1 3 Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena Institut für Musikwissenschaft Intangible Cultural Heritage and Transatlantic Connections: Panafricanism and African Revolution in Brazilian Music submitted by Kamai Freire (12735) to obtain the academic degree of Master of Arts at the UNESCO Chair for Transcultural Music Studies Advisor: Prof. Dr. Tiago de Oliveira Pinto (HfM Weimar) Examiner: Prof. Dr. Kazadi wa Mukuna (Kent State University) October, 2020 4 Laroyê, Esu! Agô, mojuba! Open the path for us… Ogun yê! March in our frontline… Okearô, Odé! Help us to survive and to find the best strategy… Epa Baba! Bring us peace and wisdom… Ora ye ye, Osun! Odoya, Yemoja! Wash away our enemies… Eparrei, Oyá! Crush down our doubts and our fears… All the Orisas, Voduns and Nkisis… awurê… kolofé… modupé… Ibolele, Ibolele o, Ibolele o Mangnanman, Granmoun pa jwe o! 5 is work is dedicated to all those who paved the way before me, all those who are currently battling in our flanks, and all those who will forward the Struggle long after I am gone. anks to Maristela and Júlio, who brought me to this world and made possible the greatest part of the journey so far. anks for teaching me how to think, how to feel, how to dream and how to make my dreams come true. anks to Luan, my beloved brother. Tamo junto! anks to all my brothers and sisters who were born to other mothers, who are far too many to be named here, and who did so much for me that could never be put into words. anks to Suelen Calonga, without whom this work would never be possible, and to whom I dedicate it with all my heart. anks to all the good friends I made in Weimar, in Jena, and in Berlin. anks to all those who were placed by Esu in my road to make me understand things a bit better everyday. anks to my advisor, Tiago, who helped me so much all the way and never denied me not even one tiny bit of his immense generosity and his vast knowledge. anks to Kazadi, who shared so much wisdom through his works that were decisive in my investigations. anks to all great masters of African wisdom, whose works have turned my head upside down in so many ways. anks to all those on whose shoulders I stand on. Special thanks to Bayyinah Bello and Meki Nzewi. anks to Lazzo Matumbi, Vovô do Ilê, and Bia Ferreira, the very soul of this work. Axé ô! Huge thanks to my Drop Squads, who washed my eyes to make me unlearn and relearn so much – Kilûmbu Òkòtó, Zaus Kush, Abibiman and all the malungos and malungas around the world forwarding the struggle for cultural, intellectual, and spiritual abolition. Special thanks to all those who helped me so much in so many ways but were not named here. Last but not least, thanks to the Secretaria de Cultura do Distrito Federal and to the Gesellschaft der Freunde und Förderer der Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar for the financial support. Axé! Axé! Axé ô! Kamai Freire Weimar, 15.10.2020 7 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 11 CHAPTER 1 1.1. Music “unrelated” to the Struggle 23 1.2. Instrumental music 29 1.3 Transculturation and emic narrative 35 1.4. Remarks on the “strictly” musical dimension 38 CHAPTER 2 2.1. Poetic-Musical Strategy of Affirmation 47 Áfricas: do Berço Real à Corte Brasiliana 50 Kizomba, a Festa da Raça 56 2.2. Poetic-musical Strategy of Awareness-raising 63 14 de Maio 66 2.3. Poetic-Musical Strategy of Counterintelligence 84 Cota Não É Esmola 86 2.4. Poetic-musical strategy of counter-humiliation 96 De dentro do Apê 98 Deixa Que Eu Conto 104 CHAPTER 3 3.1. Poetic-musical strategy of total organization: the most beautiful of all beauties 109 CONCLUSION 131 Closing remarks 146 BIBLIOGRAPHY 151 8 9 I had a dream That I was, in a certain day At a World Congress Discussing economy I argued In favor of more work More commitment, more effort More control, added value I talked about industrial energy poles I demonstrated it, in a thousand ways How a country should grow And I backed me On the economic strength Based on the tonics of technology I presented Statistics and graphs Demonstrating the evil effects of Theory, most of all The of Leisure, of Rest Of Enlargement of the Cultural Space of Poetry I finally said For all present That a country only goes forward By working every day I was certain That everything I said Represented the Truth to everyone who listened It was then, when an old man Stood up from his chair And walked out whistling A sad melody Which sounded Like a Bachian prelude A Frevo from Pernambuco A Choro from Pixinguinha And in the room All mouths smiled All eyes looked to each other All men left One by one... One by one One by one... One by one I stayed there In that empty hall Suddenly I felt cold I noticed that I was naked I woke up Scared and still dizzy Got up and went out, right away To the sidewalk to see the blue sky And the students and workers who passed by Laughed and shouted: Long live the Xingu Indian! Long live the Xingu Indian! Long live the Xingu Indian! Long live the Xingu Indian! Long live