TRACE - Publishing Archive

STYLES AHEAD
produced by
Transcultural Styles + Ideas
SALVADOR
Carlinhos Brown
Ilê Aiyé
Mãe CarmeM
Cabaré da RrrRraça
RIO
Taís Araújo
Caetano Veloso
Vik Muniz
Regina Casé
us $5.99 can $7.99 uk £3.95 Fr €5.50
Photography Evangelia Kranioti
Fashion Christine de Lassus
BRASIL 2010
photo_Evangelia Kranioti
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MASTHEAD
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CONTRIBUTORS
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EDITOR’S LETTER
CODE
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Rio People and Places Rio Rising People and Places that make up the heart of Brasil
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Rio Resistance Culture is Our Weapon
The Afroreggae movement fights poverty, violence and social inequality in the heart of Rio’s darkest favelas
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Rio Passion The Legacy of Estádio do Maracanã Filmmaker Felipe Lacerda documents the last days of Maracanã
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Rio Power Iconic
Featuring cover star Taís Arajuo, Caetano Veloso, Vik Muniz, Oskar Metsavaht, Ernesto Neto, and Hermano Vianna
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Rio Powerhouse The Reigning Queen of Rio
Regina Casé, Brazil’s most lovable and entertaining on-screen personality shows us why she is the real star of Rio
ISSUE No.
2
December 10-31, 2010
www.blackworldfestival.com
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photo_MARC Baptiste
MAIN - BAHIA RISING
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The Soul of Brasil People and Places of Salvador da Bahia
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A Day in the life of Carlinhos Brown Featuring Museu du Ritmo, Centro de Música Negra and Candyall
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Ilê Aiyê Legend Antônio Carlos Vovô and the group that works to raise the consciousness of the Bahian black community
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A Divine Experience
Renowned priest and artist Mestre Didi and his wife Juana Elbein share their deep spiritual connection to West Africa
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The Light of Consciousness A spiritually enlightening encounter with Mãe Carmem of Gantois
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An afternoon visit to the Pierre Verger Foundation Pierre Verger’s legacy lives on at Fundação Pierre Verger
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Bahian Beauty Marc Baptiste captures Salvador local Rebeca Campos at Porto da Barra
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The New Pelourinho A journey through some of the most fascinating landmarks and architectures in Salvador’s Pelhourinho district
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Bando de Teatro Olodum featuring Cabaré de RRRRRaça
Chica Carelli and Marcio Meirelles pave the way for a new type of Brazilian avant-garde theater
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Natural Invasion Carlito Carvalhosa’s Roteiro para Visitação at the The Palácio da Aclamação
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The Awakened Generation
Celebrating fifty years of Brazilian artwork at the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, featuring work by Mario Cravo Neto and Christian Cravo
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FASHION Concrete Jungle Bold prints and bright colors make a statement in the streets of Salvador
OUTRO
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Flash! The TRACE Selection The best places to stay and eat in Salvador
BILJANA DJURDJEVIĆ
UROŠ DJURIĆ
VLATKA HORVAT
JOHANNA KANDL
KUNSTHISTORISCHES
MAUSOLEUM
PAUL ALBERT LEITNER
MARKO LULIĆ
AHMET ÖĞÜT
MARKO PELJHAN
DAN PERJOVSCHI
DARINKA POP-MITIĆ
ANRI SALA
WALTER STEINACHER
ZORAN TODOROVIĆ
RAŠA TODOSIJEVIĆ
MILICA TOMIĆ
STEFANOS TSIVOPOULOS
KATARINA ZDJELAR
SERBIA
FREQUENTLY
ASKED
QUESTIONS
THROUGH JAN 11, 2011
E X H I B I T I O N
11 E 52. ST. | NEW YORK
W W W. A C F N Y. O R G
masthead #88
Chairman & Editor in Chief_Claude Grunitzky
Editorial
Assistant Editor_Mikaela Gauer
Editor at Large_Stephen Greco
International Editor_Anicée Gaddis
Creative Consultant_Marc Baptiste
Art
Art Directors_Andy Li, Crayon Lee
Assistant to Art Directors_Kyn
Fashion Director_Christine De Lassus
Fashion Market Editor_Robyn V. Fernandes
UK Editorial
UK Editor_Pardeep Sall
Print and Production Manager_Kelly Goddard
Fashion Editor_Davina Mashru
Editorial and Fashion Assistant_Melissa Simpemba
Art Assistant_Simon Auckland
Taís Araújo
photography_Evangelia Kranioti
fashion_Christine de Lassus
dress_D Squared2
makeup_L’Oréal
Contributing Writers_Damian Platt, Evangeline Kim, Felipe Lacerda, Patrick Neate
Contributing Photographers_Evangelia Kranioti, Marc Baptiste, Paolo Zambaldi
Advertising Representative_Damaris Taylor
Trace UK is published by Reactor Media
UK Publishing Consultant_Ben Martin
Sales Manager_Christopher Keeling
UK Interns_Marquita Harris, Michaela Nessim
Webmaster_Invisible Square Inc.
Join the Trace Magazine group on Facebook and read the Trace blog at http://blog.trace212.com
©2010 TRACE MAGAZINE
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CONTRIBUTORS
Marc Baptiste
Marc Baptiste was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He moved to New York at an
early age and began to study photography in high school. After receiving his
formal training in photography, graphic design and advertising, he pursued his
passion for photography by traveling between Paris, New York and London
shooting the collections for various magazines. Marc’s work continues to
appear in magazines such as Harpers Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Elle, Cosmopolitan,
Trace, German Glamour, and Clam. He has photographed a host of celebrities
including: Yoko Ono, Eva Mendez, Colin Farrell, Forest Whitaker and Chloe
Sevigny. Solo Exhibitions of Marc Baptiste’s work include Dactyl Gallery in New
York November 2003; Modernbook Gallery in San Francisco, CA December
2003; Exposure Gallery in London February 2004; and Milk Gallery in New
York April 2007. Book projects include: Beautiful Nudes 2001, Intimate Nudes
2003, and Marc Baptiste Nudes 2007; all published by Universe Publishing a
division of Rizzoli International (worldwide). Marc currently lives in Brooklyn, NY
with his wife and Children.
Evangelia Kranioti
Evangelia Kranioti was born in Athens, Greece. She holds a BA in Law from
the National and Capodistrian University of Athens, a BFA in Visual Arts and
an MFA in Editorial Design from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts
Décoratifs of Paris, France. She was chosen twice as the recipient of the Basil &
Elise Goulandris Foundation fellowship and has been awarded different grants
(Fondation Marc de Montalambert, French Ministry of Culture, French Ministry
of Foreign Affairs) enabling her to pursue her work as artist in residence in
various institutions (Mediterranean Center of Photography, Cité Internationale
des Arts, Capacete Rio de Janeiro, amongst others). In her projects she
combines media such as photography, video, drawing and storytelling. Living
and traveling away from Greece nourishes her art and has gradually led her to
focus on the complexity of notions such as distance and desire.
Evangeline Kim
Evangeline Kim is a management consultant in for-profit and non-profit sectors
with projects dealing with international commercial business development
as well as in cultural fields. She has provided strategic advice to UNESCO
to raise awareness in the U.S. about UNESCO’s Culture Sector activities in
preserving world cultural heritages and cultural diversity through specific project
modalities and development of rapport with key American cultural organizations.
She was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to serve as a
selection panel member for the National Heritage Fellowships Awards in 2004,
America’s most prestigious award for the traditional performing and visual arts
and handicrafts. She has also worked as an advisor to many arts and cultural
organizations, including the Mexican Cultural Institute, New York’s American
Museum of Natural History, the Museum for African Art, and Afropop Worldwide,
as well as an advisor for The African Development Bank and the U.S. Department
of State. Evangeline regularly contributes feature articles on global music and
African cultures in various American and international publications.
Paolo Zambaldi
Paolo Zambaldi is an Italian photographer who spends his time moving
between Paris, Milan, New York and Los Angeles. He started assisting some
of the great photographers at a very young age. His photography is inspired by
great cinema, as he feels that it is essential that his images tell a story.
He is in constant collaboration with both large advertising agencies, as well
as with the most elegant fashion magazines such as Vogue Italy, Vogue
Spain, Vogue Russia, Uomo Vogue, Vogue Jewellery, L’officile, Vanity Fair,
and GQ. He has shot advertising campaigns for Hogan, Exte, MTV, Campari,
Vespa-Piaggio, Rado, Biasia, yamaha, La Perla, Salvatore Ferragamo ,Veuve
Clicquot, Roberto Cavalli, Breil, Samsonite, Adidas, Nike ,Lacoste, Testoni,
Emanuel Ungaro, MontBlanc, Leon Hatot, L’Oreal, Bnp Paribas, Timberland,
Kohler, Rebecca,Lg, Orange, Sky channel, Sony Music, and Olivetti.
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EDITOR’S LETTER
“Everything comes to an end, reader. It is an old truism to which may
be added that not everything that lasts, lasts for long.”
- Machado de Assis
These words, which were written in “Don Casmurro”, the great Afro-Brazilian
writer’s 1899 masterpiece, say a lot about how I feel right now. I never thought
it would come to this – my final TRACE Magazine editorial. The time has come
to say goodbye. When my cousin Suneeta Olympio and I first launched TRUE
Magazine, the short-lived predecessor to TRACE Magazine, in June of 1995,
I remember our then music editor Dimitry Léger saying that he was looking
forward to the magazine’s twenty-fifth anniversary edition. As most true TRACE
fans know, TRUE lasted only a year, before I re-launched the monthly publication
as TRACE “urban” magazine in London’s Clerkenwell neighborhood.
The month was November 1996, exactly 14 years ago this month. This
magazine gradually matured with my evolving interests and cosmopolitan
curiosity. In the spring of 1998, my tiny team and I moved from grungy London
to flashy New York and, sometime around the beginning of this new millennium,
TRACE became a magazine about “transcultural styles and ideas.” The fashion
layouts became more prominent, and the covers became more, well, styleconscious. We may have featured one too many trendy model on the cover, to
the detriment of emerging R&B stars like Beyoncé, who bizarrely never made
the TRACE cover. Regardless of whether TRACE’s longtime fashion director
Christine de Lassus (then and now one of my closest friends) had anything to
do with this shift, none of those editorial decisions really matter now.
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We are publishing our final issue, as we transition to the web under the old/new
TRUE brand. We feel immensely proud to have been the mega-zine that helped
launch the careers of singers like Kelis, Alicia Keys and Rihanna, of rappers
like 50 Cent and T.I., of models like Alek Wek and Selita Ebanks, of gifted
journalists like Jon Caramanica. I will never forget the Terry Richardson TRACE
fashion shoot from the spring of 1997, when the then-unknown photographer
immortalized the lascivious kiss of gay New York B-boys with his Yashika T4
camera. (No taboos allowed in TRACE.) Nor the 1998 Albert Watson cover
shoot with Mike Tyson when the champ asked me if, as an African, I’d ever
considered converting to Islam.
True, we may have run one Kelis cover too many, and perhaps some of our
early issues may have read as Wu-Tang newsletters – blame TRACE supporter
Jon Baker for that – but we always responded well to tough love. And to
constructive criticism. At TRACE, we remain proud of our achievements. As
a self-confessed magazine junkie, I always feel overjoyed when I see bits of
TRACE Magazine in other publications, because it confirms my belief that there
will always be a corner of the world that is forever TRACE. Imitation, they say,
is the most sincere form of flattery, and I am happy that TRACE had a lasting
impact on other publications, in the same way that I was deeply influenced by
pioneering magazines like Actuel (from Paris) and The Face (from London).
ISSUE No.
BRASIL 2010
Around the year 2000, when we published our seminal “Brasil 2000” edition,
featuring 18 year-old model Adriana Lima on the cover, our readers (and most
TRACE editors) noticed that I had become more and more interested in Brazil. (I
wrote more than 95% of that particular issue, because I couldn’t afford writers.)
So these days, when my friend Emmanuel André jokes that I was able to find
every possible excuse to interview Brazilian models on Ipanema beach, he may
have a point. In reality, to me, Brazil is more than beach interviews. Brazil is the
country that allowed me to rediscover who I was, to understand a certain kind of
spirituality, and to trace many of my foreign interests back to my Togolese roots.
When, faced with shrinking numbers of readers and ad pages, I first started
thinking of publishing the final issue of TRACE, about a year ago, it seemed
natural that the last edition be devoted entirely to Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, two
Brazilian states I have learned to love for their humanity and authenticity. To this
day, humanity and authenticity are the two attributes I most closely associate
with TRACE Magazine.
Over the years, TRACE Magazine had become my best friend, and many TRACE
team members became close friends, too. I particularly want to thank, in no
particular order, my mentor François-Xavier Huberlant, Andrew McAngus (my
business partner since day one), Richard Wayner (who helped me to take
the TRACE vision to a higher level) and Anthony Evrard (the former TRACE
marketing director who somehow became my little brother). But I am also
deeply indebted to Christine de Lassus, whose name I mentioned earlier, to
Peter Lucas, who found the name TRACE in one of our early brainstorming
sessions, to Graham Rounthwaite, who was TRACE’s first art director back in
the London days, to Deryck Vonn Lee, who was our longest serving designer
in the Broome Street days, to designers Crayon Lee and Andy Li (who crafted
this issue), to Amy Andrieux, who rose from intern to managing editor over the
course of many editorial arguments, to Nami Sakai and Tomoko Yano, my two
Japanese sidekicks, to Carmen Zita, our longtime art editor whose eye for the
visual arts is, in my humble opinion, unmatched, to Steve Psyllos, who stood by
me when no one else would.
Above all, I want to thank Jefferson Hack (who encouraged me when I told him
I wanted to start a magazine), Steve Greco (who guided me though the maze
of New York City publishing), Mikaela Gauer (my right hand woman for the past
few years) and Anicée Gaddis, my doppelgänger. To the many members of the
TRACE family I forgot to name on this page, I say thank you. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you. All of you.
Claude Grunitzky
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Rio People & Places
A sailor from the Navy Museum is facing the Ilha Fiscal, a small island between the airport Santos Dumont and the port, known as the location for the
first and last party of the Empire before the proclamation of the Republic in November 1889.
The people and places that make up the heart of Brazil
text_Claude Grunitzky
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photography_ Evangelia Kranioti
On the top of the ladeira Santa Teresa, a breathtaking view of the Centro and the curious yet impressive modern style Catedral de São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro, the Cathedral of Saint Sebastian, the patron saint of Rio de Janeiro.
Rio, the so-called “Marvelous city,” has been a big part of my life since my first
trip there in early 2000. The first time I landed at Antonio Carlos Jobim airport,
having arrived from a difficult reporting trip to Brasilia with photographer Marc
Baptiste, Shade Boyewa Isaksson and a few other devoted members of my
small TRACE Magazine team, I realized that this was my city. I realized that I
was made for this city, and that this city was made for me.
