2. Candomblé

Introduction

Audio: Som da Massa, “Transcontinental Baião”

JCV: I’m Juliana Cantarelli Vita.

SW: And I’m Schuyler Whelden. 

JCV:  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. 

JVC: What’s on the agenda for today, Schuyler?

SW: Well, given this is our first episode and all, I was thinking we should start with an episode about the music of the Afro-Brazilian religion called candomblé and how it has influenced Brazilian popular music.

JVC: Yeah, that seems like a good idea, but it’s a pretty big topic. Where should we start?

SW: How about we listen to a couple of popular songs that could serve as a “way in,” things that were made by artists working now.

JVC: Sounds good. What’s up first?

SW: This is a brand new song, released in 2020 by the singer Fabiana Cozza.

Audio: Fabiana Cozza, “Kabiecilê” (Youtube) (Spotify)

JCV: Oh, wow. What’s that song called?

SW: It’s called “Kabecilê,” which I learned thanks to you...

JCV: ...is the saudação for one of the orixás of candomblé!

SW: Exactly! But wait, we should probably explain those non-English words.

JCV: Good idea. An orixá is a deity of the Afro-Brazilian religion called candomblé. A saudação is the words of praise or a greeting directed at a particular the orixá. In this case, these are the words used for the orixá called Xangô. “Kabecilê” means something like “come salute the king!”

SW: Yes, that’s actually one of the things that stood out to me. My Portuguese is decent, but “Kabiecilê” is not a word I have heard before.

JCV: That’s because it’s not Portuguese! It’s Yoruba, or a version of Yoruba that survived in Brazil when enslaved peoples brought their language from West Africa. 

SW: That explains it. But it’s interesting that it’s made it into an album of popular music in 2020.

JCV: As we’ll discuss, the music and imagery of candomblé is pervasive in Brazilian popular music. 

SW: Indeed. In fact, Xangô, the orixá you just mentioned is the topic of another recent song that I can’t stop listening to. This one is actually called “Xangô” and it’s by the group Hot e Oeira, featuring Luejdi Luna.

Audio: Hot e Oeira feat. Luejdi Luna, “Xango” (Youtube) (Spotify)

JCV: Massa! Oh my gosh, I love this song! That is, indeed, the same “Xangô” that Fabiana Cozza is singing about in the song we just listened to before.

SW: So I should say that we picked these songs not just because they are good.

JCV: Right! As we saw, they both reference candomblé orixás in their lyrics. And this is just one of the ways that they reflect the longstanding importance of candomblé both in Brazilian culture overall, and in the history of Brazilian popular music specifically. 

SW: As we’ll discuss a little later, with a little practice, we can learn to hear the musical heritage of candomblé. We’ll need to get some background on candomblé in general first. But before we do, let’s check out one more recording, something that’s not so new. It’s a 1966 recording by Baden Powell and Vinícius de Moraes.

JCV: I think I know the one. It has to be “Canto de Xangô” from the famous album Os Afro-Sambas, right?

SW: That’s the one!

Audio: Vinícius de Moraes and Baden Powell, “Canto de Xangô” (Youtube) (Spotify)

JCV: Before we jump into the history and traditions of candomblé, we should probably point out that neither of us are practitioners of this religion.

SW: Yes. We want to discuss candomblé in our first episode because it’s foundational to so much of the music we plan to discuss in future episodes, including the genres that you and I focus on in our research.

JCV: Yeah!

SW: Many Brazilian music traditions, such as samba and maracatu, owe a great debt to candomblé. Some of the musicians that developed these genres were and are practitioners of candomblé. And there are plenty of musical characteristics that we can trace to candomblé practice.

JCV: But this is a living spiritual practice, not only a musical ancestor to samba and maracatu.

And our perspectives on candomblé practice are those of outsiders. Although I was born and raised in Brazil, I am not a candomblé practitioner, and my connection to the religion is indirect and musical. I have been studying the music tradition called maracatu de baque virado,” which is rooted in candomblé, since 2010.

SW: And I’m neither Brazilian, nor am I a candomblé practitioner. But as part of my work, I research and teach samba and other Afro-Brazilian music traditions, most of which have connections to candomblé. If we’re going to talk about those traditions, it is really important to highlight the role that candomblé, both as a spiritual tradition and as a set of inherited cultural practices, has had in the history of Brazilian music.

