6. Baque Mulher
Introduction
Audio: Som da Massa, “Transcontinental Baião”
Juliana Cantarelli Vita: I’m Juliana Cantarelli Vita.
Schuyler Whelden: And I’m Schuyler Whelden.
JCV: And this is Massa, a podcast about Brazilian music and culture.
SW: Juliana and I are music professors and musicians. In each episode we dive into a specific genre, song, artist, or issue in Brazilian music to try to understand how it works and what it means.
JCV: Schuyler, I thought we could pick up on and expand the conversation we had at the end of the last episode..
SW: In case you didn't listen, our last episode was about maracatu de baque virado, an Afro-Brazilian music tradition from the state of Pernambuco that’s rooted in the religion of candomblé.
JCV: Yeah! And we ended our episode with a recording by Karina Buhr.
Audio: Karina Buhr, “A Casa Caiu” (Youtube) (Spotify)
SW: Oh, yes, I remember that. What did you want to say about it?
JCV: Well, part of that conversation focused on issues of gender in maracatu de baque virado.
SW: Right. We talked about the fact that Karina Buhr is a woman playing alfaia, the large bass-drum-like instrument at the center of maracatu de baque virado. And because many hold onto the notion that the alfaia is an instrument played by men, her playing it can be seen as transgressive or challenging of tradition.
JCV: Right! But as you can imagine, it’s actually a bit more complicated than that.
SW: It always is, right?
JCV: For example, check out this recording:
Audio: Nação do Maracatu Encanto do Pina, "O Encanto que Vem de Luanda" (Youtube)
SW: Whoa! That’s not like the Karina Buhr recording at all. Here, instead of popular music with alfaia, we have what sounds like an actual maracatu nação.
JCV: Yes! That’s the group Nação do Maracatu Encanto do Pina, a maracatu from the city of Recife, in Pernambuco that was founded in 1980 by the midwife and ialorixá Dona Maria de Sônia.
SW: But there is a big difference here. In our last episode, I don’t remember having heard a female mestre—mestra?
JCV: Mestra, yes! That’s the word. And you are correct. Last time we only heard examples with male mestres. The mestra of Encanto do Pina is Mestra Joana Cavalcante. She was the first mestra of a maracatu nation.
SW: Really!?
JCV: Really. And not only is she a trailblazer in terms of her role, she also created a movement to fight for gender equity within maracatu de baque virado, which is called Movimento Baque Mulher.
SW: So that’s why this episode is called Baque Mulher.
JCV: Indeed.
SW: The word mulher, for those filling out their Portuguese bingo cards, means “woman.”
JCV: So, I thought we could spend this whole episode discussing gender roles in maracatu de baque virado, both historically and in the present.
SW: That sounds good to me!
JCV: We’re lucky enough to have a couple of special guests to help us out.
SW: Yes!
JCV: First up is, well, I’ll let her introduce herself:
Mestra Joana Cavalcante: Eu sou Mestra Joana Cavalcante, sou nascida em Recife, Pernambuco, na Comunidade do Pina porque eu nasci em casa. Sou mestra da Nação do Maracatu Encanto do Pina, coordenadora e idealizadora do movimento de empoderamento feminino Baque Mulher e coordenadora e idealizadora do grupo Mazuca da Quixaba. Sou mãe pequena do Yle Axé Oxum Deym e mãe de João, Jay e Jade… e de muitos outros filhos e filhas de coração.
[I’m Mestra Joana Cavalcante. I was born in Recife, Pernambuco, in the Comunidade do Bode in Pina, because I was born at home. I’m the mestra of Nação do Maracatu Encanto do Pina, coordinator and creator of the Baque Mulher Movement of Female Empowerment and coordinator and creator of the group Mazuca da Quixaba. I’m the mãe pequena of Yle Axé Oxum Deym and the mother of João, Jay, and Jade … and of many other children in my heart.]
SW: And we also have with us a scholar who has recently completed a historical and ethnographic project on baque virado.
Amy Medvick: My name is Amy Katherine Medvick. My pronouns are she and her. I am a White Canadian researcher currently completing my PhD in Latin American Studies at Tulane University in New Orleans. My academic background was first in jazz performance and then later in ethnomusicology, before I came to Latin American Studies.
Situating gender in maracatu de baque virado
JCV: Before we get into Mestra Joana’s story and what she is doing with maracatu, how about we talk a bit about the gender dynamics in maracatu de baque virado?
SW: Which, in some instances, is also called maracatu nação.
JCV: Amy Medvick talked with us about the role women have played in maracatu historically, or rather, how a particular narrative has been constructed around the roles women have played in maracatu.
AM: There are, caveat, some historical sources that suggest none of these roles were always as they are claimed to be today. That has possibly changed over the years. However, as it stands, what is understood to be traditional is that drumming was only for men. And that’s a social structure that comes from candomblé ritual: that men perform on the drums. The dancers can be women or men, tend to be women more often, but they can be both. And of course, I’m using very heteronormative, cisgender, and I don’t mean those to be absolute, but that is the language of these communities more or less.
JCV: But although drumming is understood to be reserved for men, women have occupied important positions in the nação.
AM: On the flipside of that, a little bit more controversial, though, is the notion that the focal point or the top position in the maracatu hierarchy is the queen. And this isn’t as often asserted as tradition as the male prerogative to the drums, but it is often enough.
JCV: And just to remind listeners, queens of maracatu are in charge of the nation, of the nação. It’s not a symbolic position.