We were broke and we stayed at a cheap hotel in Leme, and I remember my
Rio-based photographer friend Vicente de Paulo telling me, on our first evening
there, that Copacabana and Ipanema were the touristy areas where most of the
real action was. Little did I know that those two neighborhoods, and the areas
around Gavea and Jardim Botanico, would soon become a second home, the
locales where feelings of optimism and real, authentic emotions would sallow
me to rise above the adversity that one often associates with New York City life.
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Priviledged in terms of view, some of the favelas in the Zona Sul (south part of Rio) enjoy a more scenic panorama than the Sheraton hotel’s clients in Alto Leblon.
It takes about ten minutes by car from Santa Teresa to reach the
Paineiras, some of Rio’s famous cachoeiras (waterfalls) and to be
transported in the heart of the tropical forest, o mato, surrounding
the city.
I returned to Rio a couple of months after that first trip, in early April 2000, with
a close friend, who happens to be TRACE fashion editor Christine de Lassus.
One afternoon, having returned from a very short interview at the Copacabana
penthouse of architect Oscar Niemeyer, to another cheap hotel, also located in
Copacabana, I received a call at the hotel lobby. It was my sister informing me
that our beloved father was in a coma, and that he might die within a few days.
He did die a few days later, and I will always associate Rio with those feelings
of sorrow, mixed with the joy of having met people whose love for life kept me
going during one of my darkest hours.
Christine, Marc and I returned to Rio in the spring of 2010, exactly a decade
after I received that dreadful call from my sister. This time, we were accompanied
by TRACE assistant editor Mikaela Gauer, contributing writer Evangeline Kim,
and Greek photographer Evangelia Kranioti.
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15
top: January 1st, an early morning in Arpoador. Ernesto Neto’s traditional New Year’s beach party is still going on outside the frame. Dressed in white for the occasion, two partners take a break to meditate on their New Year’s resolutions.
top-left: It takes about ten minutes by car from Santa
Teresa to reach the Paineiras, some of Rio’s famous
cachoeiras (waterfalls) and to be transported in the heart of
the tropical forest, o mato, surrounding the city.
bottom-left: Norma is an empregada (maid), a “normal”
post for many colored people in Brazil. Her still figure is
reminiscent of the Namoradeiras, the folkoric statues of
Minas Gerais representing the bust of a sensual woman
looking longingly out of the window for her beloved to pass
by or just the day to go by. The only difference was that
Norma, few seconds after the photo, came back to life and
went back to work.
Evangelia, who shot the cover of this issue, featuring actress Tais Araujo, in
the lush gardens of Jardim Botanico, is the lens behind the photos in this
portfolio. These pictures were shot entirely on film. In one of her personal
projects, Evangelia, who lived in Rio for seven months between 2009 and
2010, combines photography and creative writing in an exploration of what
she calls “exoticized femininity” in Brazil. I love these pictures, because they
show the complexity of Rio’s unique brand of hedonism. Cariocas love music,
they love food, they love caipirinhas, they love nature, they love sex. Above
all, they live to love – they’re in love with love. In Rio, it’s always about the
matters of the heart. Evangeline (our contributing writer, not to be confused
with Evangelia our photographer) said something very deep to me one day,
and her statement became the spine of our Brasil 2010 issue. Evangeline said,
“if Salvador is the soul of the country, then Rio is the heart”.
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Rio Resistance
Culture is Our Weapon:
Making Music and Changing
Lives in Rio de Janeiro
Excerpts from the beginning chapters of “Culture is Our Weapon”, a tale of the rise
of the inspiring Afroreggae art and music movement that seeks to fight poverty,
drug wars, violence and social inequality in the heart of Rio’s darkest favelas.
text_Damian Platt and Patrick Neate
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photography_Damian Platt
It’s a Saturday morning and we’re sitting on the roof terrace of an apartment
block in an affluent part of Rio, the hillside overlooking the world-famous
Copacabana Beach District, fifteen minutes’ walk from Avenida Atlántica. This
is where we’re staying.
After several days rushing around with an estate agent to be shown nothing
but claustrophobic bachelor pads—all tacky décor and far too many mirrors—we
finally got lucky. Aurélio, another northeasterner now living in Rocinha, led us to
a bright, airy, and frankly enormous two-terraced penthouse that he looks after
for its owner, a French theatre director. It happened to be available, and at a
bargain price, too. The only condition was that Leida would come in every day
to water the plants and make breakfast. No problem.
The flat is a cobertura—the chic, upper-middle-class equivalent of the laje—
high on the eleventh floor. Paradoxically, however, the height of the penthouse
setting actually sets us cheek by jowl with the neighboring favela and all its
noise and activity. This is a typical Rio irony.
This favela, Ladeira dos Tabajaras, clusters around the road that winds its way
up the hillside behind the building. Every morning is greeted by a chorus of
barking dogs and crowing cockerels. But that’s just the beginning of the daily
racket. Saturdays, for example, are dedicated to blasting forró and funk, while
Sunday nights are taken over by the thundering drums of the samba school: Its
weekly practice sessions are becoming ever more enthusiastic in the months
leading up to Carnival. Despite the refined surroundings of the cobertura, our
ears belong to the favela.
One day at dawn, the dogs and cocks are drowned out by the sound of
a helicopter that spends hours hovering over Tabajaras. It’s a civil police
machine overseeing some sort of operation on the ground. This is one of
many such operations being carried out in the city in early November that
are most likely related to the police killing of Bem-Te-Vi, the boss of drug
trafficking in Rocinha. He was one of Rio’s most wanted men.
Since Bem-Te-Vi’s death, the police have undertaken a number of incursions
into favelas dominated by drug factions that rival Amigos dos Amigos (ADA—
Friends of Friends), the gang to which Bem-Te-Vi and, consequently, Rocinha
belong. The purpose of these raids? To squash any plans by ADA’s rivals to
invade and take Rocinha and wrest control of its lucrative drug trade.
Over breakfast we read the news. Bem-Te-Vi’s immediate successor, named
in the newspapers as “Soul,” has been killed by fellow members of ADA,
the victim of an internal dispute—some “friends” they turned out to be. Rio’s
papers follow each step in the unraveling drama as if it were a soap opera, and
the subplots come thick and fast: Bem-Te-Vi’s patricinha girlfriend is arrested
and photographed for the front pages. Rio’s Public Security Secretary poses
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went to lie down on the floor in the kitchen. You’re safer there because it puts
two sets of walls between you and the bullets. So we grab what we can and run
to the kitchen. If there isn’t enough time to get to the kitchen, we hide underneath
the shower in the bathroom. It’s a horrible feeling and nowadays it’s happening
more and more often.
“We heard them running past shouting, ‘Vamos matar,’ letting everyone know
it wasn’t the police. When I heard that, I shivered with fear because I thought
it must be another invasion [by a rival faction]. From time to time the shooting
stopped, then started again. It went on for an hour and a half. When we were
almost asleep, we went back into the bedroom with our backs aching. We’d been
in the kitchen for two hours in all.”
Leida tells us that because of the internal dispute, people are saying that there
are many members of Soul’s group who’ve fled or gone into hiding. Her neighbor
has a son who was affiliated with Soul, and he’s disappeared. The other night ten
traficantes went into this neighbor’s house. Some of them were wearing masks,
but the neighbor knew exactly who they were since they used to work alongside
her son. She told them she didn’t know where he was. They said that if they found
him, he was dead. They claimed he owed them money and his mother didn’t have
enough to pay. “In the end,” Leida says bluntly, “what they’re doing is asking the
mother for money not to kill the son.”
As Leida talks, her eloquence grows and she gives a fascinating insight into life
in the midst of Rio’s drug war: “I’ll never get used to living like this. I’ve been here
for six years but, before the war, Rocinha was the favela where everyone wanted
to live. It was peaceful—shoot-outs were rare and it was calm. You used to be
proud to say you lived in Rocinha. Now I can’t tell some people that this is where
I come from.
ghoulishly for the cameras, brandishing the dead drug lord’s gold-plated Uzi.
Most bizarrely, a group of men gathering jaca fruit cause panic in a road tunnel
near Rocinha when motorists assume they are a gang of armed traficantes.
Dozens of cars are abandoned midtunnel, and the men are seized by the cops
along with the sacks and knives they were using to cut jaca.
The terrified atmosphere—all rumor and counter-rumor—owes much to concern
that the death of Bem-Te-Vi will reignite last year’s turf war between Rocinha
and the neighboring favela of Vidigal. In April 2004, Dudu, head of trafficking
in Vidigal, led some seventy men in an attempt to take over drug sales in
Rocinha. Numerous civilians were killed during several days of fighting, first
between the two factions, then between those two factions and the police, one
thousand of whom were deployed in a belated attempt to control the violence.
Dudu’s attack took place two months after Rocinha residents petitioned the
state authorities, saying they expected just such an invasion by traffickers from
Vidigal any day. Their appeals for protection had been ignored.
Bulletins from the front line
Most mornings Leida provides us with an update from Rocinha, which we try
to digest with our coffee and fresh papaya. Her calm testimony provides a
fascinating and disturbing counterpoint to the newspapers’ hyperbole. Today,
for example, she describes the Sunday night they killed Soul, the way the
shooting began in the upper half—parte alta—of the favela.
“We didn’t know what was happening at first. I called my husband and we
20
“I have a friend I can’t even go and see. She lives near here in Ladeira dos
Tabajaras which is controlled by the Comando Vermelho , and there’s no way
I can go to her house. If they find out I’m from Rocinha and they don’t like it,
they could beat her up or expel her from the favela. I’m even frightened to take
a bus that goes past favelas run by other factions. If I want to meet my friend,
we have to meet elsewhere; and I’m her daughter’s godmother. She comes from
Maranhão, too—people arrive from the northeast all the time. For everyone that
leaves Rocinha, two arrive. When there’s a war, people move out, rent out their
houses, and so on. Other people move in and, if there’s no fighting going on,
they’ll have the illusion that things will get better tomorrow.”
As Leida tells her story there is a rapid series of loud bangs from the hillside
behind the flat. It sounds like a dozen doors being slammed in quick succession.
“Tiros,” she says, lifting a finger in the air. There are a few moments of quiet
and then—BANG BANG BANG BANG—the bullets are flying again. “They must
be testing some new weapons.” She shrugs and smiles. The automatic gunfire,
directly level with the plush cobertura, continues intermittently for a few minutes.
“I don’t think there’s anything good about o tráfico. You can’t have a child,
because you’re scared they’ll get involved. You can’t keep an eye on them all the
time—you’d have to keep them in the house and you’d both end up as prisoners.
My husband and I have talked about it a lot but we’re not ready for all that yet. For
instance, your child goes to school but you don’t know what happens on the way
from school to the house because you’re out at work. So your kid could become
a filho do tráfico. This happens a lot. You see ten-year-old kids with guns. A
traficante might be in a bar, drinking and hanging out, and he’ll give the kid a
gun. And that kid feels like he’s something. Then they’ll ask him to run a message
or deliver some money. The kid becomes an aviãozinho. That’s it, he’s in. “My
mother-in-law has a grandson who is seven years old. It’s frightening. Below
my house, there’s a little bar. One day a traficante called him over. Luckily my
husband was there and he was able to say no. My husband grew up in Rocinha
and he knows most of them. That’s the only time it might be beneficial to know
a traficante.
“ ‘It sounds like a dozen doors being slammed in quick succession.
“Tiros,” she says, lifting a finger in the air. There are a few moments of
quiet and then—BANG BANG BANG BANG—the bullets are flying again.’ ”
“Say one of them is rude to you, you can go to another one you know who
can speak to the boss. And the boss will tell the rude guy that if he carries on
behaving like that, he could die or be punished. So there’s an advantage in
knowing the traficantes in some situations but, even so, if they weren’t there in
the first place you wouldn’t need to, would you?
“Many mothers are scared because of this. They’re also scared of all the
shooting and stray bullets. Their kids could be playing outside and all it takes
is one bullet to finish someone’s dreams. It must be very sad. And it’s difficult
for the mothers of traffickers, too. Because no mother wants her kid to get
involved. The trafficker might get killed by the police, another faction, or even
his own.
We’ve told Leida why we’re in Rio; that we’re writing a book about AfroReggae.
Perhaps this is why she’s so frank with us. She knows about AfroReggae and
their work and she asks if it’s true that their bands are made up of ex-soldados.
We tell her that, yes, some members of the bands and other people working
in the organization did work in the tráfico in the past. Leida has one other
question: “When they get out of trafficking and go into AfroReggae, do they
manage to stay out?”
***
To read on about the AfroReggae movement and how it is creating dynamic
change in the favelas in Rio, visit www.vpbookclub.com or www.penguin.com
to purchase your copy of “Culture is Our Weapon”.
“My mother-in-law lost a son. He was killed by the guys he worked with. In fact,
he’d already quit trafficking but he knew too much. So they came back and
killed him, even though she’d been to the boss in person to ask him to forbid it.”
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Rio Passion
the legaCY Of estÁdiO dO MaraCanã
much has been said about the impact of globalization on local cultures.
everywhere, people look for the “positive” and “negative” aspects of such
changes. What people don’t seem to see, or refuse to conceive, is that the whole
understanding of culture as a finished stable thing is, by definition, a mistake.
Cultures are dynamic and no one has come up with an “authentic-meter” for them.
so, when we observe closely, we can discover a world of differences that only
seem uniform from afar.
text and photography_felipe Lacerda
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“Brazil found improvisation, inspiration, and spontaneity as their
leitmotifs, and these words began to shape the true definition of a
national spirit and idiosyncratic culture. “
in 1950, Brazil was a very different place from what it is today. on July 16
of that year, a crowd of nearly 200,000 fans packed in the brand new Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro, only to see their national team lose the world
cup Final, leaving behind a city and a country in complete shock. People who
witnessed the tragedy described it: “we could cut the silence in the air and
carry it like a suitcase, so heavy it was.” the world had finally recovered from
world war ii and the real 20th century was beginning. as new world powers
emerged, Brazil had hopes of leaving behind its “supporting actor role” in order
to reveal itself as a real player on the international stage. winning the largest
tournament ever assembled seemed like a good start, but losing it at home was
definitely a major setback that put the country’s self esteem in a pit that would
take eight years to recover, when in 1958, Pelé would win the title.
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“All of them were unanimous in expressing their awe for the unique
vibrancy and exhilaration of that place – the passion of a roman
circus set up in the world’s most iconic arena.’”
Over the next six years, Bossa Nova, Cinema Novo and a brand new capital
began to shape the nation as the “country of the future”; home of the happiest people on earth. Even more so, Brazil found improvisation, inspiration,
and spontaneity as their leitmotifs, and these words began to shape the true
definition of a national spirit and idiosyncratic culture. In the magic of football,
in the daring lines of Niemeyer’s Brasilia, in Cinema Novo’s motto “an idea in
the head and a camera in the hand”, in the completely subversive divisions of
João Gilberto in Bossa Nova – Brazilians found a mirror they could be proud
of. They found an identity on which to build their country.
And so, this framework helped build the Brazil of today. While improvisation
and spontaneity helped Brazilian fine arts grow to find their unique place in the
world, the same characteristics birthed great tragedies, such as the uncontrolled and chaotic growth of shantytowns, as well as outbursts of violence
untamed by poorly trained police force. In particular, up to the turn of the 21st
century, Maracanã Stadium remained much as it was in 1950. A worn, chaotic
giant. With cheap ticket prices and a disorganized field calendar, the place
was home to more battles in the stands than family gatherings.
