#4 Odoyá! Odoyá!

On 15 february happened in Cachoeira the party of Yemanjá. Say the legend that this Orisha used to live in the cost of Africa, but when she had noticed that her sons where coming to Brazil to suffer, as slaves, she moved here to bring them some comfort. She looked for a peaceful place to live, and found it in Paraguaçu River, between São Félix and Cachoeira (Reconcavo's cities).

Some people say that she lives under the wale stone (the one which sustains the warning light in the photo above), and some people say that she turns herself this stone. Gifts use to be brought by the Candomblé's People, also known as People of Saint. Among the gifts we find white flowers and lots of lavender's fragrances. She is the great mother, and everybody always wants to praise her. 

This video is my first one. I took the images and sound at the celebration organized by the Yemanjá Ogunté Association. This name makes reference to a very especific kind of Yemanjá: the warrior one. Women who have this protection presents the Yemanjá's archetypes, of course, but have something more... they are very difficult kind of people. You must know how to behave near them because every little thing is able to make a huge storm in their hearts. You will not want to see what happens - the price is very high. Believe me, I say it because my wife is one of them. For your safe, never mess with an Ogunté. 

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# 3 Under the sign of Job

There are two weeks now since the last post. Brazilian’s carnival, or better, Bahia’s carnival use to be so crowd and noisy, and so many foreign people come to see this popular culture manifestation... I just feel myself tired, and I must say: Uh! What sluggishness!

 

The joy is real. Maybe on Tuesday I go to see something in a historic town here in Reconcavo, and maybe I make some images over there. Today, however, I must write about something else, something that has nothing with Bahia’s Reconcavo, but its necessary to make this blog work.

 

All this movement that we see tries to show how afro influence is important to make the sui generis existence that we are able to live here. Sometimes we forget the power of Iberian cultural or the native’s nation’s intelligence. We just have eyes to see the strong and precious contribution that came from Africa. Maybe we can see over this point of view a necessary politics position against prejudice, and we find some beauty over there. But today I want to write about a man that was born on Brazil’s south, and had nothing to do with Reconcavo. His life was marked by prejudice, and we can find something interesting, and perhaps he has something in common with people here, in Reconcavo.

 Cruz e Souza was the most brilliant figure in Brazilian’s symbolism. A childish prodigy, he starts to write poems at the age of seven. His family used to live in Santa Catarina estate, in a basement 

of a great house of a rich white family. His mother was free, and his father slave. His owner gave freedom to all slaves, including his father, some years before slavery abolition in 1888. He was educated under the protection of the solar owners, and enjoined very soon the universe of art under the European canons. Early he became a master, adopted aristocratic manners, and was called nobleman by people impressed with his style. A black man with aristocratic manners... lets see.

 

The point is that there was no place in that society for a person like him. It is very suggestive the epigraph in his first book of poems, Broquéis, which was published in 1893:

 

Seigneur mon Dieu! acordez-moi la grace de produire quelques beaux vers qui me prouvent à moi-même que je ne suis pas le dernier des hommes, que je ne suis pas inférieur à ceux que je méprise.

 

It is the final part of a Baudelaire’s prose poem called At one o clock in the morning (or something like that, I don’t know the exact English translation – but it is the number X on his Petit Poèmes en Prose). This extract is just perfect not just to the book, but to get closer to Cruz e Souza’s life.

 

He was a man who had conscience about his potential and about the value of his work. Unfortunately, he also had conscience that he never could be at the place that he had the merit to occupy, just because he was black. How painful this condition can be to a human being? I mean... to be at this condition and, at the same time, to have clarity of his own reality? He couldn’t be less than he was, and couldn’t be praised like he ought to. It was a paradox, and the logical result must be suffering. As the biblical character, Job, something stronger decided that was no joy in his destiny.

 

Maybe it was even worse. Cruz e Souza never made the reclusion option. He moved to Rio de Janeiroto try a different destiny, at those times this city was the republic’s capital  – he could not give up, could he? But the important capital never gave to him anything more than a second class job, poverty and lots of people to despise.