SW: Amy argues that we can productively theorize some of the tensions and debates around gender roles less as essentialized notions of who fills which roles in the maracatu—
JCV: —and more in terms of notions of tradition and innovation:
AM: One of the primary ways in which I try to make sense of what shapes the world of maracatu nação right now is an orientation towards tradition or towards innovation. I think all nações are practicing part of the tradition and they also have certain ways they innovate. It might not be aesthetically; it might be in other areas. No one cannot be connected to their past and yet also change. That’s just existing.
SW: For example, in the last episode we discussed the group Nação do Maracatu Porto Rico , which uses atabaques in their performances. That’s an example of an aesthetic innovation.
AM: That caveat aside, I’m looking at how people orient themselves towards those ideas: of prioritizing tradition and maintaining tradition or prioritizing innovation. And that both are ways of trying to vie for survival in a context of very limited resources for nações, who tend to be very low in the socioeconomic hierarchy. And, what’s interesting is that the claim to be the first to have women playing drums is one that’s more likely to be claimed by a nação that’s oriented towards innovation and to be completely glossed over and never mentioned by a nação that is oriented toward tradition, even if I can find evidence that that very traditional nação, in fact, had women performing with them first.
JCV: Well said! It’s so important to remember the context in which maracatu is practiced.
SW: Yeah! Amy talked about this too:
AM: In the academic world, we tend to right now have this approach to tradition that either problematizes it as essentialist and reductive and not permitting change, or that idealizes it as a form of resistance. And I don’t seek to negate the grains of truth in both of those ideas, but rather to integrate them and also bring things back to, okay, this isn’t a theoretical discussion about “are we going to be traditional or are we going to innovate within this … practice.” We’re dealing with an extremely marginalized community in a marginalized region of a marginalized country that practices a religion that’s extremely discriminated against.
SW: That actually helps me understand how these narratives get cemented as tradition, regardless of the historical record.
JCV: Yeah! And as we’ll hear shortly, even if there is a precedent for women playing drums, it doesn’t mean that women of later generations didn’t have to overcome the restrictions that became cemented over time.
SW: Speaking of which, Amy’s research shows that some of the strict gendering of these roles is, in part, connected to the interventions of scholars and scholar-adjacent folks that showed interest in maracatu de baque virado from the outside.
AM: The gender one is a big one, of looking at the ways that scholars might have contributed, for example, to the rise of the queen as this preeminent figure. The ways that they might have framed the beginning of seeing a lot more women enter the tradition as this huge rupture, where I’m finding a few references that show that there were women playing maracatu nação before that and sometimes even performing on the street, though it was not common. But it might not have been a hard and fast tradition; that’s a thing scholars love to claim because it makes their argument sound so concrete and scientific. And then those ideas and discourses become how you establish legitimacy and that becomes adopted by members of the nações and being like, “okay, yes, we have this thing called tradition and it used to be like this and now it’s like this.” So it’s all very complicated.
JCV: Just as the interaction between maracatu nações and people from outside of the nação may have contributed to the cementing of certain practices as “tradition,” it also may have contributed to certain ruptures later on.
AM: There’s this massive influx of people coming from all kinds of places into the nações, so that now a lot of the membership of even the most traditional nações are White-identified folks from the middle classes of Recife or people that are visiting from England or the U.S. or Canada, just for carnaval, and have a connection that then they can perform with these groups. And that, of course, brings with it certain expectations about gender roles, particularly in that moment in the 90s, where it was a real moment of feminist discourse in North America, so a certain expectation for gender parity in terms of performing on the drums. And so, that’s another change that is very deeply wrapped up in that relationship with people from outside the community. At the same time, I’ve seen photographs of a woman—I don’t know much about her, but definitely a very dark-skinned woman of African descent—performing with Leão Coroado in 1989 before anyone was talking about this. And I’ve heard stories that there have been women who knew how to play all of the instruments, but just didn’t perform on the street. They might even lead rehearsals. Even maybe going back to the 1940s. So I don't want to chalk it all up just to this sort of White, middle-class, transnationalist, feminist agenda. There are also women in the community who want to perform on drums and it means a lot to them to be able to do so. But that is definitely a huge part of what has driven the change in gender roles.
SW: These issues are really complicated!
JCV: They are!
SW: Which is why we wanted to highlight the work of Mestra Joana, specifically.
AM: It’s really great to see the way that she’s creating this visibility, particularly for women within the maracatu community working for more access to different roles on their own terms.
JCV: Yes, let’s hear some of her story!
SW: Let’s!
Mestra Joana
SW: As we talked about last time, and as Amy mentioned just now, maracatu nação is connected deeply to candomblé.
JCV: Mestra Joana told us about this:
MJ: Eu sou nascida e criada dentro do candomblé, dentro do terreiro de candomblé Nagô. Toda a minha família, ela vem da tradição Nagô. Eu já nasci dentro do candomblé; como eu falei antes, eu nasci em casa e quem fez o parto da minha mãe foi a minha avó - que é ialorixá, filha da Oxum, e Dona Maria de Sônia, a avó dela, a mãe-de-santo dela no caso, que é filha de Yemanjá. Ambas fizeram meu parto junto com a minha tia que é filha de Iansã. Então eu nasci em casa pela mão de três ialorixás. O meu pai é babalorixá, minha mãe é a alorixá e é yabásé, que é a pessoa responsável em cozinhar os alimentos do santo né, de um axé. Meus tios e meus irmãos são todos ogãs e toda a minha trajetória de vida foi dentro do candomblé de tradição Nagô.
