Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros67Transnationalising Brazilian ritu...

Transnationalising Brazilian ritual music: Quimbanda in Argentina and Charismatic Catholicism in the USA

Transnationalisation des musiques rituelles brésiliennes : Quimbanda en Argentine et catholicisme charismatique aux Etats-Unis
Marc Gidal
p. 111-128

Résumés

Cet article compare la musique rituelle et les contextes religieux de deux cérémonies brésiliennes pratiquées à l’étranger : une cérémonie Quimbanda à Buenos Aires, en Argentine et une messe de guérison catholique à Newark, New Jersey (Etats-Unis). Les participants (appartenant à une communauté religieuse afro-brésilienne) de la première cérémonie sont pour la plupart des natifs argentins, alors que ceux de la seconde cérémonie sont principalement des migrants brésiliens. Dans les deux cas, le clergé et les musiciens sont les principaux garants de la transnationalisation de la musique brésilienne. Les processus de transnationalisation de la musique rituelle du Quimbanda et du Renouveau Charismatique Catholique du Brésil vers l’Argentine et les Etats-Unis sont similaires, même si les pratiquants, les entités surnaturelles, et la musique ont des affiliations nationales différentes par rapport à leur environnement local. Alors que les deux études de cas incluent mobilité, migration et médias, leur comparaison met en lumière les différents degrés auxquels ces facteurs ont contribué à la transnationalisation de la musique rituelle. Les données ethnographiques sont issues de recherches de terrain réalisées en 2008 et en 2015.

Haut de page

Texte intégral

Introduction

1On a Saturday night outside Buenos Aires, Argentine followers of the Quimbanda religion drummed and sang Brazilian devotional songs in Portuguese to Brazilian spirits for trained mediums to receive. The mediums then passed healing energy and offered consultations from the spirits to novices and visitors who sought help with their worldly problems. Meanwhile the participants bonded socially and strengthened their affinities with Brazil. Elsewhere, on a Thursday evening in Newark, New Jersey, USA, Catholics from Brazil (and some from Portugal) sang Brazilian hits and liturgical songs of the Charismatic Renewal movement to celebrate a Mass dedicated to healing. Singing in Portuguese to the Holy Trinity, parishioners pledged their devotion and requested spiritual intimacy and relief from their suffering while expressing their Lusophone roots. Both ceremonies featured currently popular trends of religiosity (Quimbanda and Charismatic Catholicism) within globalised religions (Afro-Atlantic religions, Spiritism, and Roman Catholicism). Similar to Thomas Csordas’s explanation of Charismatic Catholicism around the world:

“This is the globalization of religion on the level of populations, spreading devotees in networks of communities that create styles of intersubjectivity and intercorporeality through adherence to common experiential modalities and performative genres.” (2009: 82).

2The clergy and music leaders intentionally curated familiar, stimulating, and engaging musical experiences to support ritual and communal objectives. The music would help congregants not only request healing from supernatural entities but also express their transnational affinities. In both situations, the clergy and musicians selected, performed, and led music from abroad aided by sojourns, travels, and media resources. Music here, like “performative genres,” can include songs, instrumental accompaniment, stylistic nuances, performance practices, norms of participation, common interpretations, and ceremonial functions. Regardless of the local languages (Spanish and English respectively), both ceremonies used the Portuguese language and Brazilian music. In the Brazilian-styled Masses of Newark most parishioners were economic migrants and the ritual music also came from Brazil, though the religious institution and ritual structures of Roman Catholicism had long been established in the US. By contrast, Brazil’s Quimbanda religion and its music came to Buenos Aires in the 1960s and most participants at the ceremony were countercultural Argentines. In sum, the intentions for and processes of transnationalising ritual music of Quimbanda and Charismatic Catholicism from Brazil to Argentina and the United States have been quite similar, yet the practitioners, religions, and supernatural entities had contrasting national associations relative to their local settings. Furthermore, while the dissemination and learning of music in the two situations have benefitted from different levels of media support, both communities have privileged live music making to achieve the ceremonial goals of supernatural communication, spiritual healing, communal bonding, and strengthening transnational identification.

  • 1 This article neither discusses nor utilises distinctions between transnationalism and diaspora (see (...)

3In comparison to most studies of transnational religious music, this essay highlights processes and intentions more than recontextualised meaning, musical conservation rather than local innovation, and preferences for live music over recordings during ceremonies. The religious leaders, musicians, and participants attend services for diverse reasons, including to express Brazilian aspects of their self-identities, whether or not they are native Brazilians. For those living outside of Brazil, music can support their dual transnational identities. “Transnationalism” generally means, following Steven Vertovec’s literature review, “sustained cross-border relationships, patterns of exchange, affiliations and social formations spanning nation states” (2009: 2). I consider music to be “transnational” not merely if it is played in multiple countries, but when music contributes to, supports, or expresses transnational experiences or identities (Zheng 2010: 12). The verb “transnationalise” in this article therefore means to express, trigger, support, or inform people’s sense of multiple national affinities; and to transnationalise music means to use music for achieving these goals, explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly. The clergy and musicians in these two cases provide musical events during which congregants can express or experience Brazilian aspects of their identities, whether or not this is not their primary objectives for these healing ceremonies. Studies of transnational music (and diasporic music, a related concept) often focus on recontextualised meanings in new national settings as music traditions follow migrating populations (Baily & Collyer 2006; Bohlman 2011; Brennan 2012; Krüger & Trandafoiu 2014; Lidskog 2016; Tan & Rao 2016).1 In the new settings, music often supports people’s burgeoning sense of their transnational identity, often theorised by scholars as “diasporic consciousness” (e.g., Brennan 2012: 5; McAlister 2012: 27; Slobin 2012: 99-110; Solomon 2015: 206 ff.; Lidskog 2016: 30). Given the prevalence of this theory, it is highly likely that many Brazilian Catholics in Newark experience “diasporic consciousness” or “transnational consciousness” during the Brazilian-styled Masses at St. James Church. While the present essay includes interpretations of local meanings of music, the focus is on processes of music circulation and the intentions of the religious and music leaders. Vicki Brennan took a similar approach to explain compositions, recordings, and communal performances of Christian music by Nigerian musicians living in the US. “Through an analytic focus on processes of mediation and circulation, I explore how the Asaphs of Seraph produce and maintain diasporic consciousness and community through the use of religious music” (Brennan 2012: 4). In contrast to the Nigerians in Brennan’s case study, however, my subjects resemble religious communities that aim to conserve rather than innovate ritual music in new national settings (Baily & Collyer 2006: 174; Bohlman 2006: 10; Shelemay 2006: 310; Tan & Rao 2016: 10).