No one accustomed to going to the Giants stadium could even have a clue of
what it was like to go to Maracanã. I took countless gringos there. All of them
were unanimous in expressing their awe for the unique vibrancy and exhilaration of that place – the passion of a roman circus set up in the world’s most
iconic arena. The atmosphere encouraged passion and celebration, where
over 150,000 fans would gather to sing for two to three hours – some might
say it was a religious experience. A ritualized war became the greatest party on
earth, three or four times a week, all year long. Nowhere else but in Maracanã.
For the XV Pan American games, hosted by Rio in 2007, Maracanã had a facelift and became a bit more like a modern arena. Organizers imposed a strict
set of new rules, mirroring the “order shock” that was permeating the rest of
the city. Alcohol was no longer allowed, as was standing during a game. Most
of the apparatus that fans brought to the stadium are now tightly regulated by
a new visible police force, the Stadium Battalion – no fireworks, fewer instruments, and smaller flags. On September 5, 2010, Maracanã hosted the last
match before closing for the US$ 400 million renovation for the World Cup.
When the stadium reopens on December 2012, the public will wait with baited
breath – will the same magic that initially made Maracanã the world-famous
stadium that it was remain, or will it be destroyed along with the old structure?
Will the show lose its glamour? Will the party be the same? Will Brazilians be
“less Brazilian” in a more structured and controlled environment? In order to
explore the evolution, destruction and reconstruction of Maracanã Stadium,
I directed a crew of over 30 cameramen who documented the final days of
Maracanã, the giant as we knew it. The film will be available in movie theaters
in 2011.
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Rio Power
dress_D Squared
2
Taís
Araújo
Confident, natural, and unpretentious, Brazilian actress Taís araújo sets a refreshing
new standard of what it means to be truly beautiful.
text_Claude grunitzky
photography_Evangelia Kranioti
fashion_Christine de Lassus
i first met taís araújo on december 26th, 2005, at one of actress Regina
casé’s legendary post-christmas parties, which, until 2008, were held at her
duplex overlooking Rio’s leblon beach. Regina and her husband, the director
estevão ciavatta, have a long-standing secret santa – “amigo segredo”
– tradition, which consists of giving and receiving a post-christmas gift
from a secret friend. Regina and estevão’s rules are pretty simple: no cds
or dVds allowed as presents; in order to be re-invited to those parties, one
needs to be imaginative and somewhat witty in one’s approach to gift-giving
and gift-receiving. due to the fact that the crowd is always an unusual mix of
entertainment, intellectual and street folk, the kookiest presents receive the
most attention. not to mention, once a present is given, the receiver must
dance with their secret santa right after opening their gift.
we chose to focus on those two states, the most culturally and racially mixed
of all Brazilian states, because we believe that Bahia and Rio remain the true
centers of Brazilian creativity.
lázaro hails from Bahia, and taís is from Rio. they keep a house in salvador,
and travel there often, even though, for professional reasons, Rio remains their
primary residence. with the exception of a few male stars like the late Biggie
smalls, lenny Kravitz and t.i., we have mainly featured only women on the cover
of tRace. once we looked at the Brazilian landscape, taís emerged as our
natural choice for the cover, because she represents a connection between
the two states, between the two mindsets, and her story, as i would later
discover over four separate interview sessions, is one of a quest for identity and
recognition.
i was secretly hoping that taís, an actress i’d been following since she starred
in a Rede Globo soap opera – “telenovela” – called “Xica da silva”, would be
my secret santa. But when i opened my gift, and saw that my secret santa
was one of the (male) film editors who work in estevão’s office, i realized that i
should not be so lucky. taís had come to the party with her husband, the Bahiaborn actor lázaro Ramos. i remembered lázaro from his leading role as the
capoeira-practicing homosexual outcast in Karim ainouz’s 2002 film Madame
satã. after they both received their gifts, and danced with their respective
secret santas, i walked up to the couple and asked if i could photograph them
with my small digital camera. they agreed, and smiled for my camera, but i
also realized that they were deep in conversation, so i decided to walk away
without telling them how much i enjoyed their screen presence, or how much
their status as the lead black actors of the new Brazilian cinema meant to me.
when taís arrived for the cover shoot, on a sunny saturday morning, the tRace
team was prepared for the worst. we had been unable to book a hair and makeup
team for the cover shoot, which had been postponed a few times because of her
hectic schedule. we didn’t know how to tell her that we’d dropped the ball, but
tRace fashion director christine de lassus and i apologized to her immediately
upon her arrival, explaining that is was really too short notice for the teams we
had in mind. Most celebrities would have walked away from the shoot then
and there, because in this business these days, it is highly unusual to shoot a
magazine cover without a full glam team inspecting every aspect of the actor’s
appearance. Plus, we had seen her on the covers of several recent editions of
Brazilian magazines like Vogue, so we were a bit nervous.
i have been following lázaro and taís’s careers ever since, knowing that our
paths would cross again someday. last april, which was more than four years
after that first encounter at the party, i was faced with a difficult decision: who to
pick for the cover of our Brasil 2010 edition, which would also be remembered
as the final issue of tRace Magazine. this issue was conceived as a modernday Bahia-Rio dialectic; as a celebration of the optimism and spirituality that
africans brought to a land where they were once chained as slaves. above all,
“no problem,” said taís, in her deliciously accented english. “i will take care
of my own hair, and we’ll be fine with my own makeup.” we were all the more
surprised, as taís had recently been selected as a high profile addition to the
stable of l’oréal Paris models. as the main face of the cosmetics brand in
Brazil, one would have expected a bit more diva attitude. But taís was cool like
that, and when she began to try on the designer clothes that had been gathered
and assembled by christine into a makeshift portable wardrobe, we realized that
we’d chosen the right cover star. taís’s star is on the rise, because she has the
right, positive attitude.
27
“ ‘I know that I have become an inspiration – a role
model – for little girls out there, little black girls
who take pride in seeing that a black girl can make
it to the lead role in the number one TV show in the
country.’ ”
dress_D Squar
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red
2
29
Although she ventured into television as a young teenager, it was Walcyr
Carrasco’s 1996 TV version of “Xica da Silva” that allowed Taís to position
herself as the sympathetic modern embodiment of Xica, a Brazilian slave who
became famous for working and talking her way into fame and fortune. “Xica
gave me my big break,” Taís told me one day when I was interviewing her at
the sidewalk beach café facing a Rio hotel called Arpoador Inn. “Nobody knew
who I was before that novela came out, and I will always be thankful for the
opportunity that Globo gave me when I was still a teenager.”
In 2004, Rede Globo gave her another opportunity, with a leading role in yet
another telenovela, “Da Cor do Pecado”, which also became a runaway hit,
but her prime time moment came last year when Globo made her the lead in
their top rated novela, “Viver a Vida”, which was broadcast daily during the
prized 9pm slot. (“Viver a Vida” ended last May because, by design, Brazilian
telenovelas have a short life span.) As the main protagonist of “Viver a Vida”,
which was distributed internationally under the title “Seize the Day”, Taís
played a cheeky and malicious yet very likeable character called Helena Toledo
Ribeiro. Brazilians related to the Helena character because she was a lot like
them. Helena epitomized that complexity of Brazil, of that particular Brazilian
brand of seduction, and of the love triangles that keep these novellas fun and
spicy.
Every five minutes or so, our sidewalk interview would be interrupted by
30
passersby angling for their photo op. Taís obliged every single time, but before
I realized that an interview in this public location might not have been one of
my best ideas, Taís explained why she gives so much to her fans. “I think that
Brazilians have grown to love me because they see that I am a lot like them,
that I am not pretentious, and that I love them back. My story starts with my
parents, who always insisted on sending their kids to the best schools in Rio,
even though they didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t always afford it. My
sister is a doctor, for instance, and growing up we didn’t have too many black
doctors around. When I started becoming successful, I could see that I wasn’t
becoming successful only for myself, or for my family, or for my friends, but
also for an entire generation of black Brazilians who were raised to believe that
they couldn’t amount to anything. I know that I have become an inspiration – a
role model – for little girls out there, little black girls who take pride in seeing
that a black girl can make it to the lead role in the number one TV show in the
country.”
Back to that sunny Saturday morning and our cover shoot. After she applied her
own (L’Oréal) makeup and fixed her own curly hair, she asked for our opinion
– she looked “faaaabulous” – and we had her try on the green glamazon
outfit we’d identified as the most spectacular complement to her serene, sexy
confidence. We headed to Jardim Botânico, a landmark botanical garden in
a centrally located park that was located about a mile from where we were
staying. No car service here – Taís drove herself to the park, and once we got
T-shirt_Osklen
there, we realized that we might need a permit from the city to shoot in such a
guarded location. I bought tickets for everyone: Taís, Christine, photographer
Evangelia Kranioti and Marc Baptiste who was trying to hide the top of the line
Canon 5D camera he was hoping to use for video recording purposes.
For about five minutes we pretended to walk around, taking pictures of the
flowers and the enormous trees, but as Evangelia directed Taís toward the trunk
of a large tree we clearly weren’t supposed to approach, fellow park visitors
starting approaching Taís for their own photo ops. When the guards, who were
debating whether or not to kick us out of the park, finally came towards us, the
sight of Taís posing with tourists and all kinds of visitors seemed irresistible
and they, too, asked if she could kindly pose for a photo with them. Before we
knew it, Jardim Botânico had become the privileged setting of one big lovefest
between Taís, the TRACE Magazine team, the guards and the tourists. We
were able to calmly proceed with our cover shoot in different restricted areas
of the park.
When the shoot was over, around lunchtime, and we felt absolutely certain
that we had secured our cover image, Taís walked over to her car, which was
parked right at the main entrance of the park, and proceeded to change back
into her own clothes right in her car. She then headed to the Globo studios,
where she would shoot another episode of “Viver a Vida” that same afternoon.
Early last June, Taís sent me an email informing me that she and Lázaro had
decided to take a well-deserved vacation in Greece. She told me that they
would spend a few days in New York on their way back from vacation. I decided
to organize a dinner at my place in her and Lázaro’s honor. I invited about fifty
people for the dinner, and it turned out that few of my New York guests had
heard of her and Lázaro. Taís had told me during a previous interview that her
dream was to work with American directors like Spike Lee. I felt that, as a
beautiful, hard working actress from Brazil, she could succeed in America, in
the same way that her fellow Brazilian actresses Camila Belle and Alica Braga
(another TRACE cover star) had managed to make a name for themselves on
the independent film circuit.
When Taís and Lázaro arrived on my terrace for the al fresco dinner, late one
evening on a starry summer night in July, I could see that they were still very
much in love, and that the Greek vacation had inspired them both. They looked
rested, and joked around (in English) with my guests. Taís told me that she
wanted me to call her one more time, for a final interview. We agreed to speak
two days after they returned to Rio. During that final interview, she told me
about an upcoming play she was about to star in, this time in an old São Paulo
theater. I asked her about the steps she had taken recently, in her endeavors
to launch a career in the United States. “Things have changed slightly,” she
told me. “I still want to have a nice career in the cinema, and also in the United
States, but I realize that life is about priorities. I think that it’s more important for
me, right now, to have a baby. That is something we have been talking about.”
At 31, Taís Araújo seems to have her priorities straight.
31
32
“When the guards, who were debating whether or not
to kick us out of the park, finally came towards us,
the sight of Taís posing with tourists and all kinds of
visitors seemed irresistible and they, too, asked if she
could kindly pose for a photo with them.”
33
Caetano Veloso
Hailed as Brazil’s greatest songwriter, known for his strong philosophical and
political opinions as well as active leadership in the Tropicália movement, Caetano
Veloso reveals the influence that his Bahian upbringing, specifically Candomblé, has
had on his music.
At 68, Caetano Veloso is still not a morning person. When the photographer
and I arrived – the objective being a discussion of Candomblé – at his beachfront apartment in one of the more luxurious buildings in Rio’s tiny Leblon district, late one afternoon this past April, it seemed as if he’d just woken up. Not
from a power nap, but from the previous night’s revelries. Or perhaps from a
late session in the recording studio. I have known Caetano for almost a decade,
and spent time at his houses in both Rio and Salvador, often late into the night,
and I am well aware that he likes to discuss politics and current affairs until the
break of dawn. Still, on this particular late afternoon, it appeared that the man
many consider to be Brazil’s greatest living singer/songwriter, had many things
on his mind. He was about to go back on tour in the United States, he told us,
and his schedule had turned a bit hectic.
Although Caetano now spends the majority of his time in Rio, his persona and
essence are very closely associated with the state of Bahia, with Salvador,
where he lived as a college student in the mid-sixties and, perhaps more significantly, with the city known as Santo Amaro da Purificação, where he was
born. “I was born and raised in Bahia,” he told me. “All these things concerning
Candomblé and African religions have been part of life forever. Bahia is the
nucleus of this culture, because that’s where the majority of black slaves were
brought. My father was a mulatto, and my grandmother was almost black, but it
was very obvious, even when I was a child, that the connections to this religion
were no longer race-related.”
Caetano feels that there may be other dynamics at play. “The American evangelical churches have influenced Brazil, and grown tremendously in recent
years, mostly among poorer people, and many of these poorer people are
black. I grew up entirely Catholic, and when I was a child in Santo Amaro, a
person who was close to us was into Candomblé, but I was afraid of trance.
When I was 9 or 10, although I’d always kept a mystical sensibility, I thought
I was an atheist, mainly because of the hypocrisy I encountered in religious
circles, but also because I didn’t have any evidence confirming the existence
of God. So I was afraid of trance, even though I was an atheist. When I saw
people falling on the ground, rolling their eyes, shaking and dancing, I could
34
see that they seemed possessed by the gods, but I hated the idea of losing my
consciousness and I stopped going to these Candomblé houses.
“Then, when I was 18, I moved to Salvador, then to Rio, then to São Paulo,
then to London. When I came back to Rio, I saw that my sister Maria Bethânia
(who’d been living in Rio) had become very interested and attracted to the
Candomblé thing. She introduced me to some people who were supposed to
be Candomblé priests and I just didn’t trust them. I saw that they were just as
hypocritical as the Catholic priests. So I told her, why don’t you talk to Mãe
Menininha (the leader of the Gantois Candomblé house in Salvador)? Bethânia
went to see her, and I came along for the ride. It was fantastic, because the
Gantois people were different from the fakes I’d seen Bethânia hang out with
in Rio.”
Soon enough, Bethânia decided to become very involved in this religion, and
Mãe Menininha insisted that she and Caetano be initiated together, because
she saw them as the same person. (The physical resemblance is, indeed, striking, and many people see Bethânia as a dead ringer for her older brother).
Although Caetano now says he never believed in the religion as much as his
sister did, he did agree to go through all the rituals. There is a wonderful scene
in Andrucha Waddington’s spellbinding 2007 documentary “Maria Bethânia Pedrinha de Aruanda,” where Caetano, Bethânia and their mother Dona Canô
sing an ode to the late high priestess – “Oração da Mãe Menininha” – right on
the porch of the Veloso family house in Santo Amaro on a starry night.