[I was born and raised in candomblé, in a terreiro of candomblé nagô. All of my family comes from the nagô tradition. I was born into it. As I said before, I was born at home and who delivered me was my grandmother, who is a ialorixá, a daughter of Oxum, and Dona Maria de Sônia, my great-grandmother, also a ialorixá and a daughter of Yemanjá. Both of them delivered me with my aunt, a daughter of Iansã. So I was born at home at the hand of three ialorixás. My father is a babalorixá, my mother is a ialorixá and is a yabásé, who is the person responsible for cooking the food for the orixás, to generate axé. My uncles and my brothers are all ogãs and the trajectory of my entire life has happened in candomblé of the nagô tradition.]
JCV: Without repeating too much of what we’ve discussed in other episodes, I’ll just mention that ialorixá is the Yoruba term for “mother of the saint” and refers to, essentially, the priestess within candomblé.
SW: So Mestra Joana is from a family of religious leaders.
JCV: Yes! And she mentioned that her father is a babalorixá, which is the male equivalent of ialorixá.
SW: Wow, so she is really steeped in this tradition. And this is very relevant to our discussion of maracatu, because as we talked about in the last episode, maracatu nação is candomblé. Actually, Mestra Joana explained that, too:
MJ: E daí se inicia a minha história também dentro do maracatu, que também é candomblé… um não se desvincula do outro. Então, o maracatu, ele nasce dentro do terreiro de candomblé, por isso é nação, e foi dentro desse terreiro no qual eu me criei. Então a nação do maracatu e o candomblé ambos são associados e eu sou desde barriga ambos dentro dos dois.
[And that’s also how I began my history in maracatu, which is also candomblé—one cannot be unlinked from the other. So, maracatu was born in the terreiro of candomblé, that’s what makes it nação, and it was in this terreiro that I was raised. So maracatu nação and candomblé are both connected. And since I was in the womb, I was already in both.]
JCV: In addition to being a babalorixá, Mestra Joana’s father was the mestre of the group Nação Encanto do Pina.
SW: Aha, so did she grow up around the maracatu music?
JCV: Yes!
SW: So is that how she ended up becoming the mestra of the group?
JCV: Yes and no.
SW: What do you mean?
JCV: Well, because there was no precedent in the collective memory of a woman taking over as a mestra, it was not assumed that she would do so.
SW: Ah. I imagine it surprised some people.
JCV: In some ways, it surprised her.
MJ: Olha, pra mim foi surpreendente também. Foi tudo o que aconteceu muito naturalmente e assim, meio que inesperado e também esperado, também! Por quê? Porque eu não entendia nada do que significava opressão, racismo, machismo… Vivendo dentro do contexto de periferia, é um diálogo que não chegava. Também numa época que não tinha tanta tecnologia, então era um assunto que não abrangia pra todo mundo; como hoje é mais fácil de ter esse acesso.
[Look, for me it was surprising too. Everything happened very naturally and thus, sort of unexpected and expected! Why? Because I didn’t understand anything about oppression, racism, sexism… Living in the periphery, it’s a conversation that never happened. This was also a time when there wasn’t so much technology, so it was a subject that didn’t reach everyone. Today it is easier to have access to this conversation.]
SW: When Mestra Joana refers to the “periphery”—
JCV: —in Portuguese, the periferia—
SW: —she is talking about the literal geography of Recife as well as the social status of marginalized people in Recifense life.
JCV: Yes, in some part of Brazil, the word periferia is used almost as a euphemism to describe the communities that disenfranchised people have constructed in Brazil’s urban centers. These communities are often detached from the infrastructure of the wealthier parts of the cities.
SW: That includes infrastructure for education and information sharing.
MJ: Então naquela época eu não entendia nada do que era racismo, machismo, enfim… Por ser nascida e criada dentro do maracatu, dentro do candomblé, eu sempre transitei em todas as áreas e naturalmente sempre toquei todos os instrumentos. E uma educação de que mulher não poderia tocar nenhum instrumento, o que restava era só obedecer e fazer o que era dito durante toda a vida. Não poderia tocar nos instrumentos e o espaço que era reservado pra mim e pra todas as mulheres era o dançar. Porque pra mim sempre foi dito que a gente, mulher, nasceu pra rodar a saia não pra tocar. E aí sempre respeitando isso por questão de vários princípios, por questão de estar dentro de um contexto de respeitar os mais velhos e sem entender essas opressões ao meu redor. E aí quando meu pai assumiu a Nação Encanto do Pina, numa época que mulher já tocava nos instrumentos mas ainda tava naquele processo de aceitação, que a gente sabe que até hoje não foi aceito, mas enfim…
[So, a t that time, I didn’t understand anything about racism, sexism. Having been born and raised in maracatu, in candomblé, I also passed through all of these spaces naturally and always played all of the instruments. It’s taught that women can’t play instruments, so what remained was just obeying and doing what you were told for your whole life. We couldn’t touch the instruments and the space that was reserved for me and for all of the women was to dance. Because for me it was always said that women were born to swirl our skirts, not play. So I went along respecting all of this out of principle, out of respect for my elders, and without understanding these oppressions around me. And when my father assumed the role of mestre for Nação Encanto do Pina, it was a time that women were already playing instruments, but still in that process of acceptance, that we know still hasn’t been accepted, but…]
JCV: It’s so interesting that Mestra Joana both accepted the way things were and also went against some of the unspoken rules.