JCV: At the same time, we are not privy to certain knowledge that is protected and reserved for practitioners.

SW: Right. And another important factor is that candomblé practice has roots in Afro-Brazilian communities. That doesn’t mean that all practitioners are Black Brazilians, but many are. And I want to be clear that as a White American, I recognize that I am an outsider to this culture on multiple levels.

JCV: Yes! Although I might be seen as a person of color here in the US (because I'm Latina), I too identify as White in Brazil. If we are going to talk about the music of candomblé, let’s listen to a more traditional “toque de Xangô,” something that you might actually hear as part of a candomblé ceremony.

SW: The toque associated with Xangô is called alujá.

JCV: When we come back, we’ll talk a little bit about the history and traditions of candomblé and some of its musical features.

Audio: Carlinhos D'Oxum, “Alujá” (Youtube)

Candomblé: Origins and Beliefs

SW: Before we get into the musical particularities of candomblé, we should set the stage a bit. Juliana, how would you describe what candomblé is, most simply?

JCV: Candomblé is an Afro-Brazilian religion derived from traditional West African spirituality, that became codified during the early 19th century in Brazil.

SW: Yes, it’s a religion in the sense that it has specific beliefs and rituals, but many describe it as a holistic philosophy of life. That philosophy involves recognizing the interconnectedness of things, the way that the individual is both part of a human community and within a larger universe.

JCV: That interconnectedness is not limited to the living world either. Eguns, ancestors, play a huge role in candomblé worship and daily life.

SW: As you said, this religion didn’t spring from nothing on Brazilian soil. Many of the ideas, tenets, and values came with enslaved people from West and Central Africa starting in the 16th century.

JCV: If you are wondering how this religion survived that journey, one thing to keep in mind is that more enslaved people were brought to Brazil than any other place in the Americas. But they didn’t all come from the same ethnic groups. Upon arriving in Brazil, people were divided into nations depending on the port of embarkation, which meant that Africans from different cultures, ethnic groups, regions, and religious backgrounds were thrown together.

SW: This resulted in a number of different candomblé traditions, which are typically described as nações, or nations.

JCV: Some are associated with the ethnoliguistic group Yoruba, including both the nagô and the ketu traditions that we’ll be discussing in these first few episodes.

SW: And even these words can be confusing, because practitioners use the same words for different things. Ketu typically is used to describe practices in Bahia, which is the largest state in Brazil’s Northeast region. It’s where the original capital of Brazil was under Portuguese colonization. And it’s the place where the largest  number of enslaved people entered the colony. Nagô can be a term referring to Yoruba-derived traditions in general, or sometimes a specific variant, as we’ll talk about in a later episode.

JCV: Exactly. There are other nações, or nations, as well, which sometimes refer to an origin point in Africa and other times a specific development in Brazil.

SW: Right. Enslaved people were forcibly separated from those that spoke the same language or held the same beliefs and thrown together with others from different regions and ethnic groups. This meant that the religions that they brought ended up blending together.

JCV: But at the same time, the final product was not a homogeneous set of beliefs, but a number of different, highly regionalized practices—

SW: —which have also shifted over time.

JCV: So while the various nations have traditions in common, they also have differences.

SW: Right, so different orixás who were venerated in different regions of Africa became part of the same worship practices, in some cases. And others were lost along the way. Of the thousands of orixás worshipped in Africa, only a few hundred made it across the Atlantic. Today only a couple dozen are regularly worshipped.

JCV: It took a while for candomblé to arise as an organized, structured community of practice. Really only in the early 19th century did something like what we have today come together.

SW: The mixture of many disparate practices and beliefs within a single religion is something scholars often call “syncretism.” Though not everyone likes that term. The scholar Luiz Antônio Simas prefers the word “amalgam” to describe this process, for example.

JCV: Like some other afro-diasporic religions, such as santería and vodun, candomblé has also seen some mixture with Catholicism. Sometimes candomblé orixás are syncretized with saints. 

SW: Meaning that practitioners can worship or have iconography associated with, say, São João Batista (in English, St. John the Baptist) but actually be worshipping Xangô.

JCV: Yes, though this kind of syncretism is highly regional, so you might have the same orixá associated with different saints depending on where you are in Brazil. Xangô is São João Batista in some places, but in others he might be associated with São Cristôvão, São Pedro, São Jerônimo.