In that scene, as one observes the dynamics between the siblings and their
mother, with their friends gathered around the tribe of world class musicians
(Bethânia interrupting her steady groove with serene, soulful smiles in her
trademark white outfit and Caetano singing slowly and convincingly while fiddling with the guitar on his lap), it becomes apparent that the influence of that
particular type of African mysticism can be felt in many of Caetano’s most recent records – like last year’s enigmatic “zii e zie” – as well as in his his earliest
Tropicália compositions from the sixties.
35
36
“ ‘I was born and raised in Bahia,’ he told me. ‘All
these things concerning Candomblé and African
religions have been part of life forever. Bahia is the
nucleus of this culture, because that’s where the
majority of black slaves were brought.’ “
37
Vik Muniz
Visual artist Vik Muniz describes his everevolving love affair with Rio de Janeiro,
and how the natural beauty and resilient
spirit of Rio triumph over despairing
poverty in his latest project, Waste Land.
I caught up with TRACE favorite Vik Muniz early last summer in his Brooklyn
live/work studio. The huge, remodeled, modernly decorated house is where
he spends most of his time when he is not working or relaxing in his Ipanema
beachfront apartment. The first thing the São Paulo native said was that, until
1999, his relationship with Brazil was almost exclusively based on work. Arguably the most successful Brazilian artist of his generation, Vik shot to fame in
the late nineties when an international market opened up for his distinctive
brand of drawings and paintings, which are often photographed after being
conceived out of nontraditional materials like chocolate, peanut butter or jelly.
He started the interview by revealing that, before 1999, he’d been living with
a French woman. They would often travel to France, Spain, and Italy, and he
admitted to neglecting his roots for a while. Then, in 1999, he was invited by a
well-known curator named France Morin to help conceive an ambitious educational project, called “The Quiet in the Land.” During the course of creating that
complex, multilayered project, he rediscovered Brazil, particularly Rio, a city
he would return to more and more often, eventually buying property near Rio’s
famed Jardim Botânico - a house which is now his parents’ main residence.
“My mother is from the São Paulo countryside, my father is from (northeastern
Brazilian state) Ceará,” he told me. Vik’s story is one of the working class
Brazilian Diaspora. He came to America in the late eighties, looking for an economic alternative to what he had in Brazil. His parents were poor; the son of a
waiter and a lowly switchboard operator, his excuse for an America visa was
an English language course. The six-month course was eventually stretched to
27 years, a journey that can only be described as the American dream. “For
six years, I was an illegal alien and could not exit the country. For six years, I
did not see my mother in Brazil, even though she would occasionally come to
visit me. There was this unresolved thing, and it may have something to do with
being from São Paulo. I often feel that if I were born in Rio, I would probably
never have left Brazil.”
Vik is now in love with Rio because he sees it as a city where anyone can talk
to anyone. Although Rio is not devoid of class and race issues, it is a city that
has what he calls “an openness” – unlike São Paulo. “In Rio, everything is very
casual, and everything is kind of superficial. That thing Cariocas do – when
they say ‘Let’s get together’ but no one ends up calling – is kind of interesting.
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39
40
“I often feel that if I were born in Rio, I would probably
never have left Brazil.”
In Rio, you end up with thousands of acquaintances, and I find this fascinating,
this intense social fabric.” Many people blame that bearable lightness of being
on Rio’s beach culture, but Vik sees another dimension, which informs much of
his art. “As an intellectual, you have to be able to translate that into artwork. Rio
has the full gamut of human experiences. Another thing I see, as someone who
travels a lot, is that the quality of life in the south of the city – the area known as
‘zona sul’ – cannot be compared to anything else in the world. It is unique, because you have all the amenities of a ten million person metropolis, encrusted
into this surreal natural setting, all blessed by good weather.”
Still, Vik admits that he finds it difficult to spend extended amounts of time in
the South Side without being plagued by guilty conscience. “In the three years
I was establishing myself and creating a base in Rio, I would think to myself that
it felt like morning in the disco and that it was time to go back to New York. And
I think that had a lot to do with the way the city of Rio was a few years ago. It’s
hard not to be infected with the chauvinism that the Cariocas have.”
To that end, six years ago, Vik started looking for a venue where he could create socially meaningful projects. He found a hangar in the port area, near the
Rodoviária, a huge, slightly dysfunctional bus station that was built in 1965. In
that locale, he set up an NGO called Galpão Aplauso, which now finances a
highly respected art school and other creative endeavors. Galpão Aplauso is
anchored around an enormous workshop where Vik started collaborating with
local children from underprivileged families and underserved communities, in
the disciplines of dance, circus, theater, music and all typed of plastic arts.
A natural born salesman, much of the funding for these projects comes from
major corporations like Louis Vuitton and L’Oréal, in addition to respected nonprofit institutions like the Roberto Marinho Foundation.
At the end of our interview, which ended up lasting close to two hours, he led
me to his desktop computer and showed me excerpts from his most visible
new collaboration, an award-winning feature, directed by Lucy Walker, called
“Waste Land.” “Waste Land” follows Vik as he journeys from his Brooklyn
home to the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the
outskirts of Rio. In that dump, he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores”
– self-designated pickers of recyclable materials – and all of a sudden the
transnational Vik Muniz journey takes on a new, more powerful meaning.
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Oskar Metsavaht
Sports-medicine specialist turned fashion designer, Oskar
Metsavaht balances his time between sketching, surfing
and sipping caipirinhas in Arpoador when he’s not creating
killer beach-to-mountain inspired collections.
Oskar Metsavaht, the owner and founder of leading Rio-based sportswear
company Osklen, is used to being in charge. When TRACE’s fashion director,
our photographer and I arrived for the photo shoot at his stylishly decorated
high design apartment facing Rio’s famed Arpoador beach, he immediately
suggested three different settings for the sitting, a sign that he was about to
“art direct” our shoot. Not surprising. For the past 21 years, Oskar has been in
charge of virtually every aspect of the design, production, image and expansion
of his fast-growing empire, which is now global, with outposts in major fashion
cities like New York, Milan and Tokyo.
With the roots and iconography of the Osklen brand firmly planted in snowboarding and surfing culture, it was natural for Oskar, who was born to Estonian
parents in Southern city Caxias do Sul in 1961, to eventually settle in Arpoador,
a famous surfer beach which is located between Ipanema and Copacabana.
“I chose to live in Rio,” he told me during one of a series of conversations we
have been having for the past six years. “I chose Arpoador, the exact place I am
living with my family now, because I wanted the comfort and sophistication that
comes with this area. That balance, that cosmopolitan contrast: very few cities
in the world have it. I like the mix of ages, races and sexualities on the beach.
It’s called diversity, and the way we are able to mix cultures, music and food is
my definition of Brazilian soul. Sydney, where the beaches are pretty far away,
Santa Monica and Malibu, they are just not the same. Here, we have dolphins,
surfers, divers, girls from Ipanema, and guys from the favela, all mixing right in
the middle of the beach.”
Oskar’s charmed life, which I have witnessed on several occasions, is about
reading art books and sketching in the mornings, surfing in the afternoons, playing fútbol and closing deals on the beach, being driven to work at his headquarters in the working class São Cristóvão neighborhood, having caipirinhas with
Madonna and Valentino at the Fasano Hotel near his apartment, and heading
home to his wife and kids in time for dinner before leaving again for late-night
parties in the city.
These days however, he talks a lot about urbanization in the favelas, his E-institute, which funds research on sustainability and the environment, and his work
with UNESCO on youth education in Brazil. “We need to take better care of
this beautiful nature that is God’s gift to us,” he says. “I am part of a team that is
currently helping to bring back the original flora of this Ipanema neighborhood,
and I know this will lead to an even better lifestyle around here.”
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“I chose Arpoador, the exact place I am
living with my family now, because I
wanted the comfort and sophistication
that comes with this area. That balance,
that cosmopolitan contrast: very few
cities in the world have it.”
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“What makes Cariocas special
is the fact that we do not
follow the rules. We are not on
time, and we choose to express
our individuality through a
very specific form of civil
disobedience. Take that away, and
you take away the spirit of Rio.”
Ernesto Neto
Renowned for his impressive abstract, larger-than-life sculptures, contemporary
visual artist Ernesto Neto brings TRACE behind-the-scenes to witness the creative
chaos behind his minimalistic, experiential art.
When the TRACE team entered through the open gate, walked up the stairs
past the army of assistants and seamstresses and finally arrived at the third
floor of his busy studio, which is located in Rio’s old city centre, the artist Ernesto Neto was seated in front of a laptop computer at his messy desk. He was
busy arguing with someone on the other end of the phone. We later found out
that he was resolving an “issue” with a curator from London’s Hayward Gallery.
He showed us small-scale models for a series of installations and sculptures
entitled “The Edges of the World,” which he would show three months later as
part of the London South Bank’s “Festival Brazil” festivities.
The multilevel studio, which includes several offices – “escritorios” – and a
crammed library, is full of assorted fabrics and samples of various unusual materials. Soon after he showed us the small models, he headed towards his hammock and started talking very fast, as if he were trying to make as many points
as possible during the visit. We talked a little bit about his art, as he is now well
known for the installations he and Vik Muniz created for the Brazilian pavilion at
the 2002 Venice Biennale.
Although his most famous work might be the 2006 “Léviathan Trot”, a socalled “anthropomorphic” display of high level creativity suspended at Paris’s
Panthéon, my favorite Neto piece might be the monumental work he created in
New York City last year. Randy Kennedy wrote in the New York Times that that
installation at the Park Avenue Armory, which is made of hundreds of yards of
stretched Lycra tulle, “looks something like a superfine spider web, laden with
egg sacks, that has drifted down onto the skeleton of a forgotten species of
dinosaur shaped like a cephalopod.”
I have been a friend – and fan – of Neto’s (as most people call him) for a decade, and we have met often on Ipanema beach for discussions about music,
film, love, sex and the beach culture itself. Neto, along with his good friend the
art director Marcus Wagner and other Rio beach souls, is known for throwing
legendary New Year’s Eve “reveillon” events on Ipanema and Arpoador beaches. I have attended many of those parties – one gains admission by purchasing
a limited edition white printed t-shirt - and although the idea of this particular
interview was to discuss the changing face of Rio de Janeiro as a modern metropolis, as soon as I uttered the word “Rio,” he interrupted me mid-sentence,
and launched into a long tirade against the new regulations that are reducing
the Cariocas’ civil liberties, particularly on the city’s beaches.
“It’s become unbearable,” he said. “We are not free anymore. We cannot buy
our food and our drinks and our coco water from the beach vendors anymore.
Everything is regulated, and everything is sponsored by the big corporations,
particularly these Brazilian beer companies that are trying to take over our lives,
from the umbrellas on the beach to every aspect of our Carnival. This is not
right, because what makes Cariocas special is the fact that we do not follow the rules. We are not on time, and we choose to express our individuality
through a very specific form of civil disobedience. Take that away, and you take
away the spirit of Rio.”
“They are creating their own
decentralized cultural industries,
like Baile Funk, which has gone
global, all the way to Berlin and
Luanda.”
Hermano Vianna
The lesser-known Vianna brother discusses the effect Funk music has had on the
evolution of Brazilian subculture.
Hermano Vianna, the anthropologist, composer and cultural critic, is not a
household name in Brazil. However, many Brazilians know him as the older
brother of Herbert Vianna, the lead singer of hugely popular Rio rock band Os
Paralamas do Sucesso. The Viannas’ family life took a tragic turn in February
2001, when Herbert and his wife suffered an accident with an ultralight plane
in resort area Angra dos Reis, near Rio. The fall killed Herbert’s wife, Lucy, but
Herbert gradually recovered, after spending 44 days at the Copa D’Or hospital, in Copacabana. When he woke up from his coma, however, Herbert found
himself confined to a wheelchair, but he has managed to resume his musical
career, despite his paraplegic state.
The Vianna siblings will always be closely associated with Brazilian music, and
one of Hermano’s most important publications is titled “The Mystery of Samba,”
an essay (which was translated into English in 1999) where the author makes
the case that an understanding of samba leads to a more thorough analysis of
the modern Brazilian identity. The academic Nelson H. Vieira wrote of that book
that is “points to the Brazilian nation’s strong expression of popular culture as
a long term transcultural experience between cultural elites and popular voices
both inside and outside Brazil.” Recently, however, Vianna has reinvented himself as a leading specialist of the “Baile funk” phenomenon.
Those funk balls, which combine rhythms considered derivative of electro and
Miami bass, became very popular in Brazil’s favelas about a decade ago. Having crossed over into the mainstream, they are known for their viral influence
on Brazilian dress codes and youth attitudes. Vianna has become an expert at
decoding funk’s disruptive effect on Brazilian subcultures, through its assault
46
on the Portuguese vocabulary, in a conscious reinvention of everyday slang.
When I first met Vianna, about seven years ago at one of Regina Casé and
husband Estevão Ciavatta’s house parties, just as “Baile funk” was taking off in
a big way, it seemed that all the guests were asking him about his take on the
influence of funk on Rio society.
Recently, I caught up with him, and asked him about the recent changes he
has noticed in Rio’s culture. “Rio is bigger,” he said. “Not only in geographical
and population terms, but our urban ‘imaginary’ has boomed as well. Rio has
spread all over the place; it has become more plural, in a healthy way. Ten years
ago, when people talked about Rio they were talking about the rich neighborhoods of “Zona Sul” - Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon – and people thought
about favelas only during Carnival. Now the other “Zonas,” including the new,
immense West which has created its own downtown somewhere around the
Barra shopping mall, are fighting and partying for their rights. There is a brand
new plethora of very active collectives and movements. They want to secure
a place on our cultural map, online and offline. And they don’t need the Zona
Sul mass media to do it anymore. They are creating their own decentralized
cultural industries, like Baile Funk, which has gone global, all the way to Berlin
and Luanda. These other Zonas are broadcasting their many mash-ups of other
Carioca sounds and images and ideas.”
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Rio Powerhouse
The Reigning Queen of Rio
Vivacious and radiant, Brazil’s most
lovable and entertaining on-screen
personalities shows us why she is the
real star of Rio
text_Claude Grunitzky
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photography_ Regina Casé
Regina Casé is a something of a character, to put it mildly. Some would call her
a force of nature. A bona fide, natural born comedian, she is one of Brazil’s beloved TV and film personalities. The director Daniela Thomas, who has known
Regina since the seventies, once told me that Regina was “the empress” of
Rio de Janeiro. Regina Casé also happens to be the central character of this
issue, because the majority of the profile and features are somehow directly or
indirectly related to her.
Among the anecdotes enhancing the architecture of her influence is the fact
that I first met this issue’s cover star Taís Araújo at Regina’s apartment back
in December 2005; Caetano Veloso and Hermano Vianna, both profiled for
this issue, are two of her closest friends. I discovered Salvador and Bahia ten
years ago through the lens of Regina, her husband Estevão Ciavatta and her
former neighbor Mari Stockler (who’s husband, Carlito Carvalhosa, created the
monumental show at Salvador’s Palácio da Aclamação which I reviewed in the
Salvador section of the issue). In other words, all roads in TRACE’s survey of
Brazil in 2010 lead to Regina.