SW: Yeah! It really highlights how that tension between innovation and tradition that Amy Medvick discussed might play out in a specific person’s story. So how did she go from accepting the established gender roles to taking over as mestra? Did she become conscious of the limitations of these conventions and transgress them intentionally?
JCV: Actually, not really! So, she had always played the drums and was certainly technically capable of taking the reins, but she didn’t do so in order to make a political statement at all. Here’s how she describes it:
MJ: E aí eu sempre toquei todos os instrumentos. Eu ajudava ele como podia, ajudando, ensinando. E aí meu pai teve uns problemas pessoais, espirituais, problemas familiares que ele teve que se afastar do baque. E com a ausência dele, ficou naquela de que não tinha quem assumisse. E tinha ao mesmo tempo, que seria meu irmão, meus tios. Mas como eu já sempre tive o dom de tocar todos os instrumentos—sempre me dei muito bem com todos os instrumentos. A música, a percussão, ela sempre teve muito presente em mim, mesmo sendo mulher. E ele negando isso. Mesmo que naturalmente eu fui dominando, já ajudava ele e aí quando ele teve que se ausentar, minha mãe de santo, junto com a minha avó, elas jogaram os búzios pra dizer que eu que tinha que assumir.
[So I always played all of the instruments. I helped him as I could, teaching and things like that. And my father had some personal, spiritual, family problems and he had to move away from the group. And with his absence, there was the problem of not having someone already selected to take his place. It could have been my brother or my uncles. But because I already had mastery over all of the instruments—I always was really good at all of the instruments. Music, percussion was always present in me, even as a woman. But my father denied this. Even though I was naturally mastering everything, and had already helped when he had to step aside, my ialorixá, together with my great-grandmother, they decided to throw the cowrie shells to determine if I would take the mantle.]
JCV: We should explain this.
SW: If folks listened to our episode about candomblé nagô—
JCV: —which is the same tradition within candomblé that Mestra Joana practices—
SW: Right! Well, in that episode, we heard about how the singer and composer Zé Manoel visited a candomblé terreiro where the ialorixá used the cowrie shells to determine which orixá he was a child of.
JCV: Yes, the cowrie shells, or búzios, are one of the methods that the ialorixá can use to communicate with the orixás to get guidance.
SW: So, because maracatu nação is borne of candomblé, it is a candomblé practice that guides things like leadership of the maracatu?
JCV: Exactly.
MJ: Eu, na minha total ingenuidade, eu falei, eu perguntei, "Pra quê jogar os búzios? Eu já toco, eu já ajudo ele se ele num pode, eu fico". Mas aí elas jogaram os búzios e os orixás disseram que eu tinha que continuar, tinha que tá ali na frente… E eu retruquei, dizendo, "Ah, eu sei que eu tenho que ficar mesmo.” Porque pra mim era natural, pra mim era tocar e fazer o que eu sempre fiz a vida toda.
[In my innocence, I said, I asked, “why even throw the cowries? I already play, I already help when he can’t do it and I’ve been doing this my whole life.” But they threw the cowries and the orixás said that I had to continue, that I had to stay there in front of the group. I said, “Ah, I know that I really have to stay.” Because for me it was natural, for me it was playing and doing what I had done my whole life.]
SW: Wow, so the orixás chose her to lead?
JCV: Which kind of makes sense considering she was also most qualified to take over.
SW: Except for the fact that some believed she shouldn’t even have been eligible by virtue of her gender.
JCV: Right, yeah. Which is where the challenges really started for her.
MJ: E eis que eu me surpreendi que a primeira ação quando eu assumi a nação foi de batuqueiros antigos saírem da nação porque não queria ser regido por uma mulher e eu não entendia nada, o porque tava acontecendo aquilo, eu achava que era um problema pessoal que todos eles tinham comigo, não entendia que aquilo ali era machismo.
[And then I was surprised that the first thing to happen when I took over the nação was that the older drummers left the nação, because they didn’t want to be led by a woman and I didn’t understand at all why that had happened. I thought that it was a personal problem that they all had with me. I didn’t understand that it was sexism. And even so, I continued.]
SW: Oh no! So suddenly the group was without a large portion of its drum corps?
JCV: Exactly.
SW: What did they do?
JCV: Well, one of the amazing things is that Mestra Joana was already involved in many social projects in her community—Comunidade do Bode, Favela do Bode—and even though some of the men from Encanto do Pina deserted the group, other people were available to step in and help.
MJ: Antes de assumir a nação, eu já tinha projetos sociais com jovens e crianças, já vinha de uma trajetória de projetos que eu fundei o projeto percussivo Filhas de Oxum Opará, fundei um grupo de jovens e adolescentes numa comunidade aqui perto que é o Nação da Ilha. Então quando eu assumi a Nação Encanto do Pina e os batuqueiros saíram, esses jovens que eu já tinha um trabalho anterior, eles todos vieram, chegaram junto. E várias outras pessoas também de fora que vem aqui pra curtir o carnaval do Recife também se sensibilizaram e começaram a dar força e ajudar.
[Before taking over the nação I already had social projects with young people and children. The percussion project Filhas de Oxum Opará had already come from a series of projects that I started. So when I took over Nação Encanto do Pina and the drummers left, these kids that I had already worked with, they all came, they arrived together. And various other people who came from elsewhere to enjoy Recife’s carnaval also were touched and started to make an effort to help.]