4These Quimbandists and Catholics play music from Brazil, preferring live music to the use of recordings during ceremonies. Scholars have highlighted contemporary uses of recordings and electronic communications that significantly mediate religious services, music, recitations, and sermons (e.g., Lee 2003; Eisenlohr 2006; Csordas 2009: 90; Buggenhagen 2010; Brennan 2012; Carl 2016; Ramzy 2016; see also Engelhardt 2012: 304-5). Brennan, summarising several recent studies including her own, wrote:

“electronic media technology is used in religious settings in contemporary Africa and its diaspora to enhance practices of devotion and worship, to enable interaction with the divine, and to produce various forms of interaction, interconnectedness, and transcendence” (2012: 23 n.6).

5Some circumstances necessitate electronically mediated interactions as compromises due to sound ordinances and a dispersed community (Lee 2003), legal/governmental barriers restricting contact with clergy (Buggenhagen 2010), or international separation (Beliso-De Jesús 2015). In the present case studies, the influences of recordings and mass media on the religions and their music have affected the circulation, teaching/learning, and selection of songs during ceremonies more than the ceremonies themselves. Comparing the situations of these Quimbandists and Catholics outside Brazil reveals, however, the different extents to which mass media have contributed to the transnationalisation of the ritual music. Crucial for Arjun Appadurai and relevant for this essay is that the “disjunctures and differences” in global cultural flows shape the particularities of local situations; thus they will be “radically context dependent” (1996: 47). Updating his theory of globalisation, mobility, and media in the new millennium, he argued:

“Today, I would make that suggestion more dynamic by arguing that the bumps and blocks, disjunctures and differences are produced by the variety of circuits, scales, and speeds that characterise the circulation of cultural elements” (Appadurai 2013: 68).

6The present comparison underscores differences of scale between Quimbanda in Argentina and Catholicism in the US with respect to the relative sizes of the music media enterprises involved (e.g., independent record producers and self-publishers versus major record labels, media conglomerates, and commercial recording academies).

7The following descriptions of the religions, communities, and ceremonies are necessarily brief (for more, see Gidal 2016a, 2016b), with details selected to support the concluding comparison.

A Quimbanda ceremony in Buenos Aires, Argentina

  • 2 Villegas, Gustavo (Pai Gustavo de Oxalá), interview with author, 12 April 2008. Anthropologist Alej (...)

8In April, 2008, I visited a worship house of Afro-Brazilian religions in the Merlo suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where devotees were celebrating a Quimbanda ceremony on a Saturday night. The worship house is led by the pai-de-santo (religious leader) Gustavo Villegas, known in the religion as Pai Gustavo de Oxalá, who is also an expert of the ritual music, having taught many musicians including his son Lucas.2 Quimbanda is a variation of Umbanda, an eclectic Brazilian religion that combines aspects of French Spiritism (based on Spiritualism from the US and England), Afro-Atlantic religions, folk Catholicism, and minimally Amerindian Shamanism (Capone 2010: 69-91). During Quimbanda, rituals people make devotional offerings and seek healing from folk spirits of urban street-life and cemeteries, considered more mischievous yet exciting than the benevolent and stoic spirits of Umbanda. This worship house, like many others in Buenos Aires, follows religious practices of southernmost Brazil, so they also practice Batuque (also called Africanismo or Nação, Nation), a regional Afro-Brazilian religion similar to Candomblé (Oro 1999; Corrêa 2006).

  • 3 Exu spirits differ from the orixá Exú (Capone 2010). Cosmologies and practices in greater Porto Ale (...)

9Despite the stigmatised past of Quimbanda, its ceremonies have become more popular than Umbanda and Batuque in Brazil and Argentina. Reasons identified in Brazilian contexts that are relevant to this essay are the livelier and more sociable ceremonies, free expressions of a wider-range of identity traits, and heightened feelings of what Ari Pedro Oro calls an “immanent religious experience,” which contribute to helping participants solve their personal problems (2012: 261-262). Quimbanda’s popularity and lively spirits have sparked a proliferation of new devotional songs, which are often performed at faster tempos than in Umbanda and Batuque (Gidal 2016a: 116-131). “For every hundred songs for the exus, there may be a new one for caboclos” (Por cada cien puntos para exu, puede haber uno nuevo para caboclos), surmised Pai Gustavo, contrasting the exu spirits of Quimbanda with the caboclo spirits of Umbanda.3

  • 4 The history of this drum is more complicated. Known as an ilú or tambor de cordas (cord drum), it c (...)

10The Quimbanda ceremony in Buenos Aires featured similar songs, musical practices, and ritual structure as ceremonies in Porto Alegre, the state capital of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil. The examples here also illustrate the circulation of music through mass media. Although Umbanda songs are created and sung all over Brazil, some of Pai Gustavo’s selections are popular and even composed in Porto Alegre. As well, the drums and drumming rhythms originated in Batuque ceremonies in Rio Grande do Sul (Braga 1998), which influenced local Umbanda and Quimbanda practices (Figure 1).4 During the ceremony’s introductory section, congregants sang these lyrics to the female spirits:

Iansâ que lhe deu força
Iansã, who gave him strength,
É rainha no Candomblé
Is queen in Candomblé
Vamos saravá a rainha
Let us hail the queen,
Pomba Gira Exu mulher
Pomba gira, woman exu

11Although the song begins by addressing Iansã of Candomblé, a deity in African-derived religions, the lyrics connect her to pomba giras, a general term for female spirits venerated in Quimbanda. Iansã is invoked, Pai Gustavo explained, because she commands the pomba giras in the spirit hierarchy. It is not a prayer used in Candomblé or Batuque, which would sing African-derived lyrics in call-response; rather the Portuguese quatrain is a devotional song of Umbanda or Quimbanda.

Figure 1. The double-headed ilú drums in the worship house of Pai Gustavo de Oxalá, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Figure 1. The double-headed ilú drums in the worship house of Pai Gustavo de Oxalá, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

These are identical to those used in southern Brazil, but dissimilar to the single-headed conical atabaque drums of Candomblé

© Photograph by Marc M. GIDAL.