the Xingu Indian! (Gilberto Gil) 10 11 Introduction e concepts that form the basis of my research are Panafricanism and the African Revolution, guiding my analyses of the role of music in the anti-colonialist and anti-racist struggle in Brazil. Panafricanism1 is a concept approached worldwide in a broad universe of academic, artistic and political works, pointing not to a single and univocal definition, rather to a much broader and more plural perception of the spiritual fabric that bonds all African peoples on the continent and in the Diaspora. Several considerably different concepts - such as négritude, African nationalism, Black nationalism, universal negro, garveysm, consciencism, quilombismo, afrocentricity, among others - are, in my perspective, encompassed within this same Spirit, one way or another, laying upon the backdrop of the anti-colonialist/anti-racist struggle while somehow beaconed by the African Cultural Foundations (Nkrumah 1970:79; Botwe-Asamoah, 2005:171), which is precisely the broad phenomenon that I researched within the Brazilian context, focused on how Music operates in this Struggle. Indeed, there are countless works totally or partially dedicated to a detailed differentiation between each of these concepts and their singularities, but my research does not wish to join the flanks of such strict conceptualizations. Within my analyses, all these concepts are seen as distinct manifestations of a major force called Panafricanism, which in turn, boils down to the definition synthesized in this paragraph. 1 I use exclusively the terms African and African peoples, referring to the individual and collectives born both on the African continent and in the African Diaspora, instead of using other phenotypical/ethnic-racial terminologies such as Black, Brown, Negro, Mestizo, Creole, Mulatto, Afro-descendant, Afro-Brazilian, Afro-this, Afro-that. In situations where there could be misunderstandings in the phrase if using only the term African, I choose to call African-Brazilian, for example, any individual of African descent who is born or rooted in Brazil, or African-Cuban, if born or rooted in Cuba, and so on. That is, I use here one of the writing standards of Pan-African literature. Panafricanism being the epistemological and ontological frame in this research, I always write under the understanding that all descendants of Africans scattered around the world via colonialism are in fact Africans, knowing that strengthening this understanding is vital for the Panafrican triumph today, as it has been in other victorious African revolutions so far. This unity is also underlined among people from different regions of the African continent, bearing in mind the interruption of the organic development of African civilizations by colonialist invaders and, in this sense, the extent of relative “illegitimacy” of the current nation- states in Africa - understanding the consolidation of modern nation-states as one of the main (neo)colonialist strategies of demobilization. Of course, the Panafrican terminology does not disqualify the inalienable sense of identity and belonging of each individual. If an African, from the continent or the Diaspora, has a strong preference for calling themselves above all Ivorian, Senegalese, Brazilian, or Cuban, this self-denomination is not in itself harmful to the Struggle, as long as the person directs their efforts to the collective beneft of their folk somehow. People of African descent who do not identify themselves as such and who do not work in any instance for the collective prosperity of African peoples are generally not addressed in this research, so I have not bothered to select a particular name for them. 12 e second pillar of my research’s epistemological and ontological framework is the concept of African Revolution, also defined in different ways by several authors. As far as the present work is concerned, it can be properly synthesized as: the Struggle to liberate and unify the African peoples of the continent and of the Diaspora up from a socioeconomic, sociopolitical and educational revolution, fully integrated and based on African cultural values (Botwe-Asamoah 2005:67), as outlined by Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, omas Sankara, John Henrik Clarke, Abdias Nascimento, among many others. e understanding of the African personality (Biney, 2011:121) and the African Cultural Foundations (arts, sciences, languages, historiography, spirituality, cosmovision; social, economic and governmental models)2 are fundamental to understand, in a broader perspective, how these values interact within the African-Brazilian reality, in which Music, as I shall demonstrate here, has been essential to mobilize and organize individuals and collectives against the atrocities of structural racism and (neo)colonialism.3 rough this research, I seek to outline plausible analytical paradigms for later application, expansion, and complexification in similar contexts of continental and diasporic Africa.