SW: That’s amazing!
JCV: More than that, the group actually had some of its greatest successes in Recife’s carnaval parade competition.
MJ: E aí eu coloquei a Nação, no primeiro ano, que foi 2009… Eu assumi 2008 mas o primeiro desfile foi 2009. E a Nação Encanto do Pina nunca tinha entrado em evidência, tinha sido desclassificada já quatro vezes seguidas, não tinha instrumentos, não tinha nada. Era totalmente abandonada. E eu consegui erguer a Nação nesse ano e no primeiro ano que eu assumi a Nação a gente ganhou e passou pro grupo 1. E aí foi aquele êxtase na comunidade, porque uma nação que nunca tinha conseguido nada e com toda a rejeição dos machos que tinham saído, a gente conseguiu em 2009 ser campeão do grupo A e passou pro grupo 1.
[And so when I brought the nação to carnaval—the first year was 2009. I took over in 2008, but my first parade was in 2009. And Nacão Encanto do Pina had never qualified. It had been declassified four times in a row. It didn’t have any instruments. It didn’t have anything. It was totally abandoned. And I managed to uplift the nação that year and in the first year I was in charge, we won promotion to the first division. So there was ecstasy in the community, because a nação that had never succeeded with anything and with the rejection of all of those men that had left, we managed in 2009 to be the champions of the second division and get promoted to the first.]
SW: In case anyone is confused, maracatu nações compete in a carnaval procession every year. They are judged on their costumes and the music and everything. There are multiple divisions, like in Brazilian soccer, where the poorest performers from the first division are relegated to the second, while the best performers of the second division are promoted to the first.
JCV: And in her first year leading the group, Mestra Joana accomplished promotion, something that hadn’t ever happened before.
SW: Wow. It sounds made up. Like a movie.
JCV: I know. But it’s not. It's real life!
Audio: Grupo Baque Mulher, “Meu Baque é Forte” (Youtube)
Baque Mulher
SW: Juliana, at the beginning of this episode, you mentioned that Mestra Joana created a movement called Baque Mulher—
JCV:—which is the name of this episode.
SW: Right. So where does Baque Mulher come in, in her story?
JCV: Through her experiences as a mestra, and all the prejudices that she experienced as a woman mestra among people who believed that drumming was an activity reserved for men, she started to become conscious of the sexism around her.
SW: Here's what she had to say about it:
MJ: E aí, foi onde tudo veio à tona: eu passei a entender, passei a ter dimensão ao meu redor do machismo, do racismo. E foi aí que eu tou na luta até hoje. E, paralelo a isso, porque a gente já vai puxar pro Baque Mulher; paralelo a isso, como eu falei foi ano que a gente ainda tava nesse processo ainda de aceitação dos baques das mulheres quebrando seus tabus ali. Era um espaço muito doentio, muito difícil, para as mulheres estarem dentro dos baques de maracatus, de nação. Porque por mais que estivéssemos ali, os olhares de repressão, os olhares de "aqui não é o teu lugar" eram muito constantes. Qualquer coisa que fizéssemos era motivo de algo bem desnecessário, sabe? E eu me sentia muito angustiada com aquilo. E eu sempre fui muito inquieta. Eu tive a ideia de "não, quero um espaço que a gente possa tocar o tambor, mas que a gente possa sorrir" porque dentro dos baques a gente não podia nem sorrir; dentro dos maracatus a gente não podia nem sorrir. Então eu falei pras meninas, as batuqueiras que nessa época transitavam entre as duas nações aqui no Pina - que é a Nação Porto Rico e a Nação Encanto do Pina - então, peguei as mais próximas, convidei as mais próximas, e tive a ideia de a gente ter um dia pra gente tocar só nós, mulheres. E falei, eu vou colocar o nome de Baque Mulher, porque a gente vai fazer o baque só entre a gente, então não vai ter homem nenhum.
[And so, everything surfaced at the same time: I started to understand, started to have awareness of the sexism and racism around me. And that is the struggle I still find myself in. And parallel to that—because we’re going to bring in Baque Mulher now—parallel to that, as I said it was the year that I was in that process of gaining acceptance for women to play drums and break the taboos. It was a very unhealthy and difficult space for women to be in the percussion sections of the maracatus, of the nação. Because as much as we were there, the looks of repression, the looks of “here is not your place” were constant. Whatever we did was motivated by something completely unnecessary, you know? And I was very upset by that. I was always very uneasy. I had the idea of “no, I want a space that we can play drums, but that we can smile,” because within the maracatus, we couldn’t even smile. So I spoke to the girls, the female drummers that passed between the two nações here in Pina—that are Nação Porto Rico and Nação Encanto do Pina—so, I invited the ones closest to me and I had the idea that we would have a day for us to play just us, just the women. And I said, I’m going to give it the name Baque Mulher, because just women are going to play the drums.]
SW: I remember that last episode, we explained that one of the side effects of the maracatu mania is that a number of groups not associated with candomblé terreiros began to spring up. Is Baque Mulher an example of one of these?
JCV: Actually, Baque Mulher exists within and between both worlds. It’s not associated with a specific candomblé house and not officially a part of the maracatu nation that Mestra Joana leads, but it still has its roots in both Nação do Maracatu Encanto do Pina and Nação do Maracatu Porto Rico.