  • 5 Kalunga can mean cemetery, a Central African divinity, or the spiritual cemetery of the sea.

12This devotional song, like the others, and its role in the ceremony spread from Brazil to Argentina both through word-of-mouth and print media. The song is common in Brazilian anthologies of Umbanda songs published by Editora Eco and Pallas, religious presses from Rio de Janeiro, always appearing in the section of songs to pomba giras, not in the section to Iansã. Argentine author Gustavo Maldonado also included this Portuguese song in two self-published Spanish booklets about female spirits of Quimbanda: Señoras de la noche (Women of the night) and Mulheres da kalunga (Women of the cemetery) – an African-influenced Portuguese title with Spanish content.5 Pai Gustavo de Oxalá is familiar with the author, but has not read the books, which are sold in stores of religious articles in a nearby neighbourhood; instead, he learned the song and its use when practicing the religion.

  • 6 Viana da Silva, Ieda Maria (Mãe Ieda de Ogum), interview with author, 12 March 2008.
  • 7 Bará in this song is synonymous with Exu.

13After the introductory medleys, the group switched to songs that summon specific spirits. They began with spirits common throughout Brazil, whom spirit-mediums incorporated. The second song, which called the spirit Exu Rei Sete Encruzilhadas (Exu King of the Seven Crossroads), was written by the religious leader Mãe Ieda de Ogum of Porto Alegre.6 Not only did she help rejuvenate Quimbanda practices in the 1970s and her songs are generally popular in Porto Alegre, but she has many Argentine disciples and has visited Buenos Aires regularly since the early 1980s (Oro 1999). “I saw the moon, clearing the street, the moon / I had a bottle of cachaça [alcohol] for Mister Bará to drink” (Eu vi a lua, clareando a rua, a lua / Tinha uma garrafa de marafo, para o senhor Bará tomar) begin the lyrics of her well-known song that later address “Mr. Seven, my fellow Quimbandist.”7 Forty-five minutes into the ceremony, the spirits had arrived and the music stopped temporarily for visitors to converse with the spirits (through the mediums) about their problems, as well as to receive invisible fluids as vital energy for spiritual cleansing (an influence from Spiritism). This occupied most of the remaining time in the ceremony, although devotional songs were sung during the consultations to maintain the mood and to help novice mediums develop their skills receiving and controlling spirits, which also serves as therapy for mediums. Finally, songs to send the spirits away closed the ceremony around 3.30 a.m.

  • 8 There are exceptions. Not all worship houses use as much Portuguese as his does, and there exist ho (...)

14Almost everything about this ceremony in Buenos Aires resembles Quimbanda ceremonies in Porto Alegre, Brazil: the songs, their ordering and functions, the ritual practices, the costumes, the drums, the drum rhythms, the samba-like dance steps, and the beliefs that Pai Gustavo explained to me. Notably the language is mostly the same: the prayers and songs are in Portuguese even though the practitioners speak Spanish. During consultations, the spirit mediums try to speak with visitors in Portuguese, according to levels of comprehension; otherwise, they resort to Portuñol (mixing Portuguese with Spanish) or, if still unsuccessful, Spanish. They try to sing and speak in Portuguese because, as Pai Gustavo explained, the spirits and the religion are Brazilian. Related to this point, some of his Argentine disciples occasionally compose devotional songs to the spirits; they compose in Portuguese and have fellow Brazilian mediums correct their lyrics or pronunciation.8 Although Argentine followers have publicly highlighted the Pan-African and Afro-Argentine cultural connections of their religions, downplaying its stigmatised status as a sect imported from Brazil (Frigerio 2013a), the spirits, music, and ritual language of Quimbanda point squarely to Brazil.

15Pai Gustavo’s biography is instructive about followers of Afro-Brazilian religions in Argentina and their increasingly transnational beliefs and practices, in other words, how practicing the religion and singing the songs informs their affinity with Brazil in addition to Argentina. Most practitioners are native Argentine converts while some were raised with the religion and others are Brazilian expats. Born in 1954, Pai Gustavo was raised Catholic and at age 23 became involved with Umbanda in Buenos Aires, which had arrived in the 1960s. Through Umbanda he started practicing Batuque as a disciple of Pai Jorge de Oxalá of Porto Alegre. Gustavo has visited Porto Alegre ten times or so, and his teacher has also visited Argentina. Frigerio has identified this as a common progression from Catholicism to the eclectic Umbanda and onto the more African religions; and as Catholics become gradually involved in these Afro-Brazilian religions they move from understanding it through the worldview of Catholicism to syncretic Afro-Brazilian and African perspectives (2013a). Participants may interpret Quimbanda’s influences and origins through its Catholic statues, Portuguese songs (and their lyrical content), and African-inspired drums and drumming. Pai Clovis de Xango Aganjú, who leads an Umbanda advocacy organisation in Porto Alegre, remembered the wave of Argentines and Uruguayans interested in Afro-Brazilian religions. They began visiting Porto Alegre in the early-1970s, part of the era’s global counterculture movement. Many became ordained and brought the theologies, rituals, and music back with them.

  • 9 Oliveira de Souza, Clovis Alberto (Pai Clovis de Aganjú), interview with author, 8 May 2008.

“They used to stay a month here, learned some prayers, and took back recordings of prayers. It was then that the dissemination to Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile began.9

16They could not have accomplished this without cassette recorders, he emphasised. (Brazilian LP discs of religious music would have been exported to Argentina even earlier.) During the 1970s, Argentina’s brutal dictatorship prohibited practices of Afro-Brazilian religions. Pai Gustavo recalls that leaders were arrested and even killed. Because of curfews, night-time ceremonies could not occur, especially with conspicuous drumming. Only after 1982 could Argentine devotees resume practicing the religions without secrecy, “opening” their houses to the public, as they say, and freely drumming loudly in night-time rituals.

  • 10 Da Silva, Dirnei, interview with author, 28 April 2008.
  • 11 Cordosa dos Santos, Kratos Pachero (Pai Kratos Santos), interview with author, 26 October 2007.

17In addition to word-of-mouth dissemination of devotional songs and drumming patterns, recording technologies, audio media, print media, and the Internet have helped Argentines learn music and share their own recordings of songs and ceremonies. Cassette tapes aided Argentines during the 1970s and 1980s, replaced with CDs during the 1990s and 2000s. With developing Internet capabilities and access, people shifted from learning lyrics on static websites to ordering CDs online and onto listening to music online. Dirnei da Silva is a record producer in Porto Alegre who in the 2000s was exporting CDs on his independent label Atabaques Records to Argentina, Uruguay, and elsewhere, where pirated copies of his CDs were also sold.10 The same stores that sold Maldondo’s booklets sold hundreds of pirated CDs of Afro-Brazilian religious music from Brazil and Argentine recordings of local musicians. Pai Kratos Santos, a religious leader, composer, and producer of Quimbanda CDs in Porto Alegre, sold and mailed to Argentines CDs of his composed devotional songs for Quimbanda spirits through an Internet user-group on Microsoft Network (MSN). He started the MSN group with an Argentine musician, Alabê Martins de Xangô, and received many customers from Martins’s worship communities.11 In Buenos Aires, Pai Gustavo also started an MSN Group in 2004 to share information about Afro-Brazilian religions; and his Spanish content became popular in the Southern Cone, Spain, and among Latinos in North America, due to the common language (see also Frigerio 2013a). Within a year of my interviews, however, Microsoft closed MSN Groups in October 2008, forcing Pai Gustavo, Pai Kratos Santos, Alabê Martins and the hundreds connected to their groups to find other virtual networks for sharing and selling content. According to Frigerio, Argentines migrated to similar groups by Google and Sonico (which did not become as popular as the MSN Groups), and started making photo blogs (Frigerio 2013a: 186-188). In Brazil around 2008, Orkut was the most popular social media network until its parent company Google discontinued the service in 2014. Currently devotional songs and prayers are available on YouTube, Facebook, and other websites, where devotees share recordings of songs and videos of ceremonies, whether amateur or pirated commercial productions. It is possible that watching and sharing ceremonial videos online has influenced ceremonial practices, although I have no evidence; this type of mediated interaction relates more to the next case study.

18Although people can listen to recordings of songs, it is rare for Quimbanda ceremonies in Brazil and Argentina to use anything other than live musicians, who must sing the songs and prayers and play the ceremonial drums. Pai Gustavo explained:

“The drum is a call... it is calling spiritual vibrations. You cannot play a CD, because it is not the same. The drum is a foundation of the religion (El tambor es un llamado … está llamando vibraciones espirituales. No puede poner un CD, porque no es lo mismo. El tambor es un fundamento de religión).”

  • 12 Silva da Souza, Sandra Beatriz, interview with author, 21 November 2007.

19Moreover, he told me this as an explanation of why ceremonies could not occur during the dictatorship’s curfews. Even when legally restricted, the community did not substitute live music with recordings, assuming they would be ritually ineffective. To accompany ceremonies, Argentines learn either the requisite musical skills, such as did Pai Gustavo and his son Lucas de Xangô, or they hire Brazilian musicians to visit Argentina. This is especially important for Batuque ceremonies, with far more complicated repertoire of prayers and challenging drum patterns than Umbanda and Quimbanda. For these reasons, many Argentine worship houses hire well-known musicians from Brazil. The musician Alabê Sandra da Souza of Porto Alegre, for example, found that Argentines especially enjoyed her songs to the Quimbanda spirits.12

20This case study describes the transationalisation process of a non-migrant religious minority community where the religion and its music were disseminated internationally and where media has supported transmission but not replaced live music for effective ceremonies. By contrast, the second case study features Brazilian migrants in the US who use their music in a locally established global religion; despite the influences of major mass media, they too feature live music making during ceremonies.

A Catholic Mass for healing in Newark, USA

21In Newark, a city of approximately 280,000 residents in the New York metropolitan area, exists an ethnic enclave of Brazilians, Portuguese, and Hispanics – immigrants, temporary workers, and their kin, most of whom are Catholic (Ramos-Zayas 2012). Several Catholic parishes cater to the Lusophone population by celebrating the Mass in Portuguese and using customs and musical styles of Portugal or Brazil separately in the so-called “Portuguese Mass” and “Brazilian Mass.” Many of the priests and pastors of these parishes are also Brazilian. The parish in Newark that attracts the greatest number of Brazilians is St. James Church, which uses volunteer musicians and a musical director whom the priests allow to program the music as they wish. The current pastor is Father Celso Martins, Jr. from the state of Paraná in Southern Brazil (Gidal 2016b).

22On the third Thursday evening of each month, St. James Church celebrates a Mass devoted to healing, with the nickname Misa Santísimo (Most Holy Mass), a type of Mass held weekly in Brazil. It is longer than common Masses, features music associated with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and is one of the most popular Masses at the parish, attracting 500 to 1,000 people. The homilies and para-liturgical songs tend to request intimacy and help from God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, as well as offer them devotion and praise. “The whole concept is that everyone has issues, problems, whether medical, family, financial, or otherwise,” as local musical director John Cardoso explained the healing Masses, which he also attends at St. James Church.

  • 13 Cardoso, John, interview with the author, 6 April 2015.

“Everyone is hurting and doesn’t know where to turn. It is a way of reaching out to Jesus Christ and to evoke the Holy Spirit to help us. It is to help us find peace in our lives.”13

  • 14 Martins, Celso, Jr., personal communication, 22 May 2015.

23Father Celso believes that the parishioners come to the Misa Santísimo in part because they enjoy the Charismatic music, and so does he.14 Therefore, he allows the musicians to select and play more songs during this Mass than is typical at the parish. He sometimes preaches after or during the songs by connecting lyrics to the spiritual and healing goals of the Mass. The Mass resembles Csordas’s descriptions of public ceremonies for healing in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR), without the priest “laying on of hands” for supplicants who fall to the floor. Historically these healing services drew on Protestant “baptising in the Spirit” and were accepted into Roman Catholicism after the Second Vatican Council’s reforms. Csordas also explains that the Charismatic emphasis is to experience an unmediated direct connection with the Holy Trinity, solving problems in the here-and-now instead of suffering until the afterlife. Thus, attention to healing is an extended high point of the ceremony. Music in Charismatic ceremonies typically includes para-liturgical songs, participatory singing, and soothing background music (Csordas 1994).

24In Newark, the ensemble featured the sound and instrumentation of pop-rock bands common in contemporary Christian worship music as well as music of Charismatic Masses in Brazil, embracing a “universal style” of “urban popular culture” (de Theije & Mariz 2008: 47). Songs in verse-chorus-bridge form were performed with amplified lead and background vocals, electric piano/synthesiser, amplified acoustic guitar, electric bass guitar, and drum set. The goals of the music leaders, Olga Abreu and Maria da Graça Csiszer, were to select songs that fit the theme of the Mass and encourage parishioners to sing along and involve themselves in the service. They chose songs from the Brazilian Charismatic repertoire that are especially well known, and projected the lyrics on a screen above the altar. After the Mass, Csiszer pointed out to me how many people sang along as evidence of their success. They search for new songs on Catholic Brazilian websites, CDs, and other media, selecting hits by popular Christian bands, worship groups, and solo artists who have been disseminated internationally by Christian-oriented and major record labels in Brazil.

25Their selections – the night I attended in May 2015 – were all from popular Catholic Brazilian singers (or Protestant Evangelical hits that are popular among Catholics) ranging in time period since the 1970s, after the Second Vatican Council allowed vernacular liturgical music: the ubiquitous Padre Zezinho (José Fernandes de Oliveira, b. 1941) whose recordings span 1969-2014, the bands Voz da Verdade founded in 1978, the band Vida Reluz founded in 1985 with recordings from 1996 to 2011, and the commercially recorded singers Eliana Ribeiro, Celina Borges (b. 1964), Padre Reginaldo Manzotti (b. 1969), and Aline Barros (b. 1976).

26They chose songs appropriate for moments during the Mass, starting with three upbeat songs relatively light in mood to prepare parishioners for the evening and encourage participation. One was “Homenzinho Torto” (Crooked little man), a hit from Barros’s 2006 album Aline Barros & Cia, which won that year’s Latin Grammy Award for Best Christian Album in Portuguese. The lyrics describe a man whose body, house, walk, and life were crooked until he found a Bible and Jesus straightened him out. Just as Barros’s music video portrays her and others as cute animated marionettes and clowns, moving their limp heads and dangling limbs awkwardly, the singer Csiszer at St. James Church had parishioners on their feet contorting their bodies and then straightening up with the refrain, “Jesus straightened him out” (Jesus endireitou). Movements in the music video, viewed at least 26.5 million times on YouTube and likely screened on Catholic TV, clearly influenced Csiszer’s directions during the Mass, illustrating the role of visual media in spreading the Charismatic Catholicism from Brazil (Carranza & Mariz 2013; Csordas 2009: 79). The activity also suggests how performance styles during ceremonies can inform personal experiences.15 After the song, Csiszer thanked those who participated enthusiastically, asking everyone “to feel it in your soul, in the music, and help us liven/cheer up people” (“A sentir na alma, na música, e a nos ajudar animar o pessoal”). In Csiszer’s mind, participating in the music and movements support common ritual goals.

27Charismatic songs often emphasise experiences of close intimate proximity with the divine in part by addressing God or Jesus directly in second person singular, requesting support while offering committed devotion. For example, to accompany the clergy’s entrance, the band sang “Derrama o Teu Amor Aqui” (Pour Your love here) composed by Jorge Mongó and recorded by Celina Borges on her 2006 album Ânima, produced by Aline Barros’s father Ronaldo and released on his Christian-oriented label AB Records. The hit has been covered by celebrity priest-singers Fábio de Melo and Reginaldo Manzotti, whom musicians and parishioners may have heard. The lyrics ask God to pour “Your Spirit,” “Your love,” and his living water on “us,” and that the supplicants will commit themselves to “Your heart” and want to be restored by “Your Spirit.” Lyrically similar, for Communion the band played “Como és Lindo” (How beautiful You are), which states, “My soul says, my God, how beautiful are You / I am in You, You are in me” (Minh‘alma diz, meu Deus, como és lindo / Sou em ti, és em mim). Composed by Walmir Alencar and Fábio de Melo, the Catholic band Vida Reluz released “Como és Lindo” in 1997 through the Catholic record label Paulinas-COMEP. Father Celso referenced some of these lyrics when preaching after songs and sometimes during them, evincing that the song lyrics supported the goals of the healing Mass.

28After Communion, this parish usually features a slow song for people to meditate on their connection to Jesus Christ, having just received his body and blood through the wafer and wine. During the Mass for healing, the song choice explicitly supported the topic with “Cura, Senhor” (Heal, Lord) by Suely de Faria, recorded by Manzotti on his 2011 live worship album, and released by Som Livre, a subsidiary of Brazil’s largest media conglomerate, Grupo Globo. The verses ask Jesus for closeness and care, referring to personal hardships as a “sword of pain,” a “crying soul,” memories to forget, and a “void in the soul.” The chorus calls, “Heal Lord, where it hurts / Heal Lord, right here / Heal Lord, where I cannot go.” (Cura Senhor, onde dói / Cura Senhor, bem aqui / Cura Senhor, onde eu não posso ir). Since this section is extended for healing during this type of Mass, two additional songs followed, during which some people volunteered to be anointed with oil or to have photographs of others receive unction, an anointment for the sick, presumably for those who could not attend due to poor health.

29The drummer accompanied most songs either with a standard rock beat that alternates evenly between bass and snare drums, or with a Brazilian baião rhythm on the bass and snare drums (two dotted eighth notes on the bass drum followed by an eighth note on the snare). The baião rhythm, which he played during “Como és Lindo,” “Cura, Senhor,” and other songs, is typical of many Brazilian genres, although it is not solely Brazilian; the same pattern is found in the Hispanic Caribbean (called tresillo). During the Brazilian-style Mass, the baião pattern in the drum beat referenced Brazilian music, while the rock beat played the rest of the time is a homogenous aspect of global Christian worship music, local discrepancies notwithstanding (de Theije & Mariz 2008: 47).

Concluding comparison

30Despite differences in religions and populations, the two situations are similar in the processes and intentions for disseminating, selecting, and performing Brazilian religious ritual music in other countries in part to enhance the transnational experiences and identities of participants. To begin this topical comparison, the two religions contrast in their national and international associations while sharing similar historical trajectories. In the Newark study, the Catholics practice a globally uniform ritual (the Mass according to the Roman rite) of an already globalised religion (Roman Catholicism). The ritual evinces contemporary Charismatic objectives that originated in the US and ritual songs composed in Brazil while universal in their pop-rock style. Quimbanda combines folk Catholicism with circum-Atlantic Spiritism and Afro-Brazilian religions.

31Although the supernatural entities of the two religions differ in their national associations, devotees attempt to connect with them regardless of location. For Catholics the Holy Trinity exists beyond nation-states and national identities, while the historical Jesus lived in ancient Israel, and the Christian Saints and apparitions of the Virgin Mary have celebrated locations. The Argentines recognise the Brazilian origins and identities of Quimbanda spirits, and some spirits are also connected with Spain and Western Africa. These cosmological histories and geographies may or may not be on the minds of participants, less likely during the healing Mass with its emphasis on pleading to the divine for help, not on Biblical storytelling or hagiographies. As Elizabeth McAlister has interpreted music of Afro-Creole Vodou and Evangelical Christianity in the Haitian diaspora of New York, people can conjure multiple “diasporic horizons” (using Paul Christopher Johnson’s concept) with their own “diasporic compasses” (McAlister’s concept) as they variously think about Africa, Haiti, or supernatural realities. She adds:

“When music is religious, and when music making is part of ritual contact with the unseen world, music is a sonic compass pointing out cosmic directionalities” (2012: 31; see also Slobin 2012: 102).

32Similarly, Thomas Solomon views geographical and historic influences on religious music as “diasporic networks”:

“music may articulate the different nodes of these networks while providing a vehicle for the imagination and performance of diasporic consciousness” (2015: 209).

33Whether conceived through diasporic horizons, compasses, or networks, the Holy Trinity and Quimbanda’s spirits are considered to exist apart from nation-state boundaries. Supernatural entities such as these are not restricted geographically because they “come into presence,” as Michael Lambek explains, “from the immaterial to the material, the latent to the manifest, the concealed to the unconcealed, and back” (2010: 28). Musical performance during rituals could be conceived similarly as “coming into presence” temporarily in time and place, regardless of national setting.

34The most important local forces of transnationalisation are the people who select and lead the music for rituals, affected by their lived experiences, use of mass media, and local norms and preferences (Eisenlohr 2006: 231; Shelemay 2006: 304). In Newark, the clergy and musicians transnationalise the experience of celebrating the Mass for parishioners by speaking only in Portuguese, and selecting and leading Brazilian songs. In Buenos Aires, the ritual leaders serve as “cultural brokers” (Frigerio 2013b: 97) who provide the Brazilian religion, music, and ritual experience for congregants to interpret, whether it helps them to feel connected to Brazil or fulfils them spiritually, therapeutically, or socially. The musicians also depend on congregants to know or learn the songs and to participate in music making so that they can collectively create a lively, engaging experience for everyone during rituals.

35Due to institutional support for their international mobility, the clergy are the most transnational of participants in both communities, since they have significant connections and interactions with networked professionals in many countries, and they travel, study, work, and live inside and outside Brazil. The mobile careers of the Catholic priests echo Vertovec’s note, “Religious orders are the oldest transnationals; they accompanied older forms of globalisation like colonialism” (2009: 145).

36The leaders of Afro-Brazilian religions who reside outside Brazil may be more aware of international networks and translocal communities than most leaders inside Brazil. Their professional network has enabled short-term sojourns between Argentina and Brazil over many years. Nevertheless, intensified media saturation has exposed congregants to more devotional music outside of services, without relying solely on clergy and musicians to disseminate music. This situation has also helped Catholic musicians select widely familiar songs spread through Brazil’s Christian media.

37The music in the two ceremonies share significant qualities despite obvious differences between a pop-rock band performing contemporary Christian hits a few musicians leading songs with hand drums. Regardless of the religions’ different origins, both ceremonies feature music composed in Brazil, exported and performed abroad within religious communities that identify with Brazil. Seen through a “tension between cultural homogenisation and cultural heterogenisation” (Appadurai 1996: 32), music in the two case studies primarily exemplify universalising and homogenising trends more than localising trends (Vertovec 2009: 149). However, other situations in both communities incorporate non-Brazilian music that localise the music and community, such as local compositions and bi-lingual Masses. The flow of music appears to be mono-directional from Brazil outward, for devotees in Newark and Buenos Aires have yet to contribute their original compositions to repertoires in Brazil, as far as I know. The drums and drum patterns in Quimbanda originate in Brazil, and the prominent baião rhythm played on the drum set during the Catholic Mass references Brazil while the drum set itself had already spread globally. In both events, everyone is encouraged to participate in singing prayers and devotional songs, illustrating a common value for communal singing while utilising specialists as music directors, song leaders, and instrumentalists for accompaniment. Singing and listening to music may also help congregants establish personal connections with spiritual entities, internalise the message of songs, or achieve other objectives of rituals, notably healing.

38The Portuguese language is central in both ceremonies to assist supernatural communication and to sing the Brazilian songs, despite the settings in predominantly English- and Spanish-speaking countries. Participants’ ability to navigate two languages contributes to their transnational self-identities. In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church resolved to allow the Mass to be celebrated in vernacular languages, not only in Latin, which impacted the composition of liturgical music. While some Afro-Brazilian religions try to maintain prayers in African languages (e.g., Candomblé and Batuque), the devotional songs and prayers of Quimbanda/Umbanda are in Portuguese with occasional African words. Aside from the fact that the song lyrics are in Portuguese, the communities’ reasons for singing and speaking in Portuguese contrast: one is for the sake of familiarity, the other for authenticity because of the Brazilian identities of the spirits.

39Mass media plays a supporting role in the process of transnationalising these ritual musics, though to differing degrees in each case, mirroring the religions’ unequal sizes and resources. The repertoires spread from Brazil via musicians, print media, physical recordings (cassettes and CDs), and in recent decades developing capabilities of the Internet. Major record labels and music-industry associations, like the Grammys, support the international dissemination and publicity of Brazilian Catholic music. Smaller religious labels (e.g., AB Records and Atabaques Records) and independent producers (e.g., Ronaldo Barros & Pai Kratos Santos) have also helped to create and send Brazilian recordings abroad. Static text websites, then audio and video portals, and social media platforms have increasingly facilitated research, communication, and commerce among practitioners. As Appadurai would predict (2013: 68) there are important differences of scale, because Brazilian Catholic music has benefitted from greater distribution and support from mass media and multinational media conglomerates (de Souza 2005; Carranza & Mariz 2013). These discrepant levels of media access parallel a distinction Frigerio utilised to interpret Afro-Brazilian religions in Argentina as “transnationalism from below” because it developed in grassroots social networks and social fields of a subaltern religion, rather than as “transnationalism from above,” a centralised multinational institution (Frigerio 2013a: 166-168; de la Torre 2013). The Catholic Charismatic Renewal resembles transnationalism from above, though not only from a central metropole (e.g., the Vatican); instead, Brazil also serves as a musical and linguistic hub for Brazilians residing in the US. This contrast also fits Mark Slobin’s distinction between subcultures and “supercultures” (mainstream, corporate, and hegemonic forces) that influence diasporic music through the music, film, television, and news industries (Slobin 2012: 101). Greater financial resources and larger populations have helped the Charismatic Catholic superculture based in Brazil disseminate beliefs, music and other “performative genres” (Csordas 2009: 82) to Brazilian Catholic communities abroad. Increased mobility and media saturation since the late-twentieth century have bolstered the contemporary globalisation of Catholicism more than the missionary work of earlier eras (Csordas 2009: 90; Carl 2016).

40Although the media has assisted the dissemination of music and in turn its transnationalisation by local practitioners, live music performance has remained central for rituals in both religions in order to maximise the experience and efficacy. Although media certainly helped to distribute Quimbanda music around Brazil and internationally, clergy, musicians, and disciples learn ritual music through study and participation in ceremonies in Brazil and Argentina. Similarly, regardless of mass media, the immigrant parishioners in Newark are already accustomed to the same or similar songs from church services in Brazil. This shared preference for live music is not surprising for it is the norm for religious ceremonies. Despite fascinating studies of religious situations that have utilised recordings and live interactions facilitated through electronic media and increasingly the Internet, these cases remain exceptions that prove the rule that people generally prefer to attend musical religious ceremonies in person with live music.

Haut de page

Bibliographie

Appadurai, Arjun, 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.

Appadurai, Arjun, 2013. The future as cultural fact: Essays on the global condition. London & New York: Verso.

Baily, John & Michael Collyer, 2006. “Introduction: Music and migration,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32 (2), pp. 167-182.

Beliso-De Jesús, Aisha M., 2015. Electric santería: Racial and sexual assemblages of transnational religion. New York: Columbia University Press.

Bohlman, Philip V., 2006. “Introduction: Music in American religious experience,” in Philip V. Bohlman, Edith L. Blumhofer & Maria M. Chow (eds), Music in American religious experience, pp. 3-19. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bohlman, Philip V., 2011. “When migration ends, when music ceases,” Music and Arts in Action 3 (3), pp. 148-165

Braga, Reginaldo Gil, 1998. Batuque jêje-ijexá em Porto Alegre: A música no culto aos orixás. Porto Alegre, BR: Fumproarte, Secretaria Municipal da Cultural de Porto Alegre.

Brennan, Vicki L., 2012. “’Truly we have a good heritage’: Musical mediations in a Yoruba Christian diaspora,” Journal of Religion in Africa 42 (1), pp. 3-25.

Buggenhagen, Beth, 2010. “Islam and the media of devotion in and out of Senegal,” Visual Anthropology Review 26 (2), pp. 81-95.

Capone, Stefania, 2010. Searching for Africa in Brazil: Power and tradition in Candomblé. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Carl, Florian, 2016. “Music, ritual and media in charismatic religious experience in Ghana,” in Anna E. Nekola & Tom Wagner (eds), Congregational music-making and community in a mediated age, pp. 45-60. New York & London: Routledge.

Carranza, Brenda & Cecília Mariz, 2013. “Catholicism for export: The case of Canção Nova,” in Cristina Rocha & Manuel A. Vásquez (eds), The diaspora of Brazilian religions, pp. 37-162. Leiden: Brill.

Corrêa, Norton Figueiredo, 2006. O Batuque do Rio Grande do Sul. Porto Alegre: Editora da UFRGS.

Csordas, Thomas J., 1994. The sacred self: A cultural phenomenology of charismatic healing. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Csordas, Thomas J., 2009. “Global religion and the re-enchantment of the world: The case of the Catholic charismatic renewal,” in Thomas J. Csordas (ed.), Transnational transcendence: Essays on religion and globalization, pp. 73-96. Berkeley: University of California Press.

de la Torre, Renée, 2013. “La Umbanda Argentina y el campo social transnacional Afro,” Debates do NER 14 (23), pp. 85-94.

de Souza, André Ricardo, 2005. Igreja in concert: padres cantores, mídia e marketing. São Paulo: Annablume/FAPESP.

de Theije, Marjo & Cecília L. Mariz, 2008. “Localizing and globalizing processes in Brazilian Catholicism: Comparing inculturation in liberationist and charismatic Catholic cultures,” Latin American Research Review 43 (1), pp. 33-54.

Eisenlohr, Patrick, 2006. “As Makkah is sweet and beloved, so is Madina: Islam, devotional genres, and electronic mediation in Mauritius,” American Ethnologist 33 (2), pp. 230-245

Engelhardt, Jeffers, 2012. “Music, sound, and religion,” in Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert & Richard Middleton (eds), The cultural study of music: A critical introduction, 2nd ed., pp. 299-307. New York & London: Routledge.

Frigerio, Alejandro, 2013a. “Umbanda and Quimbanda in the Southern Cone: Transnationalization as cross-border religious flow and as social field,” in Cristina Rocha & Manuel A. Vásquez (eds), The diaspora of Brazilian religions, pp. 165-195. Leiden & Boston: Brill.

Frigerio, Alejandro, 2013b. “Respuesta a los comentarios,” Debates do NER 14 (23), pp. 95-100.

Gidal, Marc Meistrich, 2016a. Spirit song: Afro-Brazilian religious music and boundaries. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gidal, Marc Meistrich, 2016b. “Catholic music in Lusophone New Jersey: Circum-atlantic music, intergroup dynamics, and immigrant struggles in transnational communities,” American Music 34 (2), pp. 180-217.

Krüger, Simone & Ruxandra Trandafoiu (eds), 2014. “Introduction: Touristic and migrating musics in transit,” in Simone Krürger & Ruxandra Trandafoiu (eds), Globalization of musics in transit, pp. 1-31. New York & London: Routledge.

Lambek, Michael, 2010. “Traveling spirits: Unconcealment and undisplacement,” in Gertrud Hüwelmeier & Kristine Krause (eds), Traveling spirits: Migrants, markets and mobilities, pp. 17-35. New York & London: Routledge.

Lee, Tong Soon, 2003. “Technology and the production of Islamic space: The call to prayer in Singapore,” in René Lysoff & Leslie C. Gay (eds), Music and Technoculture, pp. 109-124. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

Lidskog, Rolf, 2016. “The role of music in ethnic identity formation in diaspora: A research review,” International Social Science Journal 66, pp. 23-38.

McAlister, Elizabeth, 2012. “Listening for geographies: Music as sonic compass pointing toward African and Christian diasporic horizons in the Caribbean,” Black Music Research Journal 32 (2), pp. 25-50.

Oro, Ari Pedro, 1999. Axé Mercosul: as religiões afro-brasileiras nos países do prata. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes.

Oro, Ari Pedro, 2012. “O atual campo afro-religioso gaucho / The contemporary Afro-American religion field in Rio Grande do Sul,” Civitas 12 (3), pp. 556-565.

Ramos-Zayas, Ana Y., 2012. Street therapists: Race, affect, and neoliberal personhood in Latino Newark. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ramzy, Carolyn, 2016. “Autotuned belonging: Coptic popular song and the politics of Neo-Pentecostal pedagogies,” Ethnomusicology 60 (3), pp. 434-458.

Shelemay, Kay Kaufman, 2006. “Ethiopian musical invention in diaspora: A tale of three musicians,” Diaspora 15 (2/3), pp. 303-320.

Slobin, Mark, 2012. “The destiny of “diaspora” in ethnomusicology,” in Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert & Richard Middleton (eds), The cultural study of music: A critical introduction, 2nd ed., pp. 118-128. New York & London: Routledge.

Solomon, Thomas, 2015. “Theorizing diaspora and music,” Urban People/Lidé Mesta 17 (2), pp. 201-219.

Tan, Sooi Beng & Nancy Yunhwa Rao, 2016. “Introduction: Emergent Sino-soundscapes: Musical pasts, transnationalism and multiple identities,” Ethnomusicology Forum 25 (1), pp. 4-13.

Vertovec, Steven, 2009. Transnationalism, key ideas. London & New York: Routledge.

Zheng, Su, 2010. Claiming diaspora: Music, transnationalism, and cultural politics in Asian /Chinese America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Haut de page

Notes

1 This article neither discusses nor utilises distinctions between transnationalism and diaspora (see Shelemay 2006; Vertovec 2009; Zheng 2010; Slobin 2012; Solomon 2015; Lidskog 2016).

2 Villegas, Gustavo (Pai Gustavo de Oxalá), interview with author, 12 April 2008. Anthropologist Alejandro Frigerio introduced us.

3 Exu spirits differ from the orixá Exú (Capone 2010). Cosmologies and practices in greater Porto Alegre differ a little from those in Rio de Janeiro and other regions (Gidal 2016a: 33-39).

4 The history of this drum is more complicated. Known as an ilú or tambor de cordas (cord drum), it came with what became the Batuque religion from Recife where it is still used in ceremonies of the Xangô religion. Nevertheless, in Recife the drum is part of a different ensemble of drums than is used in Rio Grande do Sul and Buenos Aires. (Braga 1998; Gidal 2016a: 30, 82-83).

5 Kalunga can mean cemetery, a Central African divinity, or the spiritual cemetery of the sea.

6 Viana da Silva, Ieda Maria (Mãe Ieda de Ogum), interview with author, 12 March 2008.

7 Bará in this song is synonymous with Exu.

8 There are exceptions. Not all worship houses use as much Portuguese as his does, and there exist houses that sing Brazilian songs translated into Spanish or Portuñol, which is what Mãe Turca de Ogum (Gislande Vargas de Oliveira) of Porto Alegre, Brazil recalled hearing when she visited Buenos Aires. (Interview with author, 21 December 2007).

9 Oliveira de Souza, Clovis Alberto (Pai Clovis de Aganjú), interview with author, 8 May 2008.

10 Da Silva, Dirnei, interview with author, 28 April 2008.

11 Cordosa dos Santos, Kratos Pachero (Pai Kratos Santos), interview with author, 26 October 2007.

12 Silva da Souza, Sandra Beatriz, interview with author, 21 November 2007.

13 Cardoso, John, interview with the author, 6 April 2015.

14 Martins, Celso, Jr., personal communication, 22 May 2015.

15 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMoOdBGBeGE>, accessed 27 June 2017.

Haut de page

Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1. The double-headed ilú drums in the worship house of Pai Gustavo de Oxalá, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Légende These are identical to those used in southern Brazil, but dissimilar to the single-headed conical atabaque drums of Candomblé
Crédits © Photograph by Marc M. GIDAL.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/civilisations/docannexe/image/5026/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 106k
Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence papier

Marc Gidal, « Transnationalising Brazilian ritual music: Quimbanda in Argentina and Charismatic Catholicism in the USA »Civilisations, 67 | 2018, 111-128.

Référence électronique

Marc Gidal, « Transnationalising Brazilian ritual music: Quimbanda in Argentina and Charismatic Catholicism in the USA »Civilisations [En ligne], 67 | 2018, mis en ligne le 01 janvier 2023, consulté le 19 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/civilisations/5026 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/civilisations.5026

Haut de page

Auteur

Marc Gidal

Marc M. Gidal is Associate Professor of Music (Musicology) at Ramapo College of New Jersey. His research interests include Afro-Brazilian religious music, Brazilian music in New York, and music in transnational Brazilian communities. He is the author of Spirit song: Afro-Brazilian religious music and boundaries (Oxford University Press, 2016), and research articles in the journals ‘Ethnomusicology’, ‘Ethnomusicology Forum’, ‘Latin American Music Review’ and ‘American Music’. He received a PhD in ethnomusicology form Harvard University, MA in ethnomusicology from Tufts University, and BS in Religious Studies from the University of Oregon, USA | Ramapo College of New Jersey, School of Contemporary Arts, Ramapo Valley Road 505 (office: BC236), Mahwah, NJ 07430, USA | mgidal[at]ramapo.edu

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search