Roots in Resistance
It may be winter in NYC, but it’s high summer in Salvador, Bahia – where Fogo drummers travel nearly every year to learn with world-class maestre, play with our sister band, Banda Didá, and participate in the street-party-on-steroids that is Carnival in Bahia. Carnival is legendary – but the glittering parties and monster sound trucks that fill the parades don’t tell the full story. The drumming that defines Carnival in Bahia (and in Rio, and São Paolo) has its roots in resistance – in delivering political messages from the people to those in power, with force and at volume.
In drums, people found their power – and authorities were threatened.
From the time of its founding in the mid-16th Century, Salvador, Bahia’s capital city, served as a crossroads and brutal marketplace for more than 5 million enslaved Africans, sent to the New World by the Portuguese. The people brought with them practices and beliefs that threatened the Colonial religious beliefs (Catholicism), like Capoiera (highly stylized ‘fighting’) and a long tradition of drumming, used to communicate, celebrate, warn of impending risk and implore the gods for their good graces. In drums, people found their power – and authorities were threatened.
Historically, samba composers were considered suspect, cast as leaders of African cults. Players were routinely arrested and their instruments destroyed. But by the early 20th century, after heavy criminalization by the Brazilian government, samba was recognized as one of Brazil’s most prominent symbols and cultural exports. By the late 20th century, samba reggae drumming burst into global fame, when Western artists like Michael Jackson and Paul Simon and the world “discovered” Salvador’s Olodum.
Until 1993, no women were permitted to drum in Salvador.
Until 1993, no women were permitted to drum in Salvador. The drums were too big, too heavy, too unwieldy, too unfeminine – until Neghuino de Samba, an Olodum founder, created Banda Didá, the first women-only drumming bloco in Salvador. Arma la banda, a batalha ja vai comecar, he said: Arm the band, the battle has already begun.
Banda Didá drums, of course, but serves a larger mission, as a resource for education and community-building for hundreds Salvadoran women, of all ages. Free classes in drumming bring in eager students, who are offered lessons in Afro-Brazilian culture, academic coaching and support, and powerful role models who embody Afro-Brazilian ideals of beauty – and stand as examples of independence and accomplishment. Consider Maiana Santos Bonfim, who joined Didá at 16. Eighteen years later, working on her PhD in samba-reggae enthomusicology, she told the NYT, the drum “is a weapon; it’s a tool. It gives us power . . . and our message is heard, farther and farther away.”
We hear it loud and clear, all the way in NYC – and are honored and proud to share it far beyond Bahia’s sapphire skies and the jubilant throngs that drum and sing through the night, on Salvador’s black-cobbled streets.
Banda Didá serves a larger mission, as a resource for education and community-building for hundreds of Salvadoran women…
by Helen Zelon, Fogo Azul Repique Member
Read more about Banda Didá in the New York Times.