A “Carioca da gema” – meaning a person who was born in Rio de Janeiro
proper – she first entered the Brazilian consciousness in the seventies when
she was part of the Rio-based theater ensemble Asdrúbal Trouxe o Trombone.
Her crossover moment came a few years later, with her central role in the
groundbreaking weekly comedy show “TV Pirata”, which aired on Rede Globo
in the late eighties. Regina’s relationship with Globo blossomed into the nine-
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50
“Ademar Casé paved the way for his charismatic granddaughter.
That particular type of constant improvisation, and instinct for the
new in the mood of the nation, could have only been transmitted in
the genes.”
ties, when she became the main presenter of cult TV shows “Programa Legal”,
“Brasil Legal” and “Muvuca.” These days, she can be seen collaborating with
her husband on episodes of “Fantástico”, arguably one of Brazil’s most successful – and longest running – prime time TV shows.
“I’ve done everything on Brazilian television,” she once told me, before bursting into one of her trademark superloud laughs, so it must also be noted that,
in addition to television, she has starred in a wide range of Brazilian films, including “Chuvas de Verão”, a 1978 drama directed by Cacá Diegues and “Eu
Tu, Eles”, Andrucha Waddington’s award-winning 2001 tragicomedy about a
single woman called Darlene who returns to her provincial homeland after a
three-year absence.
Earlier this year, Estevão Ciavatta released a documentary titled “Programa
Casé”, a moving tribute to his wife’s grandfather, Ademar Casé. Pernambucoborn Ademar Casé, who died in 1993. He was a pioneer of Brazilian radio,
pretty much shaping the tone and style of his country’s early radio days, and
his influence on Brazil’s entertainment industry can still be felt today. I watched
the film last August at a private screening in Rio’s Instituto Moreira Salles, right
on the rua Marquês de São Vicente, in the foresty Gávea neighborhood, and
all along I could not help but to notice that Ademar Casé paved the way for his
charismatic granddaughter. That particular type of constant improvisation, and
instinct for the new in the mood of the nation, could have only been transmitted in the genes.
For this issue, we asked Regina to send us a few of her favorite pictures from
her many travels. The photos in this portfolio, which were all taken with the small
digital cameras she carries with her everywhere she goes, point to a life lived
in full. A life of laughter, joy, improvisation and deep, meaningful relationships.
51
The Soul of Brasil
The people and places that make Salvador da Bahia
text_Claude Grunitzky
52
photography_Evangelia Kranioti
In his 1961 novel “Home if the Sailor”, the modernist Bahian writer Jorge
Amado wrote that “it is a very risky thing for anyone to go about proclaiming the
truth simply because he finds himself in possession of concrete documentary
proofs or on the evidence of his own eyes, which is always overestimated.” In
the state of Bahia, especially in the capital city of Salvador, things are never
quite what they seem, and all too often the truth can be invisible to the naked
eye. I found out, on my first trip to Salvador in 2000, that even the most basic
truths can be subject to interpretation and reinterpretation.
A land of illusion and emotion, Bahia is the cradle of black Brazilian civilization,
and the daily routine there can be unsettling to those who are used to thinking
only with their head. It has been estimated that more than 80% of the state’s
population is of African descent, and many derivatives of African words – like
“quilombo” (escaped slave community) – have morphed into the Brazilian
Portuguese vocabulary. Even Bahia’s beloved “batucada” (the drumbeat)
reflects the origin of the African instruments - like the tam tam - that enhanced
the chants and dances of traditional Brazilian music.
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54
55
“A land of illusion and emotion, Bahia is the cradle of black Brazilian
civilization”
56
In this section of the issue, we explore the cultural and religious practices –
the truth around the Candomblé houses of worship - that define the African
heritage of Bahia. On this latest reporting trip to Salvador, which took place
last March, the TRACE team found that these were the truths that informed
the music, film, fashion and art of the region. According to the anthropologist
Luis Nicolau Parés, author of an important study on the history of Candomblé,
the collective identity of West African societies during the colonial period
was multi-dimensional and structured on different levels: ethnic, religious,
territorial, linguistic and political.
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60
I found myself enchanted by Bahia’s unique brand of syncretism on my first
visit there, because I felt that I had stepped into a land of giants. To me, these
personalities, the Pierre Vergers, the Mestre Didis, the musical legends, the
Caetano Velosos, the Gilberto Gils, the Carlinhos Browns, are towering figures
because of their giant souls. A native of Togo, I immediately felt in step with
the land of Bahia because I had never encountered such creativity in everyday
situations. The most interesting Bahians are the everyday people you see on
the streets. From the Baianas serving Acarajé at the Casa da Dinha (just like
the street vendors I grew up around in Lomé), to the men practicing Capoeira
at Santo Antonio Fort, to the sambistas roaming around Pelorinho Square; they
were all dressed in white, and they seemed to know something I had yet to
learn.
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TITLE
“Bahians are open-minded, and I found that their sense of
community, their mastery of the art of reinvention, their ability to
transform objects and beliefs, it all comes from the bonds that were
established through rebellion and resistance.”
64
When I visited Jaques Wagner in his Salvador office earlier this year, he told
me that if a white Jew from Rio, like him, could be elected governor of the
black state, then indeed Bahia was the land of possibilities. Bahians are openminded, and I found that their sense of community, their mastery of the art
of reinvention, their ability to transform objects and beliefs, it all comes from
the bonds that were established through rebellion and resistance. Everything
about the Bahia persona is related to the spirit of survival, and the photos in
this portfolio demonstrate just how free and soulful they truly are.
65
66
67
text_Evangeline Kim
photography_Marc Baptiste
Grammy-award winning musician, songwriter, artist and cultural
leader Carlinhos Brown gives back to his community by providing
real opportunities for young hopefuls
CULTURAL
RENAISSANCE
MAN
Carlinhos Brown: A Portrait of the Artist as Humanist
IF THE SOUL IS NOT NOURISHED, WE CEASE TO BE HUMAN. C. BROWN
69
“I prefer now to be known as an artist, not as a musician,” Carlinhos Brown asserted, during a recent TRACE interview with him in Paris. “Music,” he claimed,
had become “too limited” as a sole means of artistic expression and that he
has for sometime been deeply focused on his painting and other art forms. He
showed us a “sketchbook” of some of his painting projects, and the pages
were brimming with finely wrought, beautifully composed, rich color-flow studies. We could only imagine the visual impact of these explosions of color when
cast on large canvases.
Because Afro-Brasilian art has for too long been dismissively regarded as mere
“ethnographic” curiosities or worthy only in a “carnival” context in Bahia, he is
wary of exhibiting his paintings there. Carlinhos is biding his time to show his
pictures to viewers with a better sense of cultural knowledge and values.
Recognized world-wide as one of Brasil’s greatest megastar musicians and
multiple Grammy-winner, he has composed and produced over 200 hit songs
recorded not only by himself, but so many more have also been interpreted by
other Brasilian stars - with even a hundred more to come in his head, he vows.
As one of Brasil’s greatest living percussionist today, a beloved singer and witty lyricist, he was a founder of one of Bahia’s most popular percussion bands,
70
Timbalada, yet few of Brasil’s musicians possess such complete mastery of the
country’s hundreds of rhythms.
To experience the electrifying charisma of Carlinhos Brown live in concert is
more than thrilling: his catchy melodies and percussive lyrics represent the very
heart of the Bahian sound. It’s spell-binding to feel the powerful, magnetic love
between the star and huge crowds, numbering from thousands to sometimes
in the millions.
As bandleader, musician and showman, his shows embrace so many styles,
starting with Bahian samba swirled with other Brazilian beats, along with reggae, salsa, jazz, hip-hop, funk, and rock. While such broad musicianship may
be enough gratification or challenge for any accomplished musician, he continues to push beyond musical vocabularies of expression. His will-power and
his drive expand his artistic instincts towards many-faceted, Brasilian Renaissance-like achievements in culture and the arts.
Indeed, he has even designed a brilliant collection of 4 lines of fine gold jewelry
entitled “Miscigens” in collaboration with Brasil’s renowned H. Stern jeweler.
Each is themed upon titles of his songs - Latinha, Aruanda, Magano, and Indiado, and represents his love for Brasil’s fascinating ethnic mix of African,
Indigenous, and urban cultures. They remain H. Stern’s most popular and bestselling jewels, and are incredibly exquisite examples of the art of gold-smithing.
Yet he remains remarkably modest and down-to-earth in conversation and interview, with a keenly piercing mind, and, one senses, an uncompromising sense
of personal values marked by his profound spirituality. “I am only a man,” he
often notes, shunting aside any glorified pretensions.
Apart from the range of his artistry, he’s known throughout Bahia for his steadfast dedication to social responsibility through concrete community project opportunities for the impoverished, children and adults alike, under his umbrella
non-profit NGO, the Pracatum Social Action Association. Since the 80’s, his
creation of professional opportunities and reclamation of cultural pride have
been bearing fruit through educational training and development of technical
skills in a fashion school, English classes, Afro-Brasilian literature, capoeira and
dance, a pre-school nursery for children ages 2-5, and of course, music and visual arts. Success in these programs continues to earn numerous international
and national awards and critically-needed financial support.
To visit his 3 landmark spaces in Salvador below, is to witness the work of a
Bahian rebel iconoclast who manages, almost miraculously, to rise far above
and beyond pre-conceived racial notions in Bahia’s highly racist society with
its painful colonial history, as he quietly lays foundations for lasting recognition
and elevation of Afro-Brasilian culture.
Museu du Ritmo:
Although only inaugurated in 2007, Carlinhos Brown’s Museu du Ritmo in the
heart of Bahia’s capital historic center, Salvador, has quickly become one of
Bahia’s most popular open-air performing arts centers. He designed and renovated the Museu grounds in an abandoned complex of buildings (7,500 square
meters) that once housed Salvador’s 19th century lower city Mercado d’Ouro,
with a larger vision towards creating a major cultural center. He once remarked
that his head was a “museum of rhythms,” and the self-perception has materialized into an innovative reality.
The courtyard’s arcaded interior is painted with colorful, rhythmic designs and
a high-tech stage with state-of-the-art sound system looms at one end, serving
as one the best stages in the city. From November through carnival season,
thousands of fans and tourists fill the multi-storied Museu, to participate in the
mega-concerts with all of Brasil’s major stars. These are known as the “Sarau
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du Brown.”
Magnificent examples of afro-Brasilian spiritual art, symbolic of Bahia’s candomblé religion, appear throughout the Museu. there are Baroque statues and
paintings of catholic saints syncretized with the candomblé orishá deities,
and the sharp fragrance of pitanga leaves refresh the air in some of the side
rooms. Full-skirted, smiling Bahiana women in white lace are often present on
festive occasions, serving up the delicious bean fritter snacks known as acarajé
gently simmering in huge pots of pungent dendê oil.
to further the Museu’s vision, under construction now within the structural
space, the first international center for Black Music, the centro da Música
negra (cMn) will open in late 2011. the cMn’s projected thematic organi-
72
zation will trace the complex saga of black music, its histories, geographies,
and artists, while encompassing its musical cross-fertilizations and linkages
between Bahia, africa, and the african diaspora throughout europe and the
americas. with interior designs by architect Pedro Mendes da Rocha, the
cMn’s plans include permanent and revolving exhibitions with 100 state-ofthe-art, interactive, multi-media installations, an online research and documentary center, concert-film-lecture-workshop spaces, recording studios, a restaurant and café. it’s partnered with France’s Mondomix who will provide technical
support with a committee of 20 international experts.
the cMn will help pull salvador, Brazil’s emblematic city of africa, out of relative insularity and strategically connect it with the world’s centers of black mu-
sic. its objectives are noteworthy: to instill black pride in a country with a long
history of repressed afro-Brazilian culture; stimulate cultural tourism by paying
tribute to black music in Brazil and throughout the world; and spur recognition
of salvador as south america’s cultural capital of black music.
candyall Guetho square:
coolness and serenity pervade this beautifully designed oasis that carlinhos
opened in 1996, in the midst of the candeal neighborhood where he was
born and raised. originally built as a large, popular performance venue where
thousands of visitors and fans attended nighttime concerts by all of Brasil’s renowned artists as well as thunderous sunday afternoon rehearsals by timbalada’s percussionists, candyall is currently a private studio center where he re-
cords, rehearses, creates his artworks, and welcomes friends. inside the lovely
painted building behind the plaza’s long balustrade, there are again rooms filled
with Baroque art, a sacred altar, and an atmosphere of consecrated enchantment and profound peace.
the beauty of the candyall space is symbolic of what’s achievable in what was
once a barrio with typical lack of decent infrastructure - and also, historically,
an area populated by liberated captive africans in the 17th century. over the
years, carlinhos has helped instill a sense of dignity, pride, and hope in the
poor community district by advocacy and national and international fund-raising
for candeal’s clean running water, sewer lines, electricity, paved roads, the first
health clinic, home building and renovation, and a better soccer field for
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Carlinhos Brown performs in New York City at the Brazilian Day Festival
photo_Mikaela Gauer
the children.
Pracatum Music School:
A few buildings down the road from Candyall Guetho Square, the multi-storied
Pracatum Music School rises high above the street. Within the modern space,
1200 young students each year fill the classrooms, rehearsal spaces, a library,
cafeteria, the instruments room, and a recording studio. With state and private
funding, students pay no tuition. They are trained in all the technical skills of
audio-visual recording, sound engineering, and scores of budding musicians
are exposed to many styles of music, from Bahian samba to hip-hop and classical European. Cadres of Pracatum students are the core of next generation’s
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A student at Pracatum Music School
“Yet he remains remarkably modest and down-to-earth in
conversation and interview, with a keenly piercing mind, and, one
senses, an uncompromising sense of personal values marked by his
profound spirituality. ‘I am only a man,’ he often notes, shunting
aside any glorified pretensions.”
self-sufficiency in Bahia’s music industry.
During our TRACE team visit to the school, the door of one the classrooms suddenly opened and a roomful of grinning children sang out in unison and perfect
pitch - Bob Marley’s “Is this love - is this love - is this love – is this love that I’m
feelin’…?” We were exhilarated.
To enter those spectacular 3 spaces in Salvador - the Museu du Ritmo, Candyall Guetho Square, and Pracatum Music School - is to catch a glimpse of the
palace of the mind of an exceptional artist. Where art triumphs over poverty;
where dreams become opportunities; and where life is a celebration of human
creativity.
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Legend –
Antônio Carlos Vovô
Ilê Aiyê is in the hearts of every Afro-Brasilian because it was the very first Afro
Bloco. Nowadays, it’s the only group that sticks to black principles. –
Billy Arquimimo, African Heritage State Coordinator
text_Evangeline Kim
76
photography_Evangelia Kranioti
Early November, 2009: It’s a warm, late Saturday summer night in Bahia. I am
here to visit Salvador’s key cultural sites with a small group of international journalists. We drive slowly through the winding, steep streets of Brasil’s biggest
black neighborhood - the bairro popular, Liberdade, where over 600,000 people of mostly African descent live. The streets are filled with partying throngs
lining the streets. Our destination is the Ilé Aiyê headquarters and cultural
community center, Bahia’s beacon of black pride and consciousness.
