Rhythm Ancestrality And Spirit In Maracatu De Na O And Candombl

Rhythm, Ancestrality and Spirit in Maracatu de Nação and Candomblé: Repercussions examines how the highly percussive carnival practice of Maracatu de nação – an Afro-Brazilian musical and spiritual tradition originating in the north- eastern state of Pernambuco – has evolved in relation to the cosmology of Candomblé Nagô in the urban centres of Recife and Olinda, Brazil. Offering one of the first detailed ethnographic explorations into maracatu de nação, Candomblé Nagô and the connections between them, this book is a collaborative enquiry into frequently negated sacred and ancestral knowledge systems central to Afro-Brazilian musical-spiritual practices. Using an innovative research framework which integrates musical and rhythmic practices with spiritual, ancestral and ecological knowledge systems, readers are provided with an intimate ethnography based on eight years of friendship and learning with the oldest continuously active maracatu group in the world, Nação Leão Coroado, and its most recent leader, Mestre Afonso Aguiar (1948– 2018). This is a valuable text for those interested in ethnomusicology, performance studies, religious and cultural anthropology, decolonial research methods and writing styles, eco- musicology and Afro-diasporic, Brazilian and Latin American studies.

Winner, Hubert Herring Book Award, Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies Candomblé, an African religious and healing tradition that spread to Brazil during the slave trade, relies heavily on the use of plants in its spiritual and medicinal practices. When its African adherents were forcibly transplanted to the New World, they faced the challenge not only of maintaining their culture and beliefs in the face of European domination but also of finding plants with similar properties to the ones they had used in Africa. This book traces the origin, diffusion, medicinal use, and meaning of Candomblé's healing pharmacopoeia—the sacred leaves. Robert Voeks examines such topics as the biogeography of Africa and Brazil, the transference—and transformation—of Candomblé as its adherents encountered both native South American belief systems and European Christianity, and the African system of medicinal plant classification that allowed Candomblé to survive and even thrive in the New World. This research casts new light on topics ranging from the creation of African American cultures to tropical rain forest healing floras.

Detailed information on almost all ethnic and vernacular recordings from many countries on 78rpm is provided in this seminal work. The current state of discographical research in this wide and varied field is such that a research tool of this nature is badly needed. Jesse Walter Fewkes and Mary Hemenway recorded Native American music as early as 1890; Bela Bartok recorded rural music in the Balkans; Erich von Hornbostel, the grand old man of ethnomusicology in Europe, recorded in Southeast Asia. More than just a discography, this work demonstrates that cultures around the world and over time have more similarities than differences. A necessity for scholars, students, archivists, and individual record collectors and dealers. The goals of this volume are many and varied: to promote thought and discussion toward a concise definition of recorded ethnic music; to assist specialists working on individual discographical projects; to introduce users to the interconnectedness of cultures through regional music; to gather heretofore disparate pieces of information under one cover in a way that for the first time allows specialists to accurately identify all manner of recordings in many languages. The four sections of the volume work together for easy usage through cross referencing. The philosophy behind the volume was expressed by Rodney Gallop when he remarked that music, for him, was often the key to the understanding of other cultures.

Situates the cultures of Portuguese-speaking Africa within the postcolonial, global era.

In their contributions, the autors elaborate on research and cultural practices. For that, they take a closer look at specific regularities by focusing on historical texts, art, literature, music in past and present.

Examines the full range of humanities and social science scholarship on people of African descent in Latin America.

Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm offers new understandings of musical rhythm through the analysis and comparison of diverse repertoires, performance practices, and theories as formulated and transmitted in speech or writing. Editors Richard K. Wolf, Stephen Blum, and Christopher Hasty address a productive tension in musical studies between universalistic and culturally relevant approaches to the study of rhythm. Reacting to commonplace ideas in (Western) music pedagogy, the essays explore a range of perspectives on rhythm: its status as an "element" of music that can be usefully abstracted from timbre, tone, and harmony; its connotations of regularity (or, by contrast, that rhythm is what we hear against the grain of background regularity); and its special embodiment in percussion parts. Unique among studies of musical rhythm, the collection directs close attention to ways performers and listeners conceptualize aspects of rhythm and questions many received categories for describing rhythm. By drawing the ear and the mind to tensions, distinctions, and aesthetic principles that might otherwise be overlooked, this focus on local concepts enables the listener to dispel assumptions about how music works "in general." Readers may walk away with a few surprises, become more aware of their assumptions, and/or think of new ways to shock their students out of complacency.