SW: So Baque Mulher is the offspring of these nações?
JCV: More or less.
SW: But it’s also kind of a social project, it sounds like.
JCV: Yes, it’s both a percussion group—a space where women can play all of the instruments of maracatu without being side-eyed, or worse, by the men—and it’s also a space to talk about these issues.
MJ: E pra gente não ter nenhum problema daqui da comunidade, de onde está sediada as duas nações, a gente vai fazer esse baque lá no Recife Antigo. Porque é um espaço turístico, o Recife Antigo é um espaço turístico, e lá tinha vários grupos percussivos, ainda tem. Então a gente foi pra lá.
[And for us to not have any problems with the community that was already hosting two nações, we’re going to do this in Recife Antigo (Old Recife). Because that is a touristic space, Old Recife is a touristic space. And it had lots of percussion groups. It still does. So we went there.]
SW: Oh wow, so she moved the rehearsals right out of the community!
JCV: Exactly.
SW: Was that because the touristic nature of Old Recife meant that there were already women playing alfaias and such, so no one would think twice? Or the fact that they weren’t among their neighbors so they didn’t have to explain themselves?
JCV: Both of those things. But also, there are already two maracatu nações in the Comunidade do Bode and, as we heard last episode, getting all of these folks playing at the same time is a very loud endeavor.
SW: Ah, so there are some practical concerns as well.
JCV: Yup. In fact, in Old Recife, lots of percussion groups rehearse on Sunday.
Black Feminist Empowerment
SW: So, how about we listen to one of the songs that Mestra Joana composed for Baque Mulher?
JCV: Great idea!
SW: Let’s listen to the song “Sou Mulher Negra Empoderada"
JCV: The title translates to “I’m an empowered black woman.”
Audio: Baque Mulher, “Sou Mulher Negra Empoderada" (YouTube)
JCV: Before we dive into the specific lyrics, let’s talk a little bit about issues of female empowerment in Afro-Brazilian communities.
SW: Great idea! As we talked about in our candomblé episodes, some Afro-Brazilian religions, such as candomblé, offer counternarratives and alternative social structures to the sexism and racism that pervades Brazilian society.
JCV: Exactly. For example, women in candomblé frequently occupy important positions as ialorixás and iakekerês that garner both power and respect.
SW: And, as Amy Medvick discussed, in maracatu nação, women occupy the most powerful position as queens.
JCV: With Baque Mulher, Mestra Joana and the other participants expand on this notion by celebrating and generating female empowerment through Afro-Brazilian cultural forms.
SW: Ah. Highlighting these two valences of her identity at the same time is not only important, but it reflects her actual lived experiences. It’s what legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw has termed “intersectionality.”
JCV: And, of course, North Americans don’t have a monopoly on intersectional thinking. The Brazilian scholar, activist, and politician Lélia Gonzales has written, “It is undeniable that feminism, both in theory and in practice, has played a fundamental role in the struggles of women. It has presented new questions, stimulated the formation of groups and networks, and encouraged the search for a new way of being a woman.… But a reading of feminist texts and an analysis of feminist practice reveals a kind of forgetfulness about the racial question.”
SW: Let’s go through the lyrics of this song one at a time.
JCV: Let’s!
JCV: The first line is “Sou mulher negra empoderada / Trago o axé da nação nagô / Feministas do baque virado / Mulheres guerreiras tocando tambor.”
SW: Which translates to, “I am an empowered Black woman / I bring axé from nação nagô / Feminists from baque virado / Women warriors playing drums.”
JCV: A few things to highlight here. First, she is connecting everything to the nação nagô tradition of candomblé.
SW: Right! As you mentioned, Baque Mulher is not officially tied to a specific candomblé house, but that doesn’t mean it’s not rooted in candomblé.
JCV: Exactly. So, when she “brings axé” from candomblé, it’s part of the tradition of maracatu as an expression of candomblé in the street.
SW: But there is another aspect as well, which some would argue is not traditional, though that is in dispute. She is asserting her own status as a Black feminist from inside the tradition.
JCV: Right! As we saw last time, it’s very common for mestres to sing about the nação, which she does, to a degree. But more than that, she is singing about herself. She is empowering herself, despite all of the ways that she has been marginalized through racism and sexism.
SW: The structure is important too, because even though the first line is about her, the second line pluralizes that experience for all of the young women—women of all ages—playing with her.
JCV: They sing, “Feminists from baque virado / Women warriors playing drums.”
SW: And in doing so, they basically become those women warriors.
JCV: In fact, “Feministas do baque virado” or FBV is how they sign off on group messages on social media and in other communiqués.
SW: The next part is all done in call and response and seems to be grounded in that experience that Mestra Joana described when she took over the nação.
JCV: Yes, she brought this group to, for lack of a better term, a safe space for these women to express themselves, musically.
SW: She sings, “Não há violência / Ou machismo qualquer / Que cale meu tambor / Eu sou Baque Mulher.”
JCV: In English, “There is no violence / nor any sexism / that can silence my drums / I am Baque Mulher.”
SW: Here, the call and response is used again to assert an identity and take a stand against the exclusions that these musicians face in many so-called traditional contexts.
JCV: And “Baque Mulher” comes to stand for something more than the name of the group. It’s a social commentary and a statement of group belonging.
SW: Can you talk to us a little about the setting of these lyrics? To my untrained ears, it sounds a lot like the setting of the baque virado we listened to last time.