 

There is no arrogance in this feeling of despise, but maybe some reaction to the falsity. You know... at coffee shops and literary salons people could never reject his work because it was really good. But the quality was so higher than the white aristocratic intellectual’s works, that it causes discomfort. It was the minimum. It was like putting salt over a bloody injury. Even the abolitionist guys had shown how their convictions were fragile. It was fashion to be abolitionist in 19^th century Brazil, but we know that the real comprehension of that was not so easy to that army of dummies that use to consider themselves inside the intellectuals circles at those times. 

 

I mean: people use to fight for freedom and equality. When they talks about possibilities, everything is OK, and the future is nice and full of colors. But when the imaginary future turns real, how those good people should behave? Cruz e Souza show us that those good people were nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. It explains the despise feeling. So he, as Baudelaire, prays the Lord to give him the power to make verses not to be better, but to not be inferior. What is inferior to hypocrisy? It is better not thinking about that.

 

People who smiled and said nice things about his work was the same people who denied the full development of his potential in the society life. How could he feel about that? His wife, Gavita, became crazy, and his three children were starving when Cruz e Souza died in 1898, eight years after he moved to Rio. In 1901 Gavita died, before her, two of their kids. After that, Cruz e Souza starts to be published more frequently – hypocrisy!

 

I wish I have the competence to translate some Cruz e Souza poems. I put two of them as images above, but his works stills in need of a good human translator. I used the translito http://translito.com/pt/translators/Portuguese-English software to help the translation. (It made almost all work)

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# 2 Odoyá

One of the most beautiful contributions that African people brought to Brasil is the Candomblé. It is a very important knowledge that survives and modifies itself through the time. Part of this beauty we find just in this capacity to change by joining elements from other cultures – like the homage to the native people from Brasil in the Caboclo´s cult, that we will see better at his glorious moment, on June.

That’s no problem at all in modifying itself. In opposition to other beliefs, what Candomblé searches are not the truth unique and, sometimes, full of pain and regrets. Candomblés leaders use to worry themselves about harmony between human beings and nature, and also between men and society. Sure that in a new space, with different landscapes and vegetations, the many ethnic groups that came from Africa should adapt themselves, keep and dignify the knowledge that they brought from their old land, from their ancestors. For most of them there was no way to back, and they should learn how to live here with this other nature reality and with those other social groups, as the Tupis and Europeans.

 

Lots of oral traditions, maybe all of them, are able to change and not mischaracterize it selves. The fact is that culture is always in movement, and if we search for purity, we take the risk to find illusions or frustrations, it depends on how much sincerity we have with ourselves... whatever! Today I must write about Yemanjá, the great mother. An orisha very respectful, about who Pierre Verger, this great French anthropologist and photographer wrote:

 

“Yemanjá, whose name is derived from Yeye oman ejá, ‘The Mother whose children are fish,’ is the Orishá of the Egbás, a Yoruba nation once established in the Ibadan region, where the 

Yemanjá River still flows. Wars between the Yoruba nations forced the Egbás to migrate westward to Abeokutá in the early 19th century. Clearly, they could not take their river with them, but they did take her sacred objects, the basis of divinity’s Ashé (...)” (published in African Gods in the Candomblé of Bahia, a book of drawings by Carybé, a great Argentinean artist who lived in Bahia for many years – both drawings that are reproduced in this post were taken from this book, the Yemanjá’s instrument, and the Rio Vermelho´s Party, in Salvador)

We see that the moving to Brasil was not the first migration movement made by the Yemanjá’s cult followers. The point is that in this country, especially in Bahia, followers from lots of Orishas met themselves and started to learn with each other, and started to get stronger too. In Bahia’s Recôncavo, especially in Cachoeira city, this knowledge reached its limit. Histories of lots of Yoruba communities were worked as the history of just one nation. Cults of different divinities were learnt  and practiced together, because the followers of all those Orishas were living together, under the same reality. It is easy to see that it was a wonderful moment to the development of a beautiful culture, and people in Recôncavo made it happen in its entire splendour.

 

Mãe Filhinha (Mother Filhinha) is one of these people. Last sunday, February first, her home gave a party to Yemanjá, and put gifts 

over the waters to homage this divinity. It is beautiful to see that a 105 years old woman sustains her Orisha’s tradition. She herself went to the Paraguaçu River to give her gifts to the divinity. It was a moment of joy and proud. The realization of the act is decisive in Candomblé. Giving gifts to the mother shows respect, and, at the same time, establishes the continuity of the tradition and reinforces the fraternity feeling among the members of the community that she leads. It is complex. The word is absolute when it is said, and the act is complete when it is done.