SW: Right. And what does that look like when we have the syncretism in terms of maybe an idol, for example?

JCV: So, you'd have a statue of a saint, of a catholic saint, say São João Batista, right next to a picture of Xangô, or a picture of someone incorporating Xangô. So they would be right next to each other in a terreiro.

SW: And this aspect of syncretism is often characterized as a strategy of survival or a strategy of resistance. Because the catholic church condemned and repressed candomblé worship, especially during Brazil’s colonial period, practitioners seem to have adopted these associations to preserve their practices, sometimes in a hidden form.

JCV: Even though the first permanent terreiro in Bahia was formed in 1830, it took until a Presidential decree in the mid-1930s for candomblé to be recognized as a legitimate and significant religion in Brazil. And then practitioners had to wait until 1976 for a law protecting the freedom of religion, and thus mandating tolerance for candomblé practices. In spite of that, candomblecistas are still persecuted.

SW: But even so, many erroneously describe candomblé practices as satanism or devil worship or by using other pejorative language. We’ll put a link in the description of this episode to a Washington Post article that describes how candomblé has come under attack from some radical Evangelical Christians in recent years. And when I say “under attack,” I mean literally. One place of worship was actually set on fire.

JCV: There are attacks that even use music. I’m from Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco, which is also in the Brazilian Northeast. And there, I’ve seen churches turn up their volume extremely loud to drown out the sound of maracatu players, in part because these players are candomblecistas.

SW: The word candomblecistas refers to practitioners of candomblé, regardless of role or experience level.

JCV: Beyond that, I have seen prejudice and harassment personally. One of my good friends is a maracatu leader who teaches some candomblé principles along with the music and his family members, who are not candomblecistas, constantly question why people would be interested in learning such a thing. They intentionally don’t use the term candomblé to describe this and instead use pejorative terms like macumba, which roughly translates to “witchcraft.”

SW: This is another reason we wanted to highlight candomblé in these first few episodes. It has long been the target of colonial and colonialist attitudes and, despite the important legacy it has passed on to many Brazilian music forms, is still at risk of persecution and misunderstandings today.

Axé

JCV: Where should we start?

SW: Well, if we are going to talk about candomblé as both a religion and a holistic philosophy of life, we could start with the beliefs that undergird that philosophy, such as axé.

JCV: Axé means the energy or life force. It flows through the visible (or human) world and the invisible world of the orixás and ancestors, known as eguns.

SW: Yeah, it can be channeled through humans, plants, animals, blood, inanimate objects.

JCV: Candomblé ceremonies are designed to create and channel axé. These ceremonies sometimes include animal sacrifice, anointing liquids, animal blood offerings, food offerings, prayer recitation, music, percussion, dance, spirit possession.

SW: And most importantly for us, two of the principal activities for generating axé are music dance, which happen in tandem. Specifically, I’m talking about the drumming of sacred rhythms, the vocalizing of sacred songs, and the choreographed dances this music accompanies.

JCV: Another way to think of it is this: through music and dance, humans communicate with orixás, who are the guardians of axé. The orixás then bestow axé on practitioners, which allows them to thrive and prosper.

Terreiro

SW: Some of you might be wondering where candomblé worship happens.

JCV: Typically, the place of worship is the terreiro, a word that literally means “plot of land,” the space where the religious center is constructed.

SW: Scholars have pointed out that for many candomblecistas, the terreiro is a piece of Africa in Brazil, a recreation of the homeland from which people were taken when enslaved.

JCV: Sometimes a terreiro is called an ilê, meaning “house” or an ilê axé, meaning a house of axé. It is the space through which candomblecistas generate and share axé.

SW: So, let's talk a little bit about what it actually looks like. We're gonna get into this more in another episode, but if you are to walk into a terreiro or ilê, what are you gonna see, basically?

JCV: So in the terreiros that I've been to, there's always a narrow hallway, and on that hallway that's where you'd see the statues I was just talking about.

SW: Statues of Xangô with São João Batista, for example.

JCV: Yes. And that's where people would also leave their offerings on the feet of those statues. And then after that narrow hallway, then you're in a big room that is covered in tile on the floor and on the walls as well, so the sound reverberates on the room. It's just like a constant echo when you're there with the music. There's always a center piece—

SW: —like a pillar that's right in the middle of the room that is sort of the center for all the worship practice.