Our van stops in front of the floodlit 8-story building. It’s a grand presence.
The building facade is covered with neatly designed mosaic work in Ilé Aiyê’s
colors – a blaze of bright black, red, yellow, and white - depicting its AfroBrazilian motifs and iconographic mask. Charged rhythms from Ilê Aiyê’s live
band are pouring forth from inside, filling the neighborhood’s night air.
In the cavernous concert hall with crowds of ecstatic dancers, a phalanx of percussionists below the stage pounds out a mesmerizing mix of ijexá and samba
rhythms. The stage is filled with beautiful, smiling, crowned women dancers, in
regal dress, swirling gracefully, undulating uplifted arms. Behind them a “Noite
da Beleza Negra” backdrop banner stretches across the stage - bathed in
shadowed stage lighting. The huge space with capacity for over two thousand
fans is reverberating with melodies and harmonies, as stage vocalists belt out
Ilê Aiyê’s songs of freedom, meshed with the thrashing drumming beats.
These popular public performance sessions, which begin in August, are known
as “ensaios.” They lead up to the Salvador’s massive street carnival in February,
where over one hundred of Ilê Aiyê’s musicians are joined by three thousand
singing, dancing members in procession with the band’s gigantic “trio-eléctrico” truck carrying musicians and a high-powered sound system.
***
Eu tenho uma vantage sobre a maioria dos filhos de famílias negras da
Bahia. Pois sempre soube ser um descendente da Família Negra de “Lá.”
Sempre fui orientado a procurer ser sempre melhor em todos os sentidos,
pois negro sempre ê vilão, e eles nunca se preocupam conosco, e por isso
faço minha parte e tenho tanto orgulho dessa minha formação de categoria em negritude. Obrigado Mãe, por ter formado esse produto que mudou
a cara e a cabeça da Bahia. – A. C. Vovô
Late March, 2010 – TRACE Visit: It’s Holy Week in Bahia, the week before
Easter, and although the Ilê Aiyê Band usually doesn’t perform during this period, we want to learn more about the whole organizational history first-hand
from its president, Antônio Carlos Vovô, better known as Vovô (Grandfather).
Tall, dressed in whites, long dreadlocks flowing, we are in the grave and commanding presence of a singular, world-famous personage: the man who founded Ilê Aiyê, the very first Afro Bloco in 1974, with sacred blessings and support
by his late, distinguished mother, Mãe Hilda, the neighborhood’s Candomblé
Mãe de Santo, when he was just 22 years old.
The evening before, the TRACE team attended the Cabaret da RRRRaça performance at the Teatro Vila Velha. Towards the ending, the drummers began
77
This policy is not, however, an outright discriminatory practice on their part, he
carefully points out. It depends entirely on the self-perception of those who
wish to be members and carnival participants. “It’s a matter of identifying yourself as black, with no hesitation and absolute conviction.”
“In Bahia,” he remarks, “black people are afraid of being black. Afro Brasilians
have been made to believe that to be white is good and to be black is bad.”
His struggle to instill black pride and self-esteem in Liberdade’s and Bahia’s
Afro-Brasilians has initiated further, greater strategies over the past 22 years to
buttress his pioneering Afro Bloco.
Ilê Aiyê has now evolved as a socio-cultural development role-model through
to thrum out Maracatu rhythms, as the troupe sang about the great early antislavery leader, Zumbi dos Palmeres (after which the Northeastern Pernambuco
rock-Maracatu group Nação Zumbi is named).
Suddenly, from the top of the amphitheater’s stairs, a booming voice pierced
the packed theater, the drum rhythms shifted to carnival samba beats, and the
dreadlocked lead singer of Ilê Aiyé, Guiguio Aguinaldo, quickly descended the
stairs. The room was electrified. Dancing, audience members rushed onstage
to join this finale epiphany celebration for the black race, joining Guiguio’s exuberant chants for Ilê Aiyê.
How is it that Ilé Aiyé came to hold such inspirational grip over blacks and enlightened non-blacks, including Brasil’s biggest stars – Gilberto Gil, Caetano
Veloso, Lenine, Margareth Menezes, Daniela Mercury, and countless others - all
over the country? “Ilê Aiyê” is invoked many times in great Brasilian recordings
and live performances throughout Bahia and Brasil. And what gave Bahian
Guiguio such charismatic strength?
Before 1974, Vovô recounts, Bahia’s carnival samba blocos (informal street
percussion groups) never had the participation of a black bloco. This is ironic
since all popular samba forms were forged originally from Candomblé rhythms
by Afro-Brasilians. Ilê Aiyê performed for the first time in 1975 and was organized originally to be the first historical musical black bloco in Bahia. But they
found themselves immediately denigrated by the media and followed around
by the police, with accusations of Communism. This was the period of Brasil’s
military regime.
Ile Aiyê’s hand was forced. It looked to the Black Power Movement in the U.S.
for inspiration. Vovô and his directors made conscious decisions to stand up
against the intense injustice and racism of the period in Bahia and Brasil. They
became resolved to fight for civil rights for Afro-Brasilians through their bloco’s
music. All of Ilé’s lyrics still today carry Afro Brasilian cultural, political, and
social content, and the organization is strictly limited to black Brasilians as a
form of cultural resistence.
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creation of vitally important educational programs, starting with his mother’s literacy school based on art-education for young children, The Mãe Hilda School,
launched in 1988. Known as the community’s “Guardian of Faith and African
Tradition,” Mãe Hilda was the guiding force for Ilê Aiyê and countless thousands who still mourn her passing last September. Each annual carnival Saturday, she opened Ilê Aiyê’s parade celebration with a ceremony on her balcony.
She released white doves as blessings for Vovô and his directors.
As we spoke with Vovô in the late waning light of the afternoon, happy, eagerto-learn children filled classrooms downstairs.
The newer headquarters holds extensive training programs for thousands of
teachers and students.
Social Projects:
• Pedagogical Extension Project, established in 1995, covers courses
about Afro-Brasilian history and culture for teachers, educational supervisors,
and counselors from public schools, including in-depth studies of ethical issues
and cultural pluralism.
• Ilê Aiyê Today: With 120 musicians, Band’ Aiyê leads thousands of carnival-goers each year and has inspired growth of dozens of newer Afro Blocos. It
has had cameo appearances on recordings by pop stars including Bjork, Yerba Buena, Nass Marrakech, and Daniela Mercury. Since 1983, the group has
performed in Angola, Benin, Martinique, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, France,
Spain Holland, England, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and the U.S.
• Ilê Aiyê Vocational School aims to enable youth from the community for the
job market. This project offers free classes on subjects such as shoe, bag and
accessory manufacturing, facility electricity, computers, beauty care, dressmaking, and cooking.
• Band’ Erê School of Percussion, Song, Dance, and Citizenship, established
in 1992, is a full-time children’s and teen training school, aimed at developing
musical skills while instilling citizenship values. They attend courses about AfroBrasilian history, interpretation and languages, musical rhythms, singing, dance,
and personal health and hygiene.
Vovô’s biggest challenges today at the Ilê Aiyê 4,500 square meter headquarters, the Senzala do Barro Preto, are hefty monthly and annual maintenance and
educational costs. He is currently deeply preoccupied with funding for a badlyneeded, in-house recording studio. Until then, we have to await recordings by
one of Brasil’s most important musical bands.
Cultural Projects:
Billy Arquimimo, Bahia’s African Heritage Tourism Coordinator, Vovô’s longtime friend, who long ago served as an Ilê Aiyê director (1976–1984), and who
went on to manage Olodum (1987-2001), confirms that Bahian elites have “no
cultural respect” for Ilê Aiyê’s inestimable achievements. Well-deserved official
state and city recognition rarely materializes, he notes, and increased financial
support will be vitally necessary to enable Ilê Aiyê to continue its historic mission
towards racial equality through cultural activism.
• Ilê Aiye’s Black Music Festival serves as the annual key event to select
theme songs to be developed during the year, making carnival their target stage.
Songwriters express their self-esteem and feelings in two categories, Theme
and Poetry.
• Black Beauty Night – Ebony Goddess Pageant: Ilê Aiyê focuses on black
womanhood in this hugely popular evening party event, wherein an Ebony Goddess is selected who will serve as next carnival queen. The winner must be an
ethical black beauty who reaffirms dignity, identity, delivers values, and represents highest ideals of black cultural expressions.
He believes that since 1976, Salvador has undergone many transformations
towards racial justice, but Vovô is not completely happy. “Bahian society is
racist,” he maintains.
As we leave our meeting, Vovô silently points to the words underneath the logo
image of the Ilê Aiyé mask: PERFIL AZEVICHE – JET BLACK PROFILE.
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A Divine Experience
Text_Claude Grunitzky
Photography_Marc Baptiste
Renowned priest and artist Mestre Didi and his wife, Juana Elbein, share the deep
spiritual contribution West African culture has made to the Brazilian way of life a contribution that makes Brazil different from any other country in the Americas.
Of all the West African cultures that helped create the special kind of AfroBrazilian syncretism that can be found at the heart of the Bahian religious experience, none is more important, or more admired, than that of the Nàgô. The
Nàgô, a tribe of the Yoruba community that migrated and spread over centuries
across the countries now known as Nigeria, Benin and Togo all the way to the
northeastern coast of Brazil, believe in the immortality of spirits. In particular,
they are known to worship their ancestors because, in their mind, no one ever
really dies.
At 92, Mestre Didi is still considered a crucial spiritual link between the Nàgô
cultures of West Africa and those of Brazil. For he and his Argentina-born Brazilian wife, the anthropologist Juana Elbein dos Santos, have made the study of
his ancestors their life’s work. When the TRACE team arrived at their doorstep,
late one morning last April, we were greeted by Elbein, who was cautious at
first, sizing us up, obviously suspicious of our motives. I explained that we were
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producing a special edition on Brazil, and that the Afro-Brazilian culture of Bahia was the main focus of our issue. A leading scholar on those issues, she sat
us down and, for more than an hour, gave us a detailed lesson on the basic
foundations of the culture.
Elbein told us many tales, and she was able to recount, in great detail, several
of their pilgrimages to the motherland. Every few minutes, she would test her
husband’s memory by asking him to recollect a specific incident, or to remember a specific person, from a specific trip to West Africa. Mestre Didi listened
on, nodded in acquiescence and sat quietly in his chair. We could perceive
that those African memories brought a light to his eyes, and he started smiling.
Born Deoscoredes Maximiliano dos Santos, Mestre Didi is the son of Arsenio
dos Santos and Maria Bibiana do Espírito Santo, a lady also known as Mãe
Senhora Oxum Muiwà. Mãe Senhora was a descendent of the Asipa family,
which originated in Oyo and Ketu, two important cities in the extended Yoruba
empire, and she became one of the founders of a highly influential candomblé
house called ilê axé aira intile. that house is often credited with maintaining
many of the most important nàgô traditions.
in another display of syncretism, Mestre didi was baptized in the catholic
church, and at the same time as he was told to worship Jesus christ and given
his first communion, he was simultaneously initiated into the cult of the nàgô.
over time, as he became more comfortable with his status as a high priest of
the candomblé, he chose to express his religious beliefs through art – particularly with an abundant usage of the symbols of the orixás nana and omulu/
soponna. and so didi began creating sculptures out of raw, organic materials
– like cowrie shells – that had been traditionally used for religious ceremonies
in the candomblé. Many of his finest pieces were on display in their apartment,
and i remembered having seen similar ones, more than twenty years ago, at the
seminal group exhibition “les Magiciens de la terre,” which was held in 1989
at the centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande halle de la Villette in Paris.
as we surveyed (and photographed) the art in their living room, i realized that
several of the strategically placed vintage black and white photographs of deceased high priests and priestesses were yet another reminder of the presence of our ancestors. the books on the shelves, on the other hand, seemed
to speak to didi’s other life as a writer and cultural historian. in 1946, didi
published a yoruba dictionary, the first of its kind, and in 1961, he published
a tome titled “Black tales of Bahia” (contos negros da Bahia - nàgô - orixás
- candomblé), which came with a preface by the writer Jorge amado and illustrations by the artist carybé.
in elbein, didi found both a co-conspirator and an intellectual sparring partner.
she was proud to tell us about her many writings in academic journals and
about her books, the most famous of which, 1972’s “the nago and death”
(originally titled “os nàgô e a Morte Pàde, Àsèsè e o culto Égun na Bahia”),
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was first published in 1972 as a doctoral thesis in Paris. in 1974, didi and ebstein founded the society for the study of Black culture in Brazil (also known
as secneB), and a generation of scholars have been quoting their research
ever since.
as my interview drew to a close, a particular mask, sitting on a far corner of
the room, caught my eye: it reminded me of the masks i had seen as a child,
growing up in togo. this particular mask, in the egungun tradition, must have
been inspired by a very specific type of ancestor worship – this mask seemed
to be a loose reinterpretation of the yoruba pantheon of divinities. if, indeed,
egungun was his inspiration for that mask, then i understood why didi looked
so immortal that day – he must have been dialoguing with the collective spirit
of his ancestors.
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“At 92, Mestre Didi is still considered a crucial spiritual link between
the Nàgô cultures of West Africa and those of Brazil.”
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A Light of Consciousness
A spiritually enlightening encounter with Mãe Carmem of Gantois, the most
celebrated Candomblé house in Brazil
text_Claude Grunitzky
84
photography_Marc Baptiste
As if the closed wooden window panes and the bright yellow light shining
faintly out of the top of the white door at the main entrance of the “terreiro” of
Gantois were not intimidating enough, we were greeted by our quiet host, Kátia
Badaró, and led, through the side entrance, to the back terrace, where we were
instructed to wait. The wind was blowing, and we were told that it was prayer
time – early evening. So we waited patiently.
Pinned to a board on the terrace wall was a poster featuring a digitally-retouched photograph of a smiling older lady wearing spectacles and dressed in
Baiana white. The lady, whose features looked West African, wore bracelets
well, and I understood the extra large African beads covering part of her chest
to be subtle displays of grace and elegance. The poster read “Mãe Menininha
- Concha Acústica.” It seemed to be advertising a tribute concert, celebrating
what would have been Mãe Menininha’s 113th birthday. The headliners were
listed as Maria Bethânia, Gal Costa, Marlene de Castro, Geronimo, Marcia
Short, Caetano Veloso and Daniela Mercury. Above the poster was a printed
sign explaining how “hierarchy must be observed in every aspect of life.”
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A teenage girl, dressed entirely in virginal white, came out of seemingly nowhere, and started praying on the other end of the terrace.