 

At the end, Mãe Filhinha hugged everybody and went home to cut the party’s cake. I didn’t have gone myself to this party, unfortunately. So, I must thank the photos that I reproduce here to Beatriz da Conceição, my dear Bibi, an exceptional warrior for the traditional culture in Recôncavo, and a good friend. 

Just to finish with another citation from Verger:

"The salutations for Yemanjá are extremely interesting:

'Queen of the waters who comes from the house of Olokum.

She wears a dress of beads in the market. 

She waits, proudly seated, before the king. 

Queen who lives in the depths of the waters. 

Our mother of the weeping breasts' "

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#1

It is easy to love the territory known as Recôncavo from Bahia, where the sun shines and the landscapes are always green. During XVII and XVIII centuries this region took an important role in world economy as high quality sugar producer. When europeans arrived, around XVI century, they had already been living in a sort of capitalism for some time. To find a paradisiacal continent must have been great, especially if it could be possible making some profits with it. And it was. 

Salvador city is situated in a peninsula that draws a bay with the continent. This bay is called Baía de Todos os Santos (Bay of All Saints). In there took place the administrative power from colony. On the bay's country side travellers would find lots of sugar cane plantations and a beautiful tropical forest. Weather and soil were good to sugar culture and, while those men didn’t find something rarer or more rentable to dedicate their energies, they should make fortunes over this place.

Nature is always present in this region, especially through foreign people eyes. At sunrise the weather is just fine. The sky turns bright and blue; a huge variety of vegetal starts to be seen, each one with its own peculiar tone of green; and we all enjoy the delightful and inoffensive morning sunrays. It’s nice to walk next to the rivers Paraguaçu or Jaguaripe at this moment. The sunrays spread the nighty hazes and we feel that day rise clean and immaculate.

A movement of life starts over these little cities around the bay. People must wake up early and do their duties soon, because it is not good to be outside between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. All over the rural areas farmers, who work for their own subsistence, organize fruits and vegetables to sell on small town's free-fairs. Each day in week it happens on a different town. 

At afternoons, when the sun burns, nature shows us how nasty it can be. Everything is quiet, streets are empty and shadows are rare. People avoid to walk outside. Women commonly use umbrellas to protect their skin and little towels to dry the inevitable sweat. Light in excess starts to hurt our eyes. Don´t you ever forget your sunglasses. Besides that, landscapes are green all the year.

While sun keeps his way to the west, people get outside their houses and start to talk about everything, enjoying the breeze and watching girls becoming women and boys making themselves men. In rural zones, nights are highly illuminated when the moon appears, and very dark when it doesn’t. Before electricity recôncavo’s nights must have been full of dangerous and adventures. How many conspiracies have been planned? How many histories, how many heroes and lovers, and how many dangerous curses have been said? Witchcrafts! Lots of amazings witchcrafts.

People who first arrived in this new world, both africans and europeans, had to face the weather issues, and had to learn efficient mechanisms to make life works here. Sure there were frequently contacts with native people, who shared their survival knowledge with foreigners. Unfortunately, christian's faith did not accept living together with other traditions, and it must have seemed impossible for those Tupi nation’s communities to keep their political and cultural autonomy among civilizables.

To keep the local economy moving, sugar-engine owners were always in need of workers. To satisfy this demand they started close relations with some african nations that used to conquer 

villages and make slaves.Lots of people were commercialised in change of tobacco those days. The arrival of different ethnic groups from African continent, allied with the dominant Iberia culture and native knowledge, gave origin to a brand-new culture. Recôncavo’s territory has watched the meeting of a bunch of different ways of life, a bunch of peculiar approaches to existence. They all had to learn how to live together.

That’s what I intend to post in this blog. Pieces of this culture displayed in videos, photos and words.  I know that my english is far away from perfection, but whatever, I think that I can be understandable. 

My desire is to talk with people from world, so I must use english... even a full of mistakes one! And you don't need to have a perfect english to comment, of course. 

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