JCV: Yes. And that's where, when they have ceremonies on Fridays, that's where they put all the offerings that they will eat afterwards. So when they have ceremonies, they share the food as well.

SW: And it's important to keep in mind that this pillar being in the center--it really distinguishes a candomblé terreiro from, like, a Catholic church where there's this hierarchical structure with the altar in the front of the church and things like that. In this case, the ceremony happens in a circle so that there is this—it's called a roda, or circle—and that is seen as an important inheritance of African spiritual practice.

JCV: Yes. And then on the walls you'd see, in this particular terreiro that I am thinking of, you have big photos of the important people: of the babalorixá and ialorixá—

SW: —which are words that you'd never heard before, but we'll explain them later.

JCV: Yes, we'll get to them! Along with the photos, you'll see the thrones, so there are thrones where the priests, if you will, that's where they sit after and before the ceremonies.

SW: Another difference between candomblé and something like catholicism is that candomblé is decentralized.

JCV: There is no “pope” of candomblé.

SW: Right. Terreiros are independent. This means that a given terreiro follows their own specific practices and rituals. Though different terreiros may have many things in common, they can also vary greatly.

JCV: And as we’ll see, this is specifically true of the music. Two terreiros may play songs or rhythms with the same name that are otherwise completely different.

SW: This actually makes sense, if you think about it. Given that candomblé survived in Brazil through surreptitious means, it would have been difficult to have an overarching governing body survive along with that.

JCV: First, people were separated from others from the same ethnolingustic groups, forcing religious practices to meld and change. Then these new versions of African religion developed in isolation from one another, leading to major differences.

People

SW: Despite the wide variety of specific practices, there are some commonalities that we can observe and discuss, at least with respect to the two varieties we are gonna discuss in these couple of episodes.

JCV: For example, there are certain roles that we tend to see from terreiro to terreiro.

SW: So, who tends to be present in the terreiro for ceremonies and the like?

JCV: First of all, the eguns, or ancestors of the people of the nação. Those who have been part of that terreiro and those that practitioners carry with them.

SW: That makes sense, given the importance of ancestors in candomblé, as we discussed earlier.

JCV: Yes. Also, there are the people who organize and execute the ceremony—ogãs, who are the men, and ekedis, who are the women.

SW: So how do they dress, the ogãs and the ekedis?

JCV: They are all dressed in white. And everyone in the terreiro is also wearing white. They really reinforce this idea of white clothing even as we were interviewing some folks for this episode—because these interviews happened on a Friday—they asked me to dress in white so that the interviews could happen in a respectful way.

SW: Oh, I didn't even know that. That's really interesting. So who is the spiritual leader of the terreiro?

JCV: If the spiritual leader is a woman, then she is usually called a ialorixá—

SW: —which would we translate that as “priestess”?

JCV: We could, yeah, that’s pretty close. She is also sometimes called a mãe de santo.

SW: Portuguese for “mother of the saint.”

JCV: Saint, or santo, referring here for the orixás.

SW: Ah right, because we talked earlier about how orixás can be syncretized with saints so the term santo can just be a generic term for an orixá.

JCV: Yes.

SW: And if the spiritual leader is a man?

JCV: Then he would be a babalorixá or pai de santo.

SW: Ah, I see the pattern. Babalorixá is Yoruba and pai de santo is Portuguese. With the word “orixá” in there, can I assume that babalorixá means something like “father of the saint” as well?

JCV: That’s my understanding. And similarly, iá means mother.

SW: Some terreiros also have a secondary spiritual leader, right?

JCV: Yes, called a iakekerê or mãe pequena in the case of a woman—

SW: —and a babakekerê or pai pequeno in the case of a man?

JCV: That’s it, you got it. The iakekerê or babakekerê would be available to lead a spiritual practice if the ialorixá or babalorixá were unavailable to, for some reason.

SW: Let’s talk about the musicians that are present—it is a music podcast after all.

JCV: Sure! Well, there is drumming and vocalizing. Depending on the tradition, all of the drummers might be called alabês. Sometimes just the lead drummer is an alabê.

SW: And what do they play?

JCV: Typically there are three drums, which are played with the palm of the hands and sticks.

SW: Depending on the exact tradition, these drums have different names. But in most cases, each drum carries its own rhythm, which it plays as a loop or ostinato.

