to orient and guide them.

Do you have a story that you would like to share with the international capoeira community? Send it along and we will post it.

Mãe Menininha do Gantois

Just like Besouro Preto, Mestre Pastinha, and Princess Isabel, Mãe Menininha is another important figure from popular Brazilian culture who makes regular appearances in Capoeira Angola music. Her presences also demonstrates further the links between capoeira and candomblé that Mestre Poloca talked about in his article.

In February of this year, viver Bahia! a magazine that promotes the popular culture of Bahia, published and article about Mãe Menininha. Here, we present an excerpt from that article “A Oxum mais linda tá no Gantois” (The most lovely Oxum is in Gantois):

Admired for her wisdom, grace, knowledge, humility, and firm hand, for 64 years, the incomparable Mãe Menininha held the highest rank in the Candomblé hierarchy, that of Ialorixá, or Mãe de Santo, a position that combines religious guidance, political leadership and therapeutic power at the Terreiro do Gantois… with great spiritual powers and rare personal charisma, Mãe Menininha was largely responsible for the diffusion and popularization of Candomblé in Bahia.

With her immaculate lace skirts in turquois blue, golden yellow, and eyeglasses with strong lenses, she was na eloquent woman, sought out by politicians, celebrities, regular folks, and non-believers, by anthropologists, sociologists who in her found a precious font of information for their academic studies. She was a friend and spiritual guide for artists such as Pierre Verger, Carybé, Gal Costa, and the Mãe-de-Santo of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil...

… A daughter of Oxum, the goddess associated with fresh water and love, the religious leader had various characteristics of her orixá.

… Granddaugher of slaves from Nigeris, she was named Maria Escolástica da Conceição Nazareth upon her birthday, February 10, 1894, in the neighborhood of Saldinha, in Salvador. She came from a family devoted to Candomblé. Her grandmother, Maria Júlia da Conceição Nazareth, founded Ilê Iya Omin Axé Iyamassê, the Terreiro do Gantois, in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Terreiro was later led by Mãe Menininha´s mother…

... When Mãe Menininha became an Ialorixá, the times were not easy for practitioners of Candomblé. There was much prejudice, and practitioners suffered great persecution and violence. “There was not freedom to practice our religion. The houses were persecuted and invaded by the police. They came in mounted on horses, with their swords drawn they would cut the skins of the drums and destroy everything in their path,” said her daughter and current Mãe de Santo of Gantois, Carmen Oliveira da Silva.

Mâe Menininha died on August 13, 1986 at the age of 92 of natural causes.

This is a great article with a lot more information on Mãe Menininha, the Terreiro of Gantois, and its followers. The article is available in English and Portuguese in the library of FICA-Bahia.

Today in Salvador: A Lavagem do Bonfim

Today is the Lavagem do Bomfim, one of the most important and largest festivals in Salvador da Bahia.

On this day, hundreds of women dressed in typical baiana garb and carrying vases of scented water and flowers parade through the Cidade Baixa (Lower City) to the Igreja do Nosso Senhor do Bonfim to wash the stairs of the church, a ritual that has gone back almost 250 years and reflects the powerful blend of Catholicism and candomblé that distinguishes the Northeast of Brazil. Nosso Senhor do Bonfim is synchronized with the orixá Oxalá, the father of all orixás.

Follwing an early morning mass at the Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Conceição da Praia, located in the Comercio neighborhood, on the road that connects the Cidade Alto (Upper City) to the Cidade Baixa, the baianas set out for the approximately 10 kilometer walk to the Igreja do Nosso Senhor do Bonfim.

In their wake follows a happy jumble of hundreds of thousands of locals, tourists, politicians, musical acts, street merchants, capoeiristas, reporters, tv cameras, and assorted others having a good time under the hot summer sun. The streets of the pathway are lined with barracas selling traditional Bahian food and drinks. And if you are a fan of fitas, the colorful ribbon bracelets associated with Nosso Senhor do Bonfim, you’re in luck because there is no dearth of them today in the streets of Salvador.

Once the baianas arrive at the Igreja do Bomfim, they sing songs praising Nosso Senhor do Bonfim and Oxalá and set to washing the stairs of the church with their scented water and brooms. When the religious ceremony is complete, the party continues in the Largo do Bonfim outside of the church. Everyone is in a good mood because they know that when the Lavagem do Bonfim hits, Carnival is around the corner!

If you are in Salvador today, have a blast! If not, there is always next year…

Carnival Edition: Ilê Aiyê

In 1975, a revolution occurred during Bahia’s carnival that would change not only the way Carnival was celebrated, but also the very culture of Brazil. Ilê Aiyê paraded as the first ever bloco-afro.

With music that referenced black power, celebrated black beauty, and proclaimed that blacks built Brazil, Ilê Aiyê was fearless in its politics. Not only was the group challenging Brazil’s “racial paradise” paradigm, but it was also organizing in direct conflict with the military dictatorship’s repression of novel cultural manifestations.

Ilê Aiyê was founded in 1974 by Antonio Carlos dos Santos, or Vovô as he is known to fans around the world, and Apolônio de Jesus. Their mission was to create a group that honored African and Afro-Brazilian culture, fought against racism, and instilled pride in the black community of Salvador. Based in Liberdade, the blackest neighborhood in the blackest city in Brazil, Ilê Aiyê was unapologetically for blacks, by blacks.

The group faced great obstacles in its early years, including people who considered it racist and black Brazilians who did not self-identify as blacks. After Ilê Aiyê’s first Carnival appearance, A Tarde, Salvador’s largest newspaper, accused it of being racist and imitating the politics of blacks in the United States. The article said, “Fortunately, we [in Brazil] don’t have a race problem. This is one of the great joys of the Brazilian people…” and went on to suggest that Ilê Aiyê present a less controversial theme next year.

But Ilê Aiyê never wavered in its mission or its politics, and in its wake, dozens of other bloco-afros formed, including the world-renowned Olodum and Ara-Ketu, and as Muzena and os Malê de Balê.

Today, Ilê Aiyê has various programs aimed at raising awareness of Afro-Brazilian culture, including three schools. Every year, a few weeks before Carnival, it hosts “Beleza Negra”, a pageant/talent show/party that celebrates black beauty and selects a Goddess of Ebony who will dance atop its float and represent Ilê Aiyê around the world.

Ilê Aiyê has truly changed the way Brazilians celebrate Carnival and think about their country.

Festa de Iemanjá

   

Today in Salvador, most everyone will be heading down to the beach at Rio Vermelho with their presents for Iemanjá, orixá of the sea, Mother of the Waters and the Fishes.

According to lore, Iemanjá is very beautiful and vain, and she covets offerings such as mirrors, make-up, combs, perfume, flowers, and jewelry. Her colors are light blue and white, and she is sometimes personified as a mermaid. There are images of her all over Bahia. Some people will spend months creating elaborate baskets of offerings, while others will add their simple offering to the many baskets in the Weigh House at Rio Vermelho. The baskets will be piled onto hundreds of small boats and rowed far out to sea and placed in the waters. It is truly a beautiful sight. It is said that if your offering sinks, Iemanjá has accepted your gift and will protect you. If it doesn't... well, perhaps its time to talk to a mãe de santo.

The festival began back in 1923, when a group of fisherman offered presents to the goddess of the sea because it had been a particularly bad fishing season.

Even if you are not into candomblé, this is an event not to be missed because you will experience many of the wonderful aspects of Salvador, including capoeira rodas, batuque do afoxé and samba, "as baianas vendendo acarajé", the joie de vivre of Bahia in festival, and, of course, lots of fitas.