Close to half an hour later, we were finally led to the room leading to the room
where Mãe Carmem was holding court. Mãe Carmem, born Carmem Oliveira
da Silva, is the daughter of Mãe Menininha, the legendary figure who’d turned
the House of Gantois – a matriarchal den of spirituality also known as “Ilé Iyá
Omi Axé Iyámase do Gantois” – into the most celebrated Candomblé house
in Brazil. She was deeply seated in a wooden throne; behind her throne was
a wall painted with the figure of a crown-wearing mermaid. The mermaid, who
seemed to be looking deep into the horizon, was holding a flag with the word
“Pax” printed on it.
Mãe Carmem was wearing a white dress not unlike the one her mother wore
in the photograph that had been retouched for the poster on the terrace. Her
beads were almost as prominent as her mother’s, but in person she appeared
slightly less imposing than the photograph indicated Mãe Menininha to have
been. One of Mãe Carmem’s daughters, who welcomed us by revealing her
name as Neli de Oxossi, informed us that her mother had become the head of
the Gantois in 1997, after Mãe Carmem’s sister Mãe Cleusa passed away. We
noticed that most everyone was sitting on the floor, so the TRACE team was
allowed to sit on the floor, next to Mãe Carmem and her throne. I was able to
proceed with my short interview, which really was only about gaining some sort
of basic understanding of the codes of the Orishas, as adapted to the Bahian
context.
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In the Yoruba tradition, a tradition that was secretly maintained in Brazil long
after the newly established slaves settled in their new land, Orishas are the
individual deities that reflect one of the manifestations of God. “Oshun is the
Orisha of love and marriage, of life,” she told me. “Osun, on the other hand, is
more about the soul.” Mãe Carmem herself, had been initiated into the Candomblé through an Orisha named Oxalá, a divine celebration of the light of
consciousness. I told her I was born in Togo, and we talked a bit about Africa,
about the power of the native land. We talked about the spirits, and the Gods.
Our time was up. She then blessed us, smiled at all of us, and we were led back
to the gate through the terrace and the side entrance.
“She was deeply seated in a wooden throne; behind her throne was a wall painted with the figure of a crown-wearing mermaid.”
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An afternoon visit
to the Pierre Verger
Foundation
Famous for his striking black-and-white
photographs documenting various cultures around
the world and his deep spiritual connection with
Africa, Pierre Verger’s legacy lives on at Fundação
Pierre Verger.
text_Claude Grunitzky
photography_Marc Baptiste
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“Verger went so far (and so deep) into black culture that he
changed his name to Fátúmbí after an enlightened visit to
Benin where he was initiated into the Ifá divination, becoming a
‘babalawo’ (high priest) of Orunmila.”
Of all the many documentarians of Bahia’s black culture, Pierre Verger, who
died in Salvador in 1996 at the age of 93, remains the most influential. Some
would call him the most controversial. He is certainly the most celebrated,
with an international cult following rivaling that of the late writer Jorge Amado,
another chronicler of everyday Bahian life.
Lula Buarque de Hollanda’s masterful 1998 documentary “Mensageiro Entre
Dois Mundos” (Messenger Between Two Worlds), which was narrated by
Gilberto Gil, does a wonderful job of explaining why the Parisian photographerturned-journalist-turned-ethnographer actually left the world of French
bourgeois privilege behind and chose to devote his entire adult life to the study
of black Brazilian lifestyle. More than that, Verger’s was an arduous, methodical,
transcontinental effort – recorded in over 63,000 photographs and negatives
and in countless essays – to establish the links and commonalities between
Africans from the continent and those, mostly descendents of slaves, who had
settled in the faraway lands of the Diaspora.
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Verger went so far (and so deep) into black culture that he changed his name
to Fátúmbí after an enlightened visit to Benin where he was initiated into the Ifá
divination, becoming a “babalawo” (high priest) of Orunmila. The house where he
died, high on the hills of Vila América, a working class neighborhood in Salvador,
has been turned into a foundation, and the German-born director, a beautiful,
sincere, patient woman called Angela Luhning who used to study under Verger,
has done a fantastic job of preserving his archives, his legacy and his spirit.
The afternoon of our visit, Angela and two of her colleagues gave the TRACE team
a tour of the house, of the gardens and of the dance studio where children from
the neighborhood are able to receive free lessons given by dedicated teachers
and social workers. We walked all over the house and were most impressed by
the small, single bed where the master used to sleep. We saw the vintage African
shirts he used to wear and spent quite a bit of time in his impressive library.
Above all, we were given an opportunity to admire Verger’s encyclopedic, almost
alphabetical quest for knowledge about all things African.
At one point, seeing all this African literature, I told Angela that I was from Togo,
and she asked me what my name was. When I said Grunitzky, she seemed very
surprised and proceeded to lead me to one of Verger’s books, which photographer
Marc Baptiste quickly encouraged me to buy. The book, “Pierre Verger - Reporter
Fotografico”, contains an entire chapter about my family. Turns out Verger went
to Togo as a photo-reporter in the late fifties, and ended up hanging out with my
family, in Lomé, one of his many stomping grounds.
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Bahian Beauty
Forget the girl from Ipanema - the real Brazilian beauties are found on the
beaches of Bahia. Marc Baptiste captures local girl Rebeca Campos at Porto
da Barra
text_Mikaela Gauer
photography_Marc Baptiste
fashion_Osklen
A few nights ago, I found myself at a dinner party in the Upper East Side of
Manhattan. The man sitting next to me noticed the bright orange Bonfim bracelet wrapped around my wrist and asked me if I had been to Brazil recently. I
nodded that I had, and his eyes lit up. “I love Brazil. I go there about five times
a year. There’s something about Brazil that… I just can’t put my finger on. It’s
the energy – ” he paused, a smile bursting from his lips, “—and the women! I
can’t help but fall in love every time I go to Brazil. Those Brazilian women. They
just do something to me…” he trailed off, clearly mesmerized by the memory
of a former lover.
Not the first guy I’ve heard that from. And there’s good reason why Brazilian
women seem to captivate the world. First of all, they’re beautiful. (Take one look
at Gisele or Gracie Carvalho and try to argue with me.) But there is something
that makes their beauty extraordinary and unique. Brazilian women are freespirited, they’re charismatic, they don’t take shit and they’re passionate.
I met the gorgeous star of this photoshoot, Rebeca Campos (“Beca” as she
prefers to be called – she has her nickname tattooed in a delicate script on the
outside of her left wrist) on Praia de Stella Maris, a low-key surf beach about 30
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kilometers outside of central Salvador. On that lazy, sun-drenched afternoon,
Marc Baptiste, myself, and a few locals found cool shade and strong caipirinhas under a large beach umbrella, where we watched a few young surfer boys
chase after waves. A few feet away, leaning back against an old wooden picnic
table, I noticed a girl – dark bronzed skin, shiny wet black hair, a small silver ring
hanging from her navel – in a tiny light grey bikini. There was something about
her, and Marc caught me staring. “Go get her!” he nudged, pushing me in her
direction. She caught my eye, and I smiled. She returned the smile. It began
with an awkward hello, and I asked if I could snap a photo of her. She nodded,
tilted her chin slightly upwards, pursed her lips and gazed into my lens. She
definitely wasn’t shy.
Except for the fact that I knew all of two words in Portuguese, and she could
only muster a few words in English, body language became our native tongue.
Let’s just say that the initial snapshots became a full-fledged photo shoot,
which turned the entire beach’s attention from the surfer boys to us. Natural
charisma and sensuality oozed from her pores as she danced freely and spun in
front of the camera, playing in the waves; rolling in the sand... she was engag-
96
ing, playful, fun, sexy – and had a killer body to boot. She was truly beautiful,
inside and out – the antithesis of the manufactured beauty found in the glossy
pages of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue.
Marc and I knew we had to see her again – and we did. A few days later, Beca
met us just after her evening shift at the local market, and without knowing
exactly what we had in store for her, jumped into our big white minivan and let
us whisk her away to Porta da Barra. This time, at night, at the same location
where Marc had shot Brazilian bodybuilders 10 years earlier for our TRACE
2000 Brasil issue. This time around, the photoshoot was far from glamorous.
Beca slipped into Osklen bikinis in the back of our van. She dipped into the
freezing waters of the South Atlantic, teeth chattering. There was no catering
table, no make-up artist or hair stylist. Just her, the beach, and a camera. And
as she spun around in front of the camera, she titled her head back, laughing.
“That’s a wrap!” Marc exclaimed in excitement. We had our girl, we had our
picture – a picture of strength and charisma – which is the epitome of a real
Brazilian beauty.
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"Natural charisma and sensuality oozed
from her pores as she danced freely
and spun in front of the camera, playing
in the waves; rolling in the sand... she
was engaging, playful, fun, sexy - and
had a killer body to boot."
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The New Pelourinho
A journey through some of the most fascinating landmarks and architectures in
Salvador’s Pelhourinho district stirs up memories and histories of slavery and
redemption.
Text_Evangeline Kim
Photography_Marc Baptiste
Between 1558 and 1888, enslaved Africans must have gazed secretly at the
brilliant sun-lit skies in the Pelourinho - perched high within the upper escarpment of Salvador’s peninsular city – and by moments, they must have also
marveled at the glittering Todos os Santos Bay, swelling with the waters of
the Atlantic Ocean. The sea’s waters, they believed, were the abode of their
sea goddess Orishá, Yemanja. They must have found some solace in the
cool ocean breezes and the lush beauty of the land despite the excruciating labor exacted from them by the Portuguese colonials. When you are in
the Pelourinho today, you just might sense the presence of their pantheon of
deities, the Orishás, who continue to inhabit Bahia’s skies, the land, and the
ocean, and who, long ago, gave the Africans the spiritual strength to survive the
most painful 330 years in Salvador’s past.
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In 1985, UNESCO declared Salvador’s Historic Center, more frequently called
the Pelourinho or “Pelô,” a World Heritage Site, and today draws hundreds
of thousands of visitors each year; the Center actually revolves around and
encompasses the Pelourinho Largo (square). “Pelourinho” is Portuguese for
“pillory,” for the neighborhood was once the public pillory area where captive
Africans were cruelly lashed and beaten. The pillories were destroyed in 1835
when the form of torture was banned. Almost hidden near a small grove down
one of the side streets, one can find the memorial shrine for the unspeakable,
horrific suffering that took place in the Pelô – a small fountain of trickling water
continuously washes over a broken stump of blue marble. It’s rarely visited.
Over time, the Pelô slowly began to transform into one of Latin America’s
great cultural centers, drawing many Brazilian and expat artists, architects, and
“To stroll through the Historic Center is a mind-boggling dream for any
architectural buff where so many styles abound and reflect the city’s expansion
during the 17th and 18th centuries, juxtaposed with assortments of more
contemporary buildings, and with the breathtaking panoramic views of the lower
city and the ocean”
writers, whose fascination with the entwined cultures of Africans from different parts of the continent, bore astonishingly beautiful artistry. Jorge Amado
moved from Ilhéus to Salvador, and his picaresque novels are filled with stories
about Candomblé miracles and the African people in the Pelô. He and Pierre
Verger, the French photographer and ethnologist, were close friends with the
Argentinean Brazilian artist known as Carybé. All three were thoroughly captivated by the power of Candomblé. The wonderful Italian Brazilian Modernist
architect, Lina Bo Bardi, also drew tremendous inspiration from African people
and their cultures in Salvador and celebrated them in her meticulous work and
collections.
Through concerted work by Bahia’s Secretariats of Culture and Tourism, the
Pelourinho is focus of continual renovation and conservation, and its narrow,
sloping cobble-stoned streets are lined with the charm of pastel-hued 2 or 3
story small buildings. And some of the world’s most magnificent churches built
from the Renaissance onwards loom high in the main praças (squares) and largos. Local lore claims that Salvador has 365 churches, one for each day of the
year, at least 100 of which are verifiable Catholic churches. By contrast, there
are an estimated 1000 Candomblé terreiros (sacred Afro-Brazilian temples) in
Salvador. Of equally great interest and importance are the profusion of museums, cultural centers, foundations, and galleries all over the city and some of
the best are to be discovered in the Center and Pelô environs.
To stroll through the Historic Center is a mind-boggling dream for any architectural buff where so many styles abound and reflect the city’s expansion during
the 17th and 18th centuries, juxtaposed with assortments of more contem-
101
porary buildings, and with the breathtaking panoramic views of the lower city
and the ocean. There are imposing, old government administration buildings
and the former homes of government officials, wealthy plantation owners and
businessmen from earlier eras.
In the southern part of the Center and the oldest part of Salvador, the Praça
Municipal features the statue of Salvador’s founder and first general-governor,
Tomé de Souza; the Paço Municipal, originally the governing council chamber
built in Neo-Classical style in 1660, and now Brazil’s oldest city hall; the opulent Palaçio Rio Branco built in 1918; and the photographer’s all-time favorite
landmark, the Elevador Lacerda art-deco building dating from 1873 and rebuilt
in the late 1920’s. For a few centavos, one can zoom down in one of the elevator cars from the upper city to the lower city, 72 meters below.
At the entrance of the Praça da Sé, one of the loveliest spots in the city, on corner of the Rua Misericórdia, the sleek, tiny Galéria Pierre Verger, exhibits some
of the powerful black and white photographs, chronicling the life of Salvador’s
Africans by the late French cultural researcher. The border of the square
overlooking the lower city and sea holds the Fallen Cross Monument by one of
Latin America’s renowned sculptors, Mario Cravo Junior; it’s dedicated to the
memory of the nearby site of what was once a beautiful cathedral, the Igreja da
Sé, pulled down in 1930 for a tramway track that never materialized.
A few steps away, one enters the small Baianas Memorial building, where large
statues of Bahiana women, historical photos of their life, examples of their lacework, and symbols of their spiritual culture are on display. The important historical Afro Brasilian leader and Brasilian national hero, Zumbi dos Palmares’
monument is also in the square.
About 100 meters northeast of the Praça da Sé, is the great plaza known as
the Terreiro de Jesus. Rising high in the sky at one end is the Catedral Basílica built by the Jesuits between 1657 and 1672. Its ownership passed to the
main body of the Catholic Church in 1759, after the Jesuits were expelled from
all Portuguese territories. Its architecture is one of the earliest examples of
baroque in Brasil. As if the cathedral’s lavish baroque and rococo interior were
not enough religious homage for the wealthy Portuguese, facing the Terreiro
at its opposite end, we walk to the Largo Cruzeiro de São Francisco, and the
crowning glory of all Salvador’s churches, the São Francisco Church and Convent, one of the finest baroque churches in all of Latin America (1708-1755).
The church façade is deceptively simple, giving no hint about the tremendous
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visual splendor inside.
The most spectacular and admirable part of the church is in the main worship
hall. Carved in jacarandá wood and almost entirely gilded with gold leaf, an
explosion of gleaming gold hits the eye. All the surfaces, from floor to ceiling,
walls, pillars, vaults, are covered with finely sculpted angels and cherubs, gilt
curvilinear arabesque foliage, flowers, birds, motifs associated with legends
about the patron saint of the poor, and interspersed with paintings and statues of saints. High in the upper left and right ceiling corners, there are two
gargoyle-like “masks,” possibly created by the Africans who built the church.