JCV: When all three drums play together, they create an interlocking pattern of different rhythms, which music scholars refer to as polyrhythm.

SW: Polyrhythm is a common feature of afro-diasporic musics. A group of instrumentalists laying different looped rhythmic cells that create a rhythmic texture is something that you hear in contexts like West African traditional music, African American funk, and many Latin American musics, like Cuban son, Colombian cumbia, and others. And, of course, we’ll also be listening for polyrhythms when we discuss other Brazilian styles, such as samba and the maracatu that you play!

JCV: Indeed. 

SW: In addition to the drums, there is one more instrument, an iron bell, either called gan or agogô

JCV: The gan is a wrought iron bell.

SW: And the agogô can be wrought iron as well, but because it has been adopted for many Brazilian popular styles, there is also a mass produced steel version that is more common.

JCV: The bell is another direct inheritance of West African musical practice.

SW: In the Ewe tradition of eastern Ghana, for example, they play a double headed bell called gankogui.

JCV: The bell often serves as a kind of time keeper, the rhythmic pattern around which the drummers and dancers organize themselves.

SW: Indeed, but the bell rarely plays the pulse, though. Typically it plays a syncopated pattern, that the drummers and dancers recognize and play off of.

Toques

JCV: In candomblé, the drumming ensemble plays a different rhythm—

SW: —or toque—

JCV: —for each of the orixás. These toques accompany dances, often ones that re-enact stories associated with the orixás. The drums act as voices that communicate with the orixás and call them to the ceremony, where they sometimes possess initiates.

SW: The alabê or alabês need to know the toques for all of the orixás that are worshipped as part of the worship sequence.

JCV: We’ll explain more about that in a later episode, though.

SW: Let’s listen to another toque for Xangô, an alujá, now that we know what to listen for. Let’s try to hear the three drums and the agogô and start to recognize the loops they are playing.

Audio: Candomblé, Uma Família de Axé, “Alujá” (Youtube)

Candomblé in Popular Music

JCV: Now that we’ve talked about the meaning of candomblé and some of its musical features, why don’t we return to those popular songs from the beginning that speak about Xangô? I’m curious to dig a bit deeper into how they connect with candomblé.

SW: Let’s! I say we start with Baden Powell and Vinícius de Moraes. Theirs was certainly not the first popular song to make reference to orixás, but it certainly made a big splash and has had a lasting influence!

SW: That's from Baden & Vinícius's 1966 album called Os Afro-Sambas.

JCV: And that's kind of redundant, isn't it? To call it "afro" samba?

SW: Yeah.

JCV: That was a record that had an enormous reach both within and outside of Brazil. Can we talk about the two artists, for a second?

SW: Yeah. Who's Baden Powell?

JCV: He grew up in Rio, Rio de Janeiro, and he was one of the most technically adept and celebrated guitarists. Some call him the greatest of all time.

SW: And he came of age during Rio’s Bossa Nova craze in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And he was certainly influenced by bossa nova in the way that he plays. Exemplifying the difficulty of translating racial categories and attitudes from Brazil to the U.S., Baden is sometimes included in lists of Black artists, but some say he is not “from the Afro-Brazilian end of the racial-cultural spectrum in Brazil.”

JCV: And regardless of the racialized nature of his physical characteristics, he was an outsider to candomblé, interested in its sounds and symbols, but not an initiate.

SW: Right. He traveled to Bahia as a young man, and he was inspired to incorporate the music that he heard in candomblé houses into his own recordings.

JCV: Yep. How about the other one, Vinícius?

SW: Well, Vinícius de Moraes was a diplomat and a poet, and he came from a very wealthy family, and he gave himself the nickname the “blackest white man in Brazil,” which from our perspective today is pretty... gross.

JCV: Yes. He certainly celebrated Afro-Brazilian culture, for example with the play Black Orpheus (or Orfeu Negro) which was made into two different movies.

SW: Right, and people have written about how Vinícius plays a part in celebrating Afro-Brazilian culture and also as an agent of Brazil’s structural racism. So he benefited from his skin color and at the same time he did certain good things within Brazilian culture.

JCV: Yeah, it's complicated. How about the lyrics?

SW: The references in the lyrics are fairly oblique, they are not really genuine ideas that come from candomblé practice, more “inspired by” candomblé. For instance, he sings about Xangô, but he doesn't really say anything that has anything to do with Xangô as we understand his personality.