JCV: That’s because it is! It starts with the call and response between Mestra Joana and the group unaccompanied.
SW: And when the lyric repeats, we hear the chamada, the snare drums that call the alfaias to start playing.
JCV: When they get to the second stanza, they begin the “turn” or the “viração” that gives the genre its name.
SW: Aha, so it’s very similar to other maracatu nação after all.
JCV: Yes, it seems your ears were more trained than you thought.
SW: Well, you trained them. So, Mestra Joana talked about how she wrote this song at the moment that she self identified as a Black woman, when she understood what it was to be empowered:
MJ: “Foi bem no momento que eu me identifiquei enquanto mulher, foi no momento que eu me identifiquei enquanto negra, foi quando entendi o que era ser empoderada…”
Music Agaist Domestic Violence
SW: Let’s talk about one more Baque Mulher song.
JCV: Great! In addition to that one, Mestra Joana wanted to highlight her song “Maria da Penha é Forte.”
Audio: Baque Mulher, “Maria da Penha É Forte" (YouTube)
SW: Maybe even more than “Sou Mulher Negra Empoderada,” this song takes a very Black feminist position.
JCV: Yes. Actually, let’s listen to Mestra Joana explain how this song came about:
MJ: Todos os domingos a gente se reunia, ia pra lá, a gente tocava nossos baques, sorria, brincava. Terminava, a gente ia tomar a nossa cerveja. Os caras naquela época, também não era fácil, os caras queriam tar lá, se intrometendo. Então foi todo aquele processo que a gente já sabe, bem desgastante…
[Every Sunday we got together, went down there and we played our rhythms, smiled, joked around. When it was over, we had a beer. The men at that time—it wasn’t easy—the men wanted to be there, meddling. So it was that whole process that we already know about, totally exhausting.]
JCV: And it was in those moments that they started empowering themselves, and each other.
SW: Also, due to the fact that Mestra Joana's work has always had a social orientation, she was attracting a lot of young women to the group. She told us that they lined up at her door, waiting to accompany her to Old Recife.
MJ: Então todo domingo eu ia e levava as meninas todinhas da comunidade e quando terminava, oferecia o lanche a gente ficava lá sentada conversando e nessas rodas de conversa que a gente tinha, que foi surgindo naturalmente, começou a vim os relatos de abuso, os relatos das dificuldades, do dia-a-dia aqui na comunidade, dentro de seus lares. E aquilo foi me deixando bastante inquieta, bastante inquieta assim. Tavam chegando aqueles relatos pra mim e eu absorvendo tudo aqui e sem ter uma solução. Sem encontrar uma solução. Porque a gente tá falando de relatos de abusos muito graves, de filhas de traficantes… Como abordar…
[So every Sunday, I went and took all the girls from the community and when it ended, I offered a snack and we sat there chatting. And in these conversations that we had, it came up naturally: the stories of abuse, the stories of difficulties, of the day to day here in the community, in their homes. And that started to trouble me, made me very uneasy. They told me those stories and I was absorbing them without a solution. Without finding a solution. Because we are talking about stories of very serious abuse, of the daughters of gang members. How do we grapple with that?]
SW: Wow.
JCV: Yes. It's incredible.
SW: So how did she grapple with this situation?
JCV: Well, actually, she used the skills she already had, as a musician:
MJ: Como é que podia ajudar essas jovens e essas crianças sendo que essas opressões, essas agressões tavam vindo da parte violenta, de traficantes… a gente sabe que comunidade né? Eu sempre falo que falar em feminismo, a gente tem que ir em duas esferas. São duas esferas. Tem o feminismo da periferia, feminismo negro; e tem o outro feminismo. Então assim, abordar dentro da nossa realidade aqui é muito diferente. E eu ficava inquieta sem saber como fazer, pra passar pra essas meninas a mensagem de que aquilo ali que elas estavam vivenciando era abuso e tava errado e elas poderiam se libertar daquilo. Mas como fazer isso sem me colocar na linha de frente, sem colocar a mim e a toda a minha família em risco. Então foi aí que veio a ideia das loas do Baque Mulher… porque através das loas que era algo, que é algo que as mulheres, as meninas, elas tão inseridas dentro do maracatu, elas absorvem. Elas vão ouvir naturalmente. E é algo que elas iam levar. Iam não, levam pra casa essa mensagem.
[How can I help these young people and these children when these oppressions, the aggressions were coming from that kind of violence, from the gangs—we know what the community is like, right? I always say that talking about feminism, we have to work in two spheres. There are two spheres. There is the feminism of the periphery, Black feminism. And there is the other feminism. So, to grapple with our own reality here, is very different. And I got very upset not knowing what to do, how to give these girls the message that what they were experiencing was abuse and it was wrong and they could escape from it. But how could I do this without putting myself in the line of fire, without putting myself and my whole family at risk? So that’s where I got the idea of using the songs of Baque Mulher… Because through the songs there was something that the women and the girls, those deep into maracatu, that they absorbed. They are going to hear it naturally. And it is something that they would take with them. They take home this message and pass it on.]
JCV: It's kind of incredible how she solved that puzzle: approaching issues of domestic violence and gender inequalities through music, through maracatu songs.
SW: Yeah, it is. Let’s go through this song a little bit to hear how she does it.
JCV: Well, first there is the title. Maria da Penha is a woman from the city of Fortaleza in the northeastern state of Ceará. She suffered horrible abuses from her husband over the years. And in 1983 he shot her while she was sleeping and left her paralyzed from the waist down.
