Reinventing Africa
&
Remixing Hybridity
Blocos Afro in Bahia
Mangue Beat in Pernambuco
Blocos Afro in Bahia
 Reinventing Africa and Black Identity
 Ilê Aiyê 1970s
 Olodum 1980s
 Axé Music 1990s
Reinventing Africa
and Black Identity
 From Bloco de Índio to Bloco Afro
 Civil Rights and the Black Atlantic
 Contesting Brazil’s Racial Democracy
Ilê Aiyê (House of Life)
 Formed 1974
 Black Power/Black
Consciousness
 Carnival for the black
community
“Que Bloco É Esse ?”
What bloco is that?
I’d like to know.
It’s the black world
That we come to sing for you
Sung during
Carnival in 1975
YouTube
We’re crazy blacks
We’re really all right
We have kinky hair
We are black power
White man, if you only knew
The value of the black man
You’d take a bath of tar
So black you would be too
I’ll not teach you my trickery
Nor even my philosophy
Light to the blind man
Is the cane of Saint Lucy
Ilê Aiyê’s “Afro” Sound
 Voices and Percussion
 Slowed-down samba mixed with ijexá
 Heavy on the low surdo drums
 Participatory style developed in
community rehearsals
Olodum and SambaReggae
 Anti-racism and social justice
 Neguinho do Samba and sambareggae
Olodum’s Anti-Racism
Bob Marley
More than a singer, a militant!
Olodum against racism
Neguinho do Samba
 Olodum’s lead drummer
and head of percussion,
1980s
 Mixed Caribbean rhythms
into samba to create
samba-reggae
YouTube
“Faraó, Divindade do Egito”
(By Luciano Gomes dos Santos)
Tutankamon, Akahenaton
Pelourinho, a small community
United by Olodum in the bonds of
fraternity
Awaken yourself to Egyptian culture in
Brazil
Instead of braided hair
We will see the turbans of Tutankamon
And liberty will fill our heads
The black community asks for equality
Leaving separatism behind
Axé Music
 Blocos afro and Bahian popular music
 Olodum and Paul Simon
 Daniela Mercury
“The Obvious Child”
(By Paul Simon)
 Paul Simon travels to Bahia in 1988
and hears Olodum’s drummers
 Rhythm of the Saints (1990)
YouTube
“O Canto da Cidade”
The song of the city
(By Daniela Mercury, Tote Gira)
1992
“I am the color of this city
The song of this city is
mine”
YouTube
Mangue Beat in
Pernambuco
 Remixing hybridity: fusion of the
northeast and global sounds
 Chico Science & Nação Zumbi
 Mestre Ambrósio
Remixing Hybridity
 Mangue Manifesto: Linking ecology to
economic and cultural reality in Recife
 Revival of cultural heritage
 Black cultural awareness and the
Maracatu
Chico Science &
Nação Zumbi




1990-93 Lamento
Negro to Nação
Zumbi
Da Lama ao Caos
(1994)
Afrociberdelia (1996)
Chico dies (1997)
Alfaia Drums
 Maracatu drum
 Recife identity
 Acoustic power (weight)
“Maracatu Atômico”
(by Nelson Jacobina and George Mautner)
YouTube1
YouTube2
Mestre Ambrósio


Leader Siba studied and researched rabeca with
cavalo marinho musicians in Pernambuco
Filtered out the foreign/highlighted the local
YouTube
“Forró Pé-de-Calçada”
Forró at the Foot of the Sidewalk
(By Sérgio “Siba” Veloso)
YouTube
So I went to a forró at the foot of a hill
In this land, never have I ever seen something like that
So I went to a forró at the foot of a hill
How hot it was, a sensational baiano
An old rabeca of pine from the grove
Spread the baiano over the room
The pandeiro shook the secret scene
I saw a cloud of dust rise from the floor
Today I play forró in the city
In the midst of confusion going the wrong way
I went to the woods and returned to the city
From a caboclo I discovered my situation
Rabeca come and don’t abandon me
Zabumba, shake the earth, devour the ground
When time is gone
Transform the city into the country