JCV: Yeah. And they start the recording with a bell, right? So there's something there that is musically inspired?

SW: Yeah, I would say in some ways the music is actually more reflective of candomblé practice than the lyrics in this case. But we're gonna talk about specific bell patterns in the next episode, and if you were to go back and compare the bell patterns that we hear in most candomblé ceremonies particularly in Bahia, it really wouldn't be the bell pattern that they have here, and that is actually more reflective of the way these kinds of sounds are used in Brazilian popular music versus, say, religious music.

JCV: Yeah.

SW: So I wanna talk about the song "Xangô" by Hot e Oreia that you really liked.

JCV: Yes, I did love that one.

SW: So I thought that the musical connections in that song were maybe a little less obvious.

JCV: Yeah, I mean, they were using synthesizers and like, kind of referring to electronic styles.

SW: Yeah, the vocal style even reminds me of a little bit more of, like, the funk music that you'll hear in Rio.

JCV: Yeah, and then the lyrics also kind of refer to Xangô.

SW: Yeah, so, again, we don't really have references to Xangô's personality, but they do say "kaô,” which is part of the saudação "kaô kabiecilê."

JCV: And this song is pretty new too.

SW: Yeah, it's brand new. And so it sort of shows how far you can get. You can take the candomblé tradition into popular music and you can get pretty far away, while still having a tether.

JCV: And we also had Fabiana Cozza's “Kabiecilê.”

SW: I think of the three songs, this one hews closest to candomblé.

JCV: Yeah, even the title of her album, Dos Santos, is both Fabiana's surname and also makes a reference to that idea we were just talking about—mãe-de-santo, pai-de-santo—of saints, of the saints.

SW: Right, people refer to Xangô and the whole squad as santos. Now, here we do have that rhythm of the agogô that we're gonna hear in our next episode and really dissect. And that sort of undergirds everything; it works here as more of a timeline that holds the music together.

JCV: And how about the other instruments? You know this recording better than I do.

SW: Well, there are atabaques, which are the kinds of drums that you hear in candomblé practice in Bahia. There's the agogô, as we mentioned; and there's the agbê or xequerê, some kind of shaker instrument. And then there are also other instruments on top, there are some string instruments that are referencing probably a berimbau--which is an instrument that we'll have to talk about in our capoeira episodes.

JCV: Yeah.

SW: But what I really wanna talk about is the lyrics, because I think what really what Fabiana Cozza does here is highlight elements of Xangô's personality in her lyrics. Do you wanna read a couple of them and we can translate them?

JCV: Yeah!  É o toque da baqueta batendo tambor.

SW: He is the rhythm of the stick hitting the drum.

JCV: É o som da pedra preta que a pedra rolou.

SW: He's the sound of the black rolling stone.

JCV: É a ponta do martelo.

SW: He's the head of the hammer.

JCV: É o cabo do machado.

SW: He's the handle of the axe.

JCV: É o ronco do trovão que é a voz de Xangô.

SW: He's the crash of thunder that is the voice of Xangô.

JCV: É o líder da tribuna.

SW: He's the leader of the courts.

JCV: É o chefe da justiça.

SW: He's the lord of justice.

JCV: É o prumo da balança.

SW: He's the balance of the scales.

JCV: É Xangô Agodô.

SW: He is Xangô Agodô.

SW: And then later on she says "Kabiecilê" which is the saudação, it says "come salute the king," and she really describes who Xangô is.

JCV: I would say this is the closest to what you would find in a candomblé house, compared to the other popular songs that we listened to.

SW: Yeah, absolutely.

JCV: It’s interesting how these examples show a spectrum of engagement with candomblé. 

SW: Yes. The Baden/Vinícius song is clearly “inspired by” candomblé imagery and music, but it ventures pretty far from the details, whether musical or lyrical.

JCV: The most generous reading is that it brought candomblé into the public eye as a set of positive signifiers. The less generous reading is that it’s an example of appropriation.

SW: Whereas Fabiana Cozza is staying pretty faithful to the stories. She describes elements of Xangô’s personality and really highlights the instruments of candomblé.

JCV: With a few additions, of course.

SW: Of course. It’s also interesting how much those two songs have in common melodically. I don’t know if they are both based on a particular candomblé melody or if Fabiana was influenced by Baden or if it’s a coincidence.