Here and there are strangely distorted images that some interpret as a form
of protest against the Portuguese by the early African and indigenous laborers. Some believe that captive, skilled African Muslim artists were very
much a part of the overall artistic design and elaboration. There seems some
evidence of this plausibility when the eye focuses on the 8-pointed stars that
are an integral part of the geometric framing pattern around the paintings on
the ceiling: the 8-pointed star is typical symbolism found in Islamic cultures.
It would take years to study the visual glory in this church, and one of the
reasons we return each time to visit the Pelourinho is to see it again, to intuit
more.
The Terreiro’s Afro-Brasilian Museum in the old Faculty of Medicine building
is a major exhibition space where a collection of Afro-Brasilian historical sacred implements and sculptures from the Candomblé religion are assembled
with excellent examples of African art in wood, metal, ceramics, and textiles
throughout 5 rooms on the ground floor. The curators were careful to position and mix pieces from West and Central Africa in the African sections,
highlighting mutual pan-African cultural ties between the different ethnicities.
On the floor below, an entire hall’s walls are covered with the gorgeous 27
cedar wood carved panels by Carybé that represent the Orishás with their
symbols and animals. Commissioned by the former Banco da Bahia, they
were originally installed in the bank’s offices in 1968. But here they are now
in this museu, silently bristling with incredible energies. Carybé understood
the Candomblé sacred sense of “axé.” This homage to the Orishás is extraordinary. They are masterpieces that need to be experienced only in the
context of this modest museum in Salvador’s Pelourinho. Not New York, not
Paris, not London, nor anywhere else.
The basement of the same building houses the Archeology and Ethnographic
“All the surfaces, from floor to ceiling, walls, pillars, vaults, are covered with
finely sculpted angels and cherubs, gilt curvilinear arabesque foliage, flowers,
birds, motifs associated with legends about the patron saint of the poor, and
interspersed with paintings and statues of saints. High in the upper left and
right ceiling corners, there are two gargoyle-like “masks,” possibly created by
the Africans who built the church.”
Museum. There are early archeological discoveries including haunting burial
urns from Bahia and a fascinating exhibit of the Rio Xingu people. It only hints
at the enormous reality and histories of the Amerindians, the indigenous, who
are rapidly disappearing from the face of the earth; and of the beauty, mystery
and power of the land.
Towards the north of the Historic Center, we finally arrive at the actual Pelourinho
Largo. Sitting atop the sloping hill, the pastel blue façade of the Fundação Casa
de Jorge Amado stretches across the street with the adjacent Museu da Cidade
yellow building. In the Casa’s café, the walls are decorated with the colorful jackets of Brasil’s most famous novelist that were translated into so many
languages. Amado’s cinematic novels are often woven with stories about the
people in this neighborhood and their Candomblé beliefs and rituals. It seems
fitting for the Casa to be just here – surveying the Largo at the top of the hill – if
you enjoy his writings.
The famous church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos that Amado so vividly describes in “Tent of Miracles” sits at the foot of the square. Africans slowly
built the church starting in 1704 over 100 years during the nighttime after their
daily labor, with little financial means. As they were not allowed inside the white
elite churches to worship, they created their own. It’s strongly associated with
Candomblé and known as the Afro-Brasilian gospel church of Bahia.
Two of Salvador’s great Afro-Blocos have their headquarters in the Pelô - Olodum and Filhos de Gandhy, and if one is there at the right moment during regularly scheduled rehearsals during the week, throngs of percussionists will suddenly appear and a spontaneous street party is in session. The Casa Olodum
was renovated by the late architect Lina Bo Bardi.
To be discovered also in this neighborhood is another landmark house whose
beautiful interior was modernized and renovated by Lina Bo Bardi - the Casa do
Benin. Opened in 1988, it showcases a rich collection of artwork from the Gulf
of Benin. Most were collected by Pierre Verger during his travels in the region
over decades. Its concept aims to strengthen cultural ties between those majority Afro-Brasilians throughout the Recôncavo region who came from the Gulf
of Benin and their African roots.
Bo Bardi remains one of Modernism’s brilliant, under recognized architects –
apart from her structural design work for Bahia’s Museum of Modern Art here
in Salvador, the monumental Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art and her Glass
House home there. In the Pelô, the Centro Cultural Solar Ferrão safeguards
the State collection of her popular artifacts – toys, clothing, utensils, ceramic
pottery, and instruments - from Northeast Brasil, along with the huge collection
of 860 selections of 20th century African art donated to the State of Bahia
in 2004 by the Italian collector, Claudio Masella, and recently curated in a
stunning exhibition by Daniel Rangel, State Director of Museums. The Centro
promises to be yet another reason to visit and re-visit the Pelourinho.
Bo Bardi once called Brasil “an unimaginable country, where everything is possible.” And she further noted, “I had lived in Bahia and seen the real Brasil, not
the one of European.” The Pelourinho’s deep-rooted African cultural traditions
became central to her creative inspiration and for so many others - with more
sure to come.
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Bando de Teatro Olodum
featuring Cabaré de RRRRRaça
Chica Carelli and Marcio Meirelles, founders of the Vila Velha Theater, pave the
way for a new type of avant-garde theater that brings exceptional black talent and under-told stories to their dynamic stage.
text_Claude Grunitzky
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photography_Marc Baptiste
Áfricas
Sonho de uma noite de verão
Auto-Retrato aos 40
O Muro
Oxente, cordel de novo?
Relato de uma guerra que (não) acabou
Material Fatzer
Já fui!
Sonho de uma noite de verão
Ópera de 3 reais
Um tal de Dom Quixote
Cabaré da RRRRRaça
Ópera de três mirréis
Erê pra toda vida * xirê
Zumbi está vivo
e continua lutando
Zumbi
Bai Bai Pelô
Medeamaterial
Woyzéck
Ó Paí, Ó!
A Volta Por Cima
O Novo Mundo
Essa é nossa praia
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On the Avenida Sete de Setembro, right across from the Palácio da Aclamação, the old Governor's Palace in the middle of Salvador’s Campo Grande, sits
the Vila Velha theater, a powerhouse of an institution that seems to encapsulate
many of Bahia’s deeply contentious cultural and racial politics.
The TRACE team had been invited to meet and exchange ideas with Chica
Carelli, the beloved director and co-founder of the Bando de Teatro Olodum.
For our photo, Carelli chose to pose with the Teatro’s lead choreographer, a
lovable, witty man called Zebrinha. Carelli is a strong-willed operative who, as
the de facto gatekeeper, knows how to get her point across. We agreed to
have coffee with Carelli right before the start of an electrifying – and racially
charged – performance by an all-black ensemble they had nurtured, the Cabaré
de RRRRRaça.
A jovial, charismatic and slightly eccentric woman who seemed to have an answer for almost every question, and a solution to almost every problem, Carelli
was clearly the brains – and the logistics – behind the revamped theater’s
operations. As she oversaw some pre-performance antics, checking for lastminute discrepancies and sifting through strange, karmic emotions, she accepted my invitation to sit for an informal interview in the theater’s coffee shop.
I had read that the Vila Velha theater reopened in May of 1998, and that the
new operators – Carelli and her business partner Marcio Meirelles, now the
state of Bahia’s Secretary of Culture – negotiated so hard with the city that
they were granted full creative control of the institution on the condition that
they experiment with the avant-garde. After all, the original building, which had
been designed to the most cutting edge specifications by the German architect
Carl von Hauenschild, had become something of a derelict landmark. It was
therefore fitting that the new operators chose to do away with the central element of the theater, of any theater – the stage.
Carelli and Meirelles had a new vision for the theater, and it included an amorphous view of its disposition, meaning that the conventional stage could be
reduced, or greatly enlarged at will and according to the performance. Carelli
and Meirelles encouraged the audience to sit on the stage, in the same way
that some members of the cast were encouraged to sit on any empty seat,
next to spectators. This disruptive approach to the very notion of municipal
theater – a theater which mostly depended on state and corporate funding for
survival – was perceived as a bit of a revolution in the provincial Bahia of the
late nineties and early 2000s.
“At the beginning, everyone thought we were going to fail, that we didn’t know
what we were doing,” Carelli told me. “But Marcio and I persevered, and we
pushed the envelope, because we knew we were on to something. We knew
that this theater was the same venue where then emerging artists Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil and Tom Zé found some of their first audiences.
We knew we could not disappoint, and that the expectations were very high.
So we made it our mission to discriminate between average performers and
exceptional artists. We were able to get away with this new policy, right from
the beginning, because everything was happening so fast, all in the name of
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experimentation and new ideas.”
Marcio Meirelles, the previous head honcho, later agreed to an interview on
the premises of his old workplace. He had accepted my request despite the
obvious conflict of interests that arose with his day job as Secretary of Culture. Meirelles is the honest, straight-shooting, tear-shedding, highly emotional
central character in this cast of iconoclasts. He said to me that “the idea of
this theater was always very important to us, because we felt that this was the
place where we could tell different kinds of stories, stories that provide a balanced viewpoint and an opposing worldview to the Jorge Amado kind of overromanticized narrative, where the black protagonist from Bahia is always poor
and needy and sad, and the female lead is often over-sexualized.”
To that effect, Meirelles pointed to the theater’s track record in helping to shine
a light on talented, promising new black actors from the new generation of
Brazilian theater. The first name that came to mind was Lázaro Ramos, now
one of Brazilian cinema’s most in-demand rising stars. (Lázaro also happens to
be the husband of this issue’s cover star, the television actress Taís Araújo.)
“Lázaro started right on this stage,” he said, “and now look where he is. Stories
like Lázaro’s mean a lot to me, because they confirm that those critics who told
me that I should stop telling stories about black people, because I just couldn’t
understand the black experience, were dead wrong. They were wrong, because
the way the Vila Velha does it now, it’s all about making sure that more and
more diverse, black, ethnic audiences have access to the theater. We want to
take the theater away from the elites.”
" "We were able to get away with this new policy,
right from the beginning, because everything was
happening so fast, all in the name of experimentation
and new ideas.' "
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Natural Invasion:
Carlito Carvalhosa’s
Roteiro para Visitação
Tree trunks, limbs and branches burst through the doors and stretch to the
ceilings of an old European palace in the heart of Salvador, regaining their rightful
roots in a land once dominated by bourgeoisie power.
text_Claude Grunitzky
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photography_courtesy of the artist
Of all settings, he could not have chosen a more kitsch location than the Palácio
da Aclamação, the old Governor’s Palace located right in the center of old Salvador. The choice of venue says a lot about 48 year-old artist Carlito Carvalhosa
and his motivations.
The Palácio is one of those eclectic Italian-style buildings that spread like wildfire around the world’s industrialized cities at the beginning of the twentieth
century. Dilapidated buildings like the Palácio, which were sometimes decorated with faux-Romantic art or pastiche Delacroix paintings, are still around to
be seen in cities like Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Rio, São Paulo and, of
course, Salvador. They are a potent symbol of the bourgeoisie seizing power at
the beginning of another age of globalization, when European culture dominated
the world stage and exported the sophisticated lifestyle.
After the last Governor left the building, in the late sixties, the Palácio decayed
in what Carlito calls “a most enchanting way, as all things do in Salvador.” When
he first visited the Palácio, he made sure to inspect the State Guest House – the
one that once hosted Queen Elisabeth II – as well as the ballroom where many
a debutante had been honored. When the Palácio was eventually turned into a
museum, no one knew what to do with it, and it was never used as such. The
Palácio da Aclamação became one of the Salvador’s many mysteries; its upper
floor full of decaying furniture, the kind one would expect to find in Lampedusa’s
Donnafugata estate.
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“The Palácio da Aclamação became one of the Salvador’s many
mysteries; its upper floor full of decaying furniture, the kind one
would expect to find in Lampedusa’s Donnafugata estate.”
“I was drawn to the Palácio’s interior,” says Carlito, who was born and raised in
São Paulo but now lives in Rio de Janeiro with his wife Mari Stockler and their
two daughters, Maria and Cecilia. “It is full of frescoes depicting Tuscany or the
south of France, floral motifs and so on. Everything is perfectly at peace there,
provided one doesn’t open the windows. Doing so brings in a powerful tropical
light, and the smell of moisture tells us that everything is OK, on the outside.”
The show, called “Roteiro para Visitação,” which translates loosely as “visiting
itinerary,” deliberately brings some exterior forces inside the building. In some
ways, the show allows for an invasion. It seeks to display elements of what
could have been there before, or what might return in the future. The trees,
which were transported inside the Palácio with heavy, industrial machinery,
are called “aroeiras.” Native to subtropical South America, particularly southeastern Brazil, these trees carry a different kind of symbolic (and religious)
meaning. “These trees are old and used, and we brought in light poles made of
discarded wood, as well as unused constructions beams. To me, these are all
manifestations of the different stages in the cycle of wood, and of the names
we give things that we choose to discard. I encouraged people who visited the
exhibition to walk around the trees, because this wood will come and go, just
like old acquaintances.”
photo_Marc Baptiste
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“Silence”, 1988, Mario Cravo Neto
The Awakened Generation
Celebrating fifty years of Brazilian artwork at the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia,
Mario Cravo Neto and Christian Cravo's masterpieces lead the way for the future of
Brazilian photography
text_Mikaela Gauer
photography_Mario Cravo Neto and Christian Cravo
This past spring, the Modern Art Museum of Bahia (Museu de Arte Moderna
da Bahia, also known as MAM-BA) celebrated over 50 years of Brazilian art,
featuring 86 carefully chosen works that illustrate the raw creativity and unique
diversity demonstrated by the best artists from the last half-century, from painting, photography and sculpture to architecture, installation and mixed media.
MAM director, Solange Farkas, curated the show and commented on the selection process: “The idea was not to just create an inventory of the works of art
acquired and conserved by the institution, but to also gain an in-depth understanding of its strongpoints and gaps, and more than anything, point out new
paths for its continuance and growth.”
Several Brazilian artists have already paved the way for the expansion and recognition of Brazilian art for the rest of the world – and, whether born and raised
or culturally adopted, classic or contemporary, pioneering artists like Pierre
Verger, Carybé and Mestre Didi continue to ignite conversations about AfroBrazilian religion and culture through their work. In particular, no example of the
depth of generational influence and artistic evolution is better told than through
the images of father and son Mario Cravo Neto and Christian Cravo. Mario
Cravo Neto, considered to be one of the most influential Brazilian artists of his
time, received his talent and training from his father, the famous sculptor Mario
Cravo Junior. Born in Salvador in 1947, Mario Cravo Neto took an interest in
sculpture and photography at the age of 17. He was heavily influenced by his
father’s work, and accompanied him to Berlin during an artist-in-residency. In
1968, Neto studied at the Art Students League, then returned to Brazil to create work focused on Afro-Brazilian culture. Like Pierre Verger, he took a special
interest in Candomblé, and created stunning black and white photographs that
emphasize mysticism and spirituality. Like the image shown here, Neto liked to
depict humans as sensual and complex beings by focusing on specific parts
of the body, captured under raw studio light, and juxtaposed with symbolic
objects – a bird, a shell, a fish. His subjects appear sculpture-like, and yet so
full of life – creating the type of tension that can capture a viewer for hours; an
alluring, magnetic sensation.
Neto passed on his signