Revised Concept for Dissertation Study: Focus on the Feminine in Candomblé
Revised Concept for Dissertation Study:
Changing Rhythms, Changing Myths: Drumming as Transformative Agent in Brazilian Candomblé Ritual and Popular Music
Part I: A Brief Introduction to the Background of Candomblé
The Candomblé group of religions was birthed from Africa and brought to the new world by slaves who survived the trans-Atlantic crossing. After reaching their destined new home, Brazil, and being forced to convert to Catholicism, they continued to worship their African deities in new, innovative ways. Although ritual innovation will be a key area of research, maintaining tradition through remembering the origins of ritual practice as well as the experience of slavery is also paramount to the study. Paul Christopher Johnson, historian of religions, elaborates that Candomblé is a tradition that transmits knowledge orally and ritually, through “bodies-as-secrets” (Johnson 6). The ritual is the “place” where embodied knowledge is passed down, generation after generation. Without a deep connection to its past, to memories of its African homeland, Candomblé would not possess the tremendous innovative ability to transform its myths and rituals.
Part II: Research Questions & Hypotheses
Question 1: In the Afro-Brazilian communities of Salvador and Cachoeira, Bahia, Brazil, how do drumming and rhythm-making contribute to both continual innovation and the preservation of African traditions in Candomblé ritual and popular music?
The drum is the central heartbeat that regulates the ritual universe in Candomblé: each orixá is called down in a specific order via their own drum rhythm pattern and song. The dancers, who are also signaled by the drummers, only dance the movements for the orixá that is being celebrated at the moment; otherwise chaos and pandemonium will ensue.
Anthropologist Victor Turner, who spent years studying the Ndembu of Northwestern Zambia, heard ritual drumming at almost all hours of the day and night during his fieldwork: “the term for ritual performance is ng'oma, which literally means ‘drum,’ and where three drums, as in Umbanda , are considered indispensable components of all ritual” (Turner, V. Anthropology, 51).
In Turner’s essay, “Social Dramas in Brazilian Umbanda: The Dialectics of Meaning,” he discusses the “meta-languages” of cultural performances as “genres of cultural performance” that “are not simple mirrors but magical mirrors of social reality: they exaggerate, invert, re-form, magnify, minimize, dis-color, re-color, even deliberately falsify, chronicled events. They resemble Rilke's ‘hall of mirrors’” (Turner Anthropology, 42). In this statement, Turner supports the importance of fluidity, innovation and play in ritual that is largely the foundational creative aspect seen in Brazil as well as other African Diaspora cultures around the world.
Percussion instruments are also the predominant driving force behind Brazilian popular music. It can be argued that through the musical political movement, Tropicália in the 1960’s, drums connected the sacred and the profane in such a way as to help shape the collective identity of a people in a particular place–Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. Christopher Dunn, a scholar of popular music who researched the Tropicália movement, and its primary founders Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, supports the theory that cultural, religious practices and political perspectives can combine to create complex new musical forms.
[…] the relationship between Tropicália and Brazilian music informed by cultural practices of the African Diaspora and its attendant discourses of racial pride and social critique. After the advent of recording technologies, the musical complexes of the Black Atlantic circulated widely in the twentieth century, generating a transnational diasporic imagination based on comparable, albeit distinct, histories of slavery, colonialism, and racial oppression. (Dunn 74)
Question 2: What is the significance of the legacy of slavery to identity creation in the communities of Salvador and Cachoeira, Bahia, Brazil? How are stories of slavery an integral narrative woven into contemporary manifestations of Brazilian Candomblé, ritual drumming and popular music?
Slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888. Still, its legacy dwells underground, in the unconscious collective psyche, reappearing and disappearing in image, music and ritual expressions. The voice and freedom of expression, whether in music, or ritual, are the vehicles of identity, of self-creation. In Slavery and Identity: Ethnicity, Gender, and Race in Salvador, Brazil 1808-1888, Mieko Nishida postulates that the making of a self, is a constantly changing and innovating enterprise, even when the circumstances are oppressive.
This creativity not only shines through popular forms of music, such as samba-reggae and pagode, but is also revealed in the drumming, dance and rituals of Candomblé. Even before arrival, the slaves were given name cards with their new Christian/Portuguese identities. This insidious act was the first step in making the slaves forget who they were and where they came from. New cultural groups in Brazil have since continuously transformed the African music and rituals brought by their African descendants into altered forms that are now prevalent in the international arena.
In Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, a young woman steps onto a stage. She is wearing a slave muzzle. She begins to drum and dance. She is a member of the all-female, Brazilian musical group Didá Banda Feminina.
The face-mask is an image that many would like to forget – it is the image of slavery, its oppression, its silencing. The legendary Brazilian slave, Anastácia, wore this leather face mask because of her rebelliousness and inability to tolerate “the imposition of a prejudiced society” (Weinoldt 1998). She had to be silenced. The image of Anastácia, which became an icon of women’s strength, calm and serenity in the midst of immense pain, emerged during a 1994 march on the International Day of the Woman.
In her life, Anastácia was very beautiful and consequently the object of envy, prejudice, and sexual abuse […] She was muzzled for speaking openly of her desires, but even after that, she continued to perform miracles. Her muzzle was then removed. But she was ill and did not have much time for her good deeds. After developing gangrene, she died. (Weinoldt 1998)
Anastácia’s image and mythology are held with the highest devotion by some and ambivalence by others. Many activists in Brazil see Anastácia as a step backward in the fight for the expression of the Afro-Brazilian voice.
The face mask emphasizes victimization. Anastácia is the image of the disempowered woman, women who are silenced, tortured […] Where do you get if you call upon people to identify with a suffering slave? We must go beyond slavery. (Burdick 162)
For many Afro-Brazilian women, the iconography of Anastácia holds the pain and suffering that slaves endured with dignity and serenity. These women, who are usually educationally and economically disadvantaged, identify with Anastácia because they feel she understands their pain, their own timidity and uncertainty of using their voices. She is not a historical figure, and no evidence of her existence has been found. However, she remains one of the most popular and beloved saints throughout Brazil.
Didá Banda Feminina is one of a growing number of Afro-Brazilian female musical groups to enter the world music stage in the past seven years. Upon arrival on the music scene, the newspaper Jornal do Brasil publicly ridiculed the group for wearing Anastácia’s face mask (Burdick 151). The silencing of slavery and of women’s voices is being challenged by this group of young women, yet the way they are doing it, in how they are expressing their perspective is denounced by some in public, including activists for Afro-Brazilian women’s rights.
As much as some Brazilian activists wish to “move beyond slavery” their efforts seem largely unsuccessful and in many ways promote the very problem they are fighting against. However, they are not ignoring or denying slavery. The legacy and silencing of slavery is subtle though, and it seems that the voice of the underprivileged Afro-Brazilian woman or man continues to be silenced on the national and international level. The way out of this labyrinth is not cut and dry, nor is it straight and direct. Brazil is not a racial paradise: the current research done by scholars of Brazilian culture, music and politics, many of whom I included in this proposal, make this fact clear.
Question 3: Have women’s ritual roles changed within the traditions of Brazilian Candomblé, and if so, how are the changes reflected in the drumming and rhythm-making of both ritual and popular music?
Traditionally women were forbidden to perform on percussion instruments during ritual, however, it has shown up in studies¬–such as Clarence Bernard Henry’s dissertation discussed in the methodologies section of this proposal–that traditional “feminine” roles, such as trance dancer, are shifting to include new occupations traditionally held only by men, such as ritual drummer. This will suggest that in spite of its tightly structured hierarchy and initiation rites, rules in Candomblé traditions are often re-aligned to revision its rituals and myths.
According to Paul Christopher Johnson, women have been forbidden to perform as drummers in Candomblé ritual because their very nature made them unfit to carry the role.
“Women are cool, reproductive, and contained–both in body and in the terreiro –while men carry the heat of bodies overindulgently open in the male domain of the street” (Johnson 44).
Women in the religion represent the earth that is penetrated by “heavenly men” (Johnson 44).
So far, I have found no theory to suggest that women in Candomblé feel deprived or discriminated against in relation to their ritual role as “receivers.” In fact, mostly women are heads of the terreiros in both Salvador and Cachoeira, and hold a great deal of power within the tradition. During the preliminary fieldwork trip I am undertaking in January 2006, it will be revealing to hear what the women of Candomblé have to say about change in ritual roles and women drummers performing in ceremonies.
Part III: Methodologies to be Employed in the Study
Archetypal Psychology
James Hillman, the founder of archetypal psychology, “re-visioned” Jungian psychology and brought image and soul to the forefront of psychic reality, transformation and healing. Many of his works can be applied to the study of Candomblé, including Re-Visioning Psychology and The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, especially when interpreting the phenomena of the orixás.
One particular way the methodology fits this study is how Hillman approaches images; he stays with the image and allows it to have a life and voice of its own. Hillman de-emphasizes the egocentricity of the personal psyche and opens up the archetype to its multidimensionality. This aspect of archetypal psychology is referred to as “befriending the image.” “Befriending” the poetic images that are connected to drumming, myth and ritual allows for many perspectives to come forward, keeping to the polytheistic nature of Candomblé itself. In a related concept, called “personifying,” Hillman prefers to gestalt an entire myth within his praxis. In other words, do not just identify with an orixá, such as Xangô, god of thunder, personify using other secondary characters in the myth, story or legend. For Hillman, archetypes are inherently polytheistic and multivalent, two qualities existing in abundance in the Candomblé traditions.
Furthermore, an archetypal psychological approach opens up the images of Candomblé in order to “see through” them into such contemporary arenas as popular music and digital music sharing. For example, in a November 2004 issue of Wired magazine interview with Gilberto Gil, Brazil’s Minister of Culture, music sharing technologies and open source computer programming were the topics of discussion. A practicing believer of Candomblé, Gil is internationally famous as one of the founders of Tropicália (alongside Caetano Veloso); a popular form of Brazilian music that was part of a political movement against the stereotypical images of the black “primitive” and the notion that media and art forms imported from the United States were superior. “Gil’s repudiation of the stereotypical black musician who is supposed to play samba amounts to a brazen critique of dominant cultural paradigms” (Dunn 79).
Gil thinks that opening the borders of multicultural music through technology is not only advantageous, but inevitable:
“A world opened up by communications cannot remain closed up in a feudal vision of property [...] No country, not the US, not Europe, can stand in the way of it. It's a global trend. It's part of the very process of civilization. It's the semantic abundance of the modern world, of the postmodern world - and there's no use resisting it” (Dibbell 2004).
Gil’s vision interestingly mirrors the cultural openness that started with the formation of Candomblé, perhaps as a religion of resistance against slavery and oppression.
Phenomenology
Phenomenologist Edward S. Casey bridges the fields of archetypal psychology and philosophy in order to show how imagination and memory work together as co-creators of image within the grounding of place or “placescapes:” “The places of landscape––“placescapes”––provide a circumambience, a setting, for archetypes as well as for structures of presentation” (Casey, Spirit xx). Casey’s sensibility of “place” is concrete and substantial, not literal. Places and landscapes exist in the physical world and at the same time exist psychologically within the human psyche.
Candomblé is a transcendent tradition that allows for deep, philosophical reflection and Casey’s Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World lays out a phenomenological approach that is appropriate for this study. His is a viable methodology because it unpacks the mystery of why “being-in-place” holds so much power over humanity by means of analyzing how the place-world is the primary source of the psyche’s outpouring of images. In particular, Casey makes the point of how forced exile can be the most painful form of separation, which is highly relevant because of the transatlantic crossing African slaves made to come to Brazil.
“As Freud, Bachelard, and Proust all suggest, to refind place...we may need to return, if not in actual fact then in memory or imagination, to the very earliest places we have known” (Casey, Getting x).
In the case of Candomblé, its exiled practitioners got “back into place” by reconnecting to their ancestral homeland through ritual. Even with a strong connection to Africa, Brazil has fully developed into its own “placescape,” with its own history, its own music and its own diverse ritual and religious practices.
Ethnomusicology
Clarence Bernard Henry specifically studied drumming with Candomblé master drummers in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil while researching his dissertation, Religious and Musical Expressions of Candomblé in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and Los Angeles, California. One of his most intriguing discoveries is how the role of women in these traditions is changing. One of the changes he noted was that there were a few women being trained in ritual drumming, although they were not yet allowed to perform on drums during ritual.
This dissertation’s fieldwork design closely mirrors Henry’s on many points, such as the focus on individual musicians in Candomblé ritual drumming. However, the main difference is the focus on the feminine and the mythological and depth psychological aspects of Candomblé, as opposed to its ethnomusicological aspects. The interviews and observations will emphasize story, image and myth, and drumming will be analyzed as a model for ritual and social transformation, instead of pure musical presentation.
During the proposed fieldwork, I will undertake drum lessons to learn Candomblé rhythms and chants from women drummers at Didá’s school of music. Didá is a music school, a social program and a drum troupe, which gave rise to the all-female percussion group Didá Banda Feminina.
Ritual Studies
The drum in Candomblé will itself be analyzed as the quintessential musical instrument of trance inducement; the drum is constructed as a liminal entity that borders the thresholds of many worlds– it is part of the vegetal world, through its body made of wood; it is part of the animal world, through its head (the area which is struck by hands or sticks) made from an animal’s hide; it is a member of the mineral world through the attachment of metallic bells. The drums contain, direct and guide all entities within the ritual time-space of the terreiro; the orixás, participants, and the trance dancers can safely explore other dimensions of reality and drop their mundane, ordinary personas. While in trance, the practitioners both embody and personify the archetypes of the orixás, through rhythms and dance movements.
In this interim of "liminality," the possibility exists of standing aside not only from one's own social position but from all social positions and of formulating a potentially unlimited series of alternative social arrangements. (Turner, V. Dramas, 13-14)
Part IV: The Study’s Impact on Mythological Studies & Other Disciplines
This study will make an important contribution to mythological studies as well as the related disciplines depth psychology and psychoanalysis. Race studies in particular have been neglected in these fields, especially the subjects of slavery and the “black-white” opposition. Michael Vannoy Adams, author of The Multicultural Imagination: “Race,” Color, and the Unconscious, asserts: “I have been struck by the fact that the word “race” occurs so infrequently in the indexes of psychoanalytic books and journals. With the exception of anti-Semitism, racism is not a topic that has attracted much psychoanalytic attention” (Adams xx).
In the field of ethnomusicology there seems to be a lack of focused material written about women drummers in Candomblé. This vacuum of information is due mainly to the fact that there have not been many, if any, women drummers performing in Candomblé ritual until the past five or six years. This dissertation will devote as much as a third of its pages to document the history of women drummers in Bahia and how they are affecting change in both ritual and social settings.
The field study will address racism, globalism and women’s issues in a reflexive, post-modern approach, where the scholar will act as both observer and participant in the rhythm-making practices of women drummers in Bahia.
The knowledge gained from the study will be applicable to what is happening with “race” in the United States. Slavery is just one of many unpleasant topics that have been swept under the rug. One need only look at the aftermath of hurricane Katrina to see how a lack of monetary means and education can shape the way a cultural group is viewed by the very people who are in a position to help. Watching the masses of people getting on planes and buses to leave Louisiana opened the eyes of many Americans, as well as those of people abroad. In the rush of advancing technology and ruthless monetary gain, these people were forgotten. A cross-cultural paradigm shift will need to occur on both national and global levels to rectify the problem–moving beyond slavery or denying its historical fact is not going to heal this old, gaping wound.
Part V: Fieldwork Plans
Preliminary Fieldwork Trip to Salvador and Cachoeira, Bahia, Brazil
January 20, 2006 - March 7, 2006
Since Brazil is the center of Candomblé, its birthplace, all of the fieldwork for this study will be focused there. I plan to go to Salvador and Cachoeira, Bahia, Brazil to begin to make key contacts, build trust with informants and acclimate to the area. I have contacted, via email, women drummers who have been trained in ritual drumming and who may or may not be forbidden from actually performing during rituals. Specifically, members from female popular music groups will be interviewed. One of those bands is Didá Banda Feminina, who were brought together by the creator of samba-reggae, Neguinho do Samba, a man.
The town of Cachoeira boasts some of the most traditional terreiros in the state of Bahia. In particular there is a group of approximately twenty women, mostly between the ages of fifty and seventy, called the Irmandade da Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte, The Sisterhood of Our Lady of the Good Death, which I plan to interview. The Sisterhood is one of Bahia’s (and possibly Candomblé’s) oldest confraternities that is devoted to and run by women. It is speculated that the confraternity came into existence in 1820 and once had over 200 members. The rites of initiation and the inner workings of the group are still secret, and as yet have not become the subject of any ethnographic studies. My questions for the group are centered around the transformation of Candomblé over the years and how they envision its future, its connection to the Roman-Catholic Church and its embracing of African traditions.
I will observe festivals and rituals in Salvador and Cachoeira, Bahia that correspond to the different orixás. Rituals take place frequently in terreiros, which will allow for many opportunities to observe how each liturgy varies in style and content from place to place. The festival of Iemanjá takes place on February 2, 2006 and Carnaval occurs from February 23 – 28, 2006.
It is vital to this study to observe the rituals and festivals of Candomblé in Bahia, Brazil, the place of origin, because the dissertation will focus on current transformations of Candomblé ritual, such as the possibility of women drummers performing in ceremonies. As of yet, there is little or no written documentation of women drummers in Candomblé.
Research Areas: Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Visitation Length: 6 months
Visitation Dates: September 2006 – April 2007
A Partial List of Repositories, Museums and Terreiros:
Universidade Federal da Bahia. Biblioteca Central, Escola de Musica (Central Library, School of Music)
Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janiero
Museum of Sacred Art, Salvador, Bahia
Housed in the 17th century church and convent of Santa Teresa, the Museum of Sacred Art contains one of the largest collections of sacred art in Latin America.
Afro-Brazilian Museum, Salvador, Bahia
Located in the former Faculty of Medicine building, this museum has a fascinating collection of objects that highlight the strong African influence on Bahian culture, including musical instruments, masks, costumes, carvings and other artifacts that are part of the local Candomblé religion.
Pierre Verger Foundation, Salvador, Bahia
The Pierre Verger Foundation features a photographic gallery of eight themes particular to the city: samba, architecture, carnival, capoeira, Candomblé, port, sleeping bodies and street scenes. All photographs have been selected with the intention of recalling the atmosphere Verger discovered in Bahia when he arrived in the late 1940s.
Terreiros: I have a list of over one hundred houses of Candomblé worship. I will list the terreiros I have contacts for on this proposal: Ilê Axé Oxumaré; Casa Branca, or Ilê Axé Yá Nassô; Gantois, or Ilê Axé Yá Massê; Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá
Works Cited
Adams, Michael Vannoy. The Multicultural Imagination: “Race,” Color, and the Unconscious. London & New York: Routledge, 1996.
Burdick, John. Blessed Anastácia: Women, Race and Popular Christianity in Brazil. New
York & London: Routledge, 1998.
Casey, Edward S. Getting Back Into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the
Place-World. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993.
---. Spirit and Soul: Essays in Philosophical Psychology. Dallas: Spring Publications,
Inc., 1991.
Dibbell, Julian. “We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin.” Wired Magazine. Accessed
online, 10 July 2004.
Dunn, Christopher. “Tropicália, Counterculture, and the Diasporic Imagination in
Brazil.” Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization. Gainesville, FL: U P of Florida, 2001.
Hillman, James. Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.
---. "Notes on White Supremacy: Essaying an Archetypal Account of Historical Events," Spring, 46 (1986): 29-58.
Johnson, Paul Christopher. Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian
Candomblé. New York: Oxford U P, 2002.
Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society.
Ithica & London: Cornell UP, 1974.
---.“Social Dramas in Brazilian Umbanda: The Dialectics of Meaning.” The
Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications, 1988.
Weinoldt, Kirsten. “Stirring up Heat: Didá Banda Feminina.” Brazzil. April 1998.
. 9 Sept. 2005.
Changing Rhythms, Changing Myths: Drumming as Transformative Agent in Brazilian Candomblé Ritual and Popular Music
Part I: A Brief Introduction to the Background of Candomblé
The Candomblé group of religions was birthed from Africa and brought to the new world by slaves who survived the trans-Atlantic crossing. After reaching their destined new home, Brazil, and being forced to convert to Catholicism, they continued to worship their African deities in new, innovative ways. Although ritual innovation will be a key area of research, maintaining tradition through remembering the origins of ritual practice as well as the experience of slavery is also paramount to the study. Paul Christopher Johnson, historian of religions, elaborates that Candomblé is a tradition that transmits knowledge orally and ritually, through “bodies-as-secrets” (Johnson 6). The ritual is the “place” where embodied knowledge is passed down, generation after generation. Without a deep connection to its past, to memories of its African homeland, Candomblé would not possess the tremendous innovative ability to transform its myths and rituals.
Part II: Research Questions & Hypotheses
Question 1: In the Afro-Brazilian communities of Salvador and Cachoeira, Bahia, Brazil, how do drumming and rhythm-making contribute to both continual innovation and the preservation of African traditions in Candomblé ritual and popular music?
The drum is the central heartbeat that regulates the ritual universe in Candomblé: each orixá is called down in a specific order via their own drum rhythm pattern and song. The dancers, who are also signaled by the drummers, only dance the movements for the orixá that is being celebrated at the moment; otherwise chaos and pandemonium will ensue.
Anthropologist Victor Turner, who spent years studying the Ndembu of Northwestern Zambia, heard ritual drumming at almost all hours of the day and night during his fieldwork: “the term for ritual performance is ng'oma, which literally means ‘drum,’ and where three drums, as in Umbanda , are considered indispensable components of all ritual” (Turner, V. Anthropology, 51).
In Turner’s essay, “Social Dramas in Brazilian Umbanda: The Dialectics of Meaning,” he discusses the “meta-languages” of cultural performances as “genres of cultural performance” that “are not simple mirrors but magical mirrors of social reality: they exaggerate, invert, re-form, magnify, minimize, dis-color, re-color, even deliberately falsify, chronicled events. They resemble Rilke's ‘hall of mirrors’” (Turner Anthropology, 42). In this statement, Turner supports the importance of fluidity, innovation and play in ritual that is largely the foundational creative aspect seen in Brazil as well as other African Diaspora cultures around the world.
Percussion instruments are also the predominant driving force behind Brazilian popular music. It can be argued that through the musical political movement, Tropicália in the 1960’s, drums connected the sacred and the profane in such a way as to help shape the collective identity of a people in a particular place–Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. Christopher Dunn, a scholar of popular music who researched the Tropicália movement, and its primary founders Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, supports the theory that cultural, religious practices and political perspectives can combine to create complex new musical forms.
[…] the relationship between Tropicália and Brazilian music informed by cultural practices of the African Diaspora and its attendant discourses of racial pride and social critique. After the advent of recording technologies, the musical complexes of the Black Atlantic circulated widely in the twentieth century, generating a transnational diasporic imagination based on comparable, albeit distinct, histories of slavery, colonialism, and racial oppression. (Dunn 74)
Question 2: What is the significance of the legacy of slavery to identity creation in the communities of Salvador and Cachoeira, Bahia, Brazil? How are stories of slavery an integral narrative woven into contemporary manifestations of Brazilian Candomblé, ritual drumming and popular music?
Slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888. Still, its legacy dwells underground, in the unconscious collective psyche, reappearing and disappearing in image, music and ritual expressions. The voice and freedom of expression, whether in music, or ritual, are the vehicles of identity, of self-creation. In Slavery and Identity: Ethnicity, Gender, and Race in Salvador, Brazil 1808-1888, Mieko Nishida postulates that the making of a self, is a constantly changing and innovating enterprise, even when the circumstances are oppressive.
This creativity not only shines through popular forms of music, such as samba-reggae and pagode, but is also revealed in the drumming, dance and rituals of Candomblé. Even before arrival, the slaves were given name cards with their new Christian/Portuguese identities. This insidious act was the first step in making the slaves forget who they were and where they came from. New cultural groups in Brazil have since continuously transformed the African music and rituals brought by their African descendants into altered forms that are now prevalent in the international arena.
In Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, a young woman steps onto a stage. She is wearing a slave muzzle. She begins to drum and dance. She is a member of the all-female, Brazilian musical group Didá Banda Feminina.
The face-mask is an image that many would like to forget – it is the image of slavery, its oppression, its silencing. The legendary Brazilian slave, Anastácia, wore this leather face mask because of her rebelliousness and inability to tolerate “the imposition of a prejudiced society” (Weinoldt 1998). She had to be silenced. The image of Anastácia, which became an icon of women’s strength, calm and serenity in the midst of immense pain, emerged during a 1994 march on the International Day of the Woman.
In her life, Anastácia was very beautiful and consequently the object of envy, prejudice, and sexual abuse […] She was muzzled for speaking openly of her desires, but even after that, she continued to perform miracles. Her muzzle was then removed. But she was ill and did not have much time for her good deeds. After developing gangrene, she died. (Weinoldt 1998)
Anastácia’s image and mythology are held with the highest devotion by some and ambivalence by others. Many activists in Brazil see Anastácia as a step backward in the fight for the expression of the Afro-Brazilian voice.
The face mask emphasizes victimization. Anastácia is the image of the disempowered woman, women who are silenced, tortured […] Where do you get if you call upon people to identify with a suffering slave? We must go beyond slavery. (Burdick 162)
For many Afro-Brazilian women, the iconography of Anastácia holds the pain and suffering that slaves endured with dignity and serenity. These women, who are usually educationally and economically disadvantaged, identify with Anastácia because they feel she understands their pain, their own timidity and uncertainty of using their voices. She is not a historical figure, and no evidence of her existence has been found. However, she remains one of the most popular and beloved saints throughout Brazil.
Didá Banda Feminina is one of a growing number of Afro-Brazilian female musical groups to enter the world music stage in the past seven years. Upon arrival on the music scene, the newspaper Jornal do Brasil publicly ridiculed the group for wearing Anastácia’s face mask (Burdick 151). The silencing of slavery and of women’s voices is being challenged by this group of young women, yet the way they are doing it, in how they are expressing their perspective is denounced by some in public, including activists for Afro-Brazilian women’s rights.
As much as some Brazilian activists wish to “move beyond slavery” their efforts seem largely unsuccessful and in many ways promote the very problem they are fighting against. However, they are not ignoring or denying slavery. The legacy and silencing of slavery is subtle though, and it seems that the voice of the underprivileged Afro-Brazilian woman or man continues to be silenced on the national and international level. The way out of this labyrinth is not cut and dry, nor is it straight and direct. Brazil is not a racial paradise: the current research done by scholars of Brazilian culture, music and politics, many of whom I included in this proposal, make this fact clear.
Question 3: Have women’s ritual roles changed within the traditions of Brazilian Candomblé, and if so, how are the changes reflected in the drumming and rhythm-making of both ritual and popular music?
Traditionally women were forbidden to perform on percussion instruments during ritual, however, it has shown up in studies¬–such as Clarence Bernard Henry’s dissertation discussed in the methodologies section of this proposal–that traditional “feminine” roles, such as trance dancer, are shifting to include new occupations traditionally held only by men, such as ritual drummer. This will suggest that in spite of its tightly structured hierarchy and initiation rites, rules in Candomblé traditions are often re-aligned to revision its rituals and myths.
According to Paul Christopher Johnson, women have been forbidden to perform as drummers in Candomblé ritual because their very nature made them unfit to carry the role.
“Women are cool, reproductive, and contained–both in body and in the terreiro –while men carry the heat of bodies overindulgently open in the male domain of the street” (Johnson 44).
Women in the religion represent the earth that is penetrated by “heavenly men” (Johnson 44).
So far, I have found no theory to suggest that women in Candomblé feel deprived or discriminated against in relation to their ritual role as “receivers.” In fact, mostly women are heads of the terreiros in both Salvador and Cachoeira, and hold a great deal of power within the tradition. During the preliminary fieldwork trip I am undertaking in January 2006, it will be revealing to hear what the women of Candomblé have to say about change in ritual roles and women drummers performing in ceremonies.
Part III: Methodologies to be Employed in the Study
Archetypal Psychology
James Hillman, the founder of archetypal psychology, “re-visioned” Jungian psychology and brought image and soul to the forefront of psychic reality, transformation and healing. Many of his works can be applied to the study of Candomblé, including Re-Visioning Psychology and The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, especially when interpreting the phenomena of the orixás.
One particular way the methodology fits this study is how Hillman approaches images; he stays with the image and allows it to have a life and voice of its own. Hillman de-emphasizes the egocentricity of the personal psyche and opens up the archetype to its multidimensionality. This aspect of archetypal psychology is referred to as “befriending the image.” “Befriending” the poetic images that are connected to drumming, myth and ritual allows for many perspectives to come forward, keeping to the polytheistic nature of Candomblé itself. In a related concept, called “personifying,” Hillman prefers to gestalt an entire myth within his praxis. In other words, do not just identify with an orixá, such as Xangô, god of thunder, personify using other secondary characters in the myth, story or legend. For Hillman, archetypes are inherently polytheistic and multivalent, two qualities existing in abundance in the Candomblé traditions.
Furthermore, an archetypal psychological approach opens up the images of Candomblé in order to “see through” them into such contemporary arenas as popular music and digital music sharing. For example, in a November 2004 issue of Wired magazine interview with Gilberto Gil, Brazil’s Minister of Culture, music sharing technologies and open source computer programming were the topics of discussion. A practicing believer of Candomblé, Gil is internationally famous as one of the founders of Tropicália (alongside Caetano Veloso); a popular form of Brazilian music that was part of a political movement against the stereotypical images of the black “primitive” and the notion that media and art forms imported from the United States were superior. “Gil’s repudiation of the stereotypical black musician who is supposed to play samba amounts to a brazen critique of dominant cultural paradigms” (Dunn 79).
Gil thinks that opening the borders of multicultural music through technology is not only advantageous, but inevitable:
“A world opened up by communications cannot remain closed up in a feudal vision of property [...] No country, not the US, not Europe, can stand in the way of it. It's a global trend. It's part of the very process of civilization. It's the semantic abundance of the modern world, of the postmodern world - and there's no use resisting it” (Dibbell 2004).
Gil’s vision interestingly mirrors the cultural openness that started with the formation of Candomblé, perhaps as a religion of resistance against slavery and oppression.
Phenomenology
Phenomenologist Edward S. Casey bridges the fields of archetypal psychology and philosophy in order to show how imagination and memory work together as co-creators of image within the grounding of place or “placescapes:” “The places of landscape––“placescapes”––provide a circumambience, a setting, for archetypes as well as for structures of presentation” (Casey, Spirit xx). Casey’s sensibility of “place” is concrete and substantial, not literal. Places and landscapes exist in the physical world and at the same time exist psychologically within the human psyche.
Candomblé is a transcendent tradition that allows for deep, philosophical reflection and Casey’s Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World lays out a phenomenological approach that is appropriate for this study. His is a viable methodology because it unpacks the mystery of why “being-in-place” holds so much power over humanity by means of analyzing how the place-world is the primary source of the psyche’s outpouring of images. In particular, Casey makes the point of how forced exile can be the most painful form of separation, which is highly relevant because of the transatlantic crossing African slaves made to come to Brazil.
“As Freud, Bachelard, and Proust all suggest, to refind place...we may need to return, if not in actual fact then in memory or imagination, to the very earliest places we have known” (Casey, Getting x).
In the case of Candomblé, its exiled practitioners got “back into place” by reconnecting to their ancestral homeland through ritual. Even with a strong connection to Africa, Brazil has fully developed into its own “placescape,” with its own history, its own music and its own diverse ritual and religious practices.
Ethnomusicology
Clarence Bernard Henry specifically studied drumming with Candomblé master drummers in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil while researching his dissertation, Religious and Musical Expressions of Candomblé in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and Los Angeles, California. One of his most intriguing discoveries is how the role of women in these traditions is changing. One of the changes he noted was that there were a few women being trained in ritual drumming, although they were not yet allowed to perform on drums during ritual.
This dissertation’s fieldwork design closely mirrors Henry’s on many points, such as the focus on individual musicians in Candomblé ritual drumming. However, the main difference is the focus on the feminine and the mythological and depth psychological aspects of Candomblé, as opposed to its ethnomusicological aspects. The interviews and observations will emphasize story, image and myth, and drumming will be analyzed as a model for ritual and social transformation, instead of pure musical presentation.
During the proposed fieldwork, I will undertake drum lessons to learn Candomblé rhythms and chants from women drummers at Didá’s school of music. Didá is a music school, a social program and a drum troupe, which gave rise to the all-female percussion group Didá Banda Feminina.
Ritual Studies
The drum in Candomblé will itself be analyzed as the quintessential musical instrument of trance inducement; the drum is constructed as a liminal entity that borders the thresholds of many worlds– it is part of the vegetal world, through its body made of wood; it is part of the animal world, through its head (the area which is struck by hands or sticks) made from an animal’s hide; it is a member of the mineral world through the attachment of metallic bells. The drums contain, direct and guide all entities within the ritual time-space of the terreiro; the orixás, participants, and the trance dancers can safely explore other dimensions of reality and drop their mundane, ordinary personas. While in trance, the practitioners both embody and personify the archetypes of the orixás, through rhythms and dance movements.
In this interim of "liminality," the possibility exists of standing aside not only from one's own social position but from all social positions and of formulating a potentially unlimited series of alternative social arrangements. (Turner, V. Dramas, 13-14)
Part IV: The Study’s Impact on Mythological Studies & Other Disciplines
This study will make an important contribution to mythological studies as well as the related disciplines depth psychology and psychoanalysis. Race studies in particular have been neglected in these fields, especially the subjects of slavery and the “black-white” opposition. Michael Vannoy Adams, author of The Multicultural Imagination: “Race,” Color, and the Unconscious, asserts: “I have been struck by the fact that the word “race” occurs so infrequently in the indexes of psychoanalytic books and journals. With the exception of anti-Semitism, racism is not a topic that has attracted much psychoanalytic attention” (Adams xx).
In the field of ethnomusicology there seems to be a lack of focused material written about women drummers in Candomblé. This vacuum of information is due mainly to the fact that there have not been many, if any, women drummers performing in Candomblé ritual until the past five or six years. This dissertation will devote as much as a third of its pages to document the history of women drummers in Bahia and how they are affecting change in both ritual and social settings.
The field study will address racism, globalism and women’s issues in a reflexive, post-modern approach, where the scholar will act as both observer and participant in the rhythm-making practices of women drummers in Bahia.
The knowledge gained from the study will be applicable to what is happening with “race” in the United States. Slavery is just one of many unpleasant topics that have been swept under the rug. One need only look at the aftermath of hurricane Katrina to see how a lack of monetary means and education can shape the way a cultural group is viewed by the very people who are in a position to help. Watching the masses of people getting on planes and buses to leave Louisiana opened the eyes of many Americans, as well as those of people abroad. In the rush of advancing technology and ruthless monetary gain, these people were forgotten. A cross-cultural paradigm shift will need to occur on both national and global levels to rectify the problem–moving beyond slavery or denying its historical fact is not going to heal this old, gaping wound.
Part V: Fieldwork Plans
Preliminary Fieldwork Trip to Salvador and Cachoeira, Bahia, Brazil
January 20, 2006 - March 7, 2006
Since Brazil is the center of Candomblé, its birthplace, all of the fieldwork for this study will be focused there. I plan to go to Salvador and Cachoeira, Bahia, Brazil to begin to make key contacts, build trust with informants and acclimate to the area. I have contacted, via email, women drummers who have been trained in ritual drumming and who may or may not be forbidden from actually performing during rituals. Specifically, members from female popular music groups will be interviewed. One of those bands is Didá Banda Feminina, who were brought together by the creator of samba-reggae, Neguinho do Samba, a man.
The town of Cachoeira boasts some of the most traditional terreiros in the state of Bahia. In particular there is a group of approximately twenty women, mostly between the ages of fifty and seventy, called the Irmandade da Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte, The Sisterhood of Our Lady of the Good Death, which I plan to interview. The Sisterhood is one of Bahia’s (and possibly Candomblé’s) oldest confraternities that is devoted to and run by women. It is speculated that the confraternity came into existence in 1820 and once had over 200 members. The rites of initiation and the inner workings of the group are still secret, and as yet have not become the subject of any ethnographic studies. My questions for the group are centered around the transformation of Candomblé over the years and how they envision its future, its connection to the Roman-Catholic Church and its embracing of African traditions.
I will observe festivals and rituals in Salvador and Cachoeira, Bahia that correspond to the different orixás. Rituals take place frequently in terreiros, which will allow for many opportunities to observe how each liturgy varies in style and content from place to place. The festival of Iemanjá takes place on February 2, 2006 and Carnaval occurs from February 23 – 28, 2006.
It is vital to this study to observe the rituals and festivals of Candomblé in Bahia, Brazil, the place of origin, because the dissertation will focus on current transformations of Candomblé ritual, such as the possibility of women drummers performing in ceremonies. As of yet, there is little or no written documentation of women drummers in Candomblé.
Research Areas: Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Visitation Length: 6 months
Visitation Dates: September 2006 – April 2007
A Partial List of Repositories, Museums and Terreiros:
Universidade Federal da Bahia. Biblioteca Central, Escola de Musica (Central Library, School of Music)
Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janiero
Museum of Sacred Art, Salvador, Bahia
Housed in the 17th century church and convent of Santa Teresa, the Museum of Sacred Art contains one of the largest collections of sacred art in Latin America.
Afro-Brazilian Museum, Salvador, Bahia
Located in the former Faculty of Medicine building, this museum has a fascinating collection of objects that highlight the strong African influence on Bahian culture, including musical instruments, masks, costumes, carvings and other artifacts that are part of the local Candomblé religion.
Pierre Verger Foundation, Salvador, Bahia
The Pierre Verger Foundation features a photographic gallery of eight themes particular to the city: samba, architecture, carnival, capoeira, Candomblé, port, sleeping bodies and street scenes. All photographs have been selected with the intention of recalling the atmosphere Verger discovered in Bahia when he arrived in the late 1940s.
Terreiros: I have a list of over one hundred houses of Candomblé worship. I will list the terreiros I have contacts for on this proposal: Ilê Axé Oxumaré; Casa Branca, or Ilê Axé Yá Nassô; Gantois, or Ilê Axé Yá Massê; Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá
Works Cited
Adams, Michael Vannoy. The Multicultural Imagination: “Race,” Color, and the Unconscious. London & New York: Routledge, 1996.
Burdick, John. Blessed Anastácia: Women, Race and Popular Christianity in Brazil. New
York & London: Routledge, 1998.
Casey, Edward S. Getting Back Into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the
Place-World. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993.
---. Spirit and Soul: Essays in Philosophical Psychology. Dallas: Spring Publications,
Inc., 1991.
Dibbell, Julian. “We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin.” Wired Magazine. Accessed
online, 10 July 2004.
Dunn, Christopher. “Tropicália, Counterculture, and the Diasporic Imagination in
Brazil.” Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization. Gainesville, FL: U P of Florida, 2001.
Hillman, James. Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.
---. "Notes on White Supremacy: Essaying an Archetypal Account of Historical Events," Spring, 46 (1986): 29-58.
Johnson, Paul Christopher. Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian
Candomblé. New York: Oxford U P, 2002.
Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society.
Ithica & London: Cornell UP, 1974.
---.“Social Dramas in Brazilian Umbanda: The Dialectics of Meaning.” The
Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications, 1988.
Weinoldt, Kirsten. “Stirring up Heat: Didá Banda Feminina.” Brazzil. April 1998.