JCV: I’m not sure either, but it is an interesting commonality. Meanwhile, Hot e Oreia are somewhere in between. The references are processed through popular styles, of course, but there are some unmistakable nods to candomblé music and worship.

Candomblé in the Black Community

SW: These recordings bring up one more topic that we should discuss before moving on.

JCV: What’s that?

SW: Well, all, in their way, speak to the importance of candomblé as a signifier of Blackness and the experience of Black people in Brazil.

JCV: That’s true. They recall, in their connection to this spiritual practice that survived the enslavement of millions, the long history of persecution and discrimination of Black Brazilians.

SW: Which is fairly common for candomblé. Practitioners have often been involved in the struggle for rights for Black Brazilians, whether in the celebration of Afro-Brazilian culture or in more overt political movements.

JCV: Right, just to highlight one factor: Black women, statistically, are most likely to occupy the lowest class positions in Brazilian society and work the least lucrative and prestigious jobs. Things like maids, nannies, sex workers. 

SW: Even though these professions should not be seen as “less than” they come with societal stigma and often limit people’s economic opportunities.

JCV: In candomblé, though, women can occupy important positions as ialorixás and iakekerês that garner both power and respect. Candomblé, in a way, offers a counter narrative to the one that accompanies and justifies the intersectional discrimination Black women face in Brazil.

SW: And even though women are underrepresented as composers and instrumentalists in the history of Brazilian popular music, that doesn’t mean that women didn’t play extremely important roles in the history of that music. One such figure is Tia Cita, who was a baiana—

JCV: —meaning a woman from the state of Bahia—

SW: —who moved to Rio in the late 19th century and created a space in her home for both the practice of candomblé and the exploration of musical ideas that would lead to the development of samba. Tia Ciata’s leadership in the religious community extended into secular music practice and helped ensure the birth of one of Brazil’s most enduring cultural practices.

JCV: And bring this forward to the 21st century, it’s no coincidence that Luedji Luna is featured on the Hot e Oreia song that we heard. Luedji is a Black woman from Bahia who has continued to work with candomblé signifiers in her music, but she has also spoken out strongly about the racism that Black people suffer in Brazil. In her music, she highlights candomblé as a means of escaping stereotypes.

Audio: Luedji Luna, "Uanga" (Youtube) (Spotify)

SW: Meanwhile, Fabiana Cozza has gone on to participate in the documentary AmarElo, directed by the musician Emicida. The film is about the importance of Afro-Brazilian culture and its survival against difficult odds in a racist country. Candomblé, as you would expect, is a recurrent theme.

Audio: Emicida feat. Pastor Henrique Vieira, Fabiana Cozza, Pastoras do Rosário, "Principia" (Youtube) (Spotify)

JCV: It should be clear that these songs are just a few examples of candomblé showing up in popular secular music.

SW: Indeed, even if we were to limit our discussion just to songs that mention Xangô, we would never have enough time to talk about all of them.

JCV: Yeah, and imagine if we added the songs about Iemanjá, Iansã, Nanã, Oxóssi, Exu, Oxalá…

SW: True. But we should still go into some more details about candomblé in its sacred form.

JCV: That’s why we are going to do two more episodes, right away, about the music of candomblé. 

SW: We’ll continue to focus on the Yoruba-derived variants, but we’ll look at two different sets of practice, one focusing on the most widely disseminated form, the one that you are most likely to encounter in Bahia.

JCV: And the one focusing on the practices in a particular terreiro in Recife that is connected to the music of maracatu that I play.

SW: I can’t wait!

JCV: I am so looking forward to the next episodes! Well, thanks for this, Schuyler!

SW: Thank you, Juliana. I learned so much. This was great.

JCV: Esse foi massa.

Credits

Audio: Sammy Bananas, “Transcontinental Baião (Carioca Remix)”

SW: Massa is written, produced and edited by Juliana Cantarelli Vita and me, Schuyler Whelden. For episode transcriptions and links, 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 essfoimassa@gmail.com. Our intro music is by Som da Massa and our outro music is by Sammy Bananas. Please join us in two weeks for our second episode on candomblé, which will investigate the drums and rhythms of candomblé ketu in the state of Bahia.

*Photo: "Saída de yawo” by Roger Cipó, Brasil de Fato