SW: And despite all of this, there were no laws to protect her. It took until 2002 for him to be prosecuted and even then, he spent less than a year in prison.
JCV: Yeah. Partly this is because Brazil didn’t have any laws to protect women. They were treated as their husbands’ property, not legally allowed to open bank accounts or file for divorce until a few decades ago. And, of course, there were no protections for women in their own homes.
SW: As a result of all of this, Maria da Penha fought for a change in the laws to protect women from domestic abuse. Finally, in 2006, President Lula da Silva signed the Maria da Penha law, which offered some of the necessary protections.
JCV: And this is exactly what Mestra Joana is singing about here.
SW: “Maria da Penha é forte / É forte pra valer / Com sua força e coragem / Fez a lei acontecer.”
JCV: “Maria da Penha is strong / She’s really strong / With her strength and courage / She made the law happen.”
SW: But Mestra Joana actually frames this information as part of her own education, and presumably the education of some of the other women in the group.
JCV: Yeah. She says, “A lei Maria da Penha / Agora eu já sei / 11.340 do ano 2006.”
SW: “The Maria da Penha law / Now I know / Law 11,340 from the year 2006.”
JCV: It’s creating an awareness for this relatively new law. It was passed only two years before the founding of Baque Mulher. And it’s information that, sadly, is still useful for women who find themselves in an abusive situation.
SW: So, not only does the song highlight the injustices, but it points to something that might help.
JCV: Later the song becomes more of a group rallying cry, adopting the first-person plural “we” to assert the power these women have as a group.
SW: “Women of the entire world / With the tenacity to overcome / Let’s unite our efforts / And make it happen.”
JCV: So, just like Maria da Penha made the law happen, we can do something about our situation.
SW: And they go on to sing “We have the right to freedom, to live, to overcome.”
JCV: The structure here is the same, so I want to highlight a different aspect of the performance.
SW: What’s that?
JCV: The melody.
SW: Okay, it’s a fairly straightforward, and potentially easy to remember melody. Is that what you wanted to highlight?
JCV: Well, it’s all of those things, but it’s also very similar to the melody of a famous nursery rhyme called “Pirulito que bate-bate.” Listen:
Audio: Aidê Araújo, “Pirulito que bate-bate”
SW: Wow, they are so similar! So, who’s that singing?
JCV: That’s my mom!
SW: Aw, just like she would sing for you when you were little?
JCV: Yup. But everyone knows this song, so everyone would be able to focus on the lyrics and probably memorize the new song more quickly.
SW: That is brilliant.
JCV: Isn’t it?
SW: So, how about to end things, we let Mestra Joana describe the transformation that this song caused for Baque Mulher?
MJ: Tem duas loas que trazem em si - todas elas trazem uma história, uma força grande - mas tem duas em especial, que é Maria da Penha é Forte e Sou Mulher Negra Empoderada. Maria da Penha É Forte porque foi a primeira loa de militância, de empoderamento feminino. Foi a primeira letra que veio. Eu fui num curso e nesse curso tinha uma pessoa que tava lá falando sobre o seu projeto e ela começou a cantar a primeira frase de Maria da Penha, falando de Maria da Penha… e aí eu comecei a juntar, juntar, juntar e veio essa letra aí Maria da Penha é Forte. Foi a primeira letra, foi bem naquele momento que eu tava bem angustiada, como é que eu ia passar pras meninas da comunidade sobre a lei, como é que eu ia falar pras meninas da comunidade que elas não podiam mais aceitar sofrer aqueles abusos. Foi a primeira loa que fez o maracatu Baque Mulher se tornar movimento de empoderamento feminino Baque Mulher. Porque antes era só "O grupo de maracatu Baque Mulher."
[There are two songs that bring with them—all of them bring a story, a strength—but there are two especially, which are “Maria da Penha é Forte” and “Sou Mulher Negra Empoderada.” “Maria da Penha é Forte” because it was the first militant song of female empowerment. It was the first lyric that arrived. I went to this course and there was a person there speaking about their project and she started to sing the first phrase of “Maria da Penha,” talking about Maria da Penha… and I started to put things together and this lyric showed up: “Maria da Penha é forte.” It was the first lyric. At that time, I was very upset, thinking about how I was going to tell the girls from the community about this law, how I was going to tell them that they couldn’t just accept being abused like that. It was the first song that turned Baque Mulher into the Baque Mulher Movement of Female Empowerment. Because before that it was just “the maracatu group Baque Mulher.”]
Audio: Sammy Bananas, “Transcontinental Baião (Carioca Remix)”
SW: Massa is written, produced and edited by Juliana Cantarelli Vita and me, Schuyler Whelden. Special thanks this week to Mestra Joana Cavalcante, Dr. Amy Medvick, Aidê Araújo, and Julia Menezes Lima Moreira. You can find links to Mestra Joana’s work in the description. For episode transcripts, please visit our website, essefoimassa.com. That’s E-S-S-E-F-O-I-M-A-S-S-A dot com. You can email us at essefoimassa@gmail.com. That is also our handle on Instagram and Twitter. Our intro music is by Som da Massa and our outro music is by Sammy Bananas. Please join us in two weeks for the first of two episodes on maracatu de baque solto. Until then, esse foi massa.
*Cover photo by Raquel Catao.
**English translations of Mestra Joana Cavalcante read by Julia Menezes Lima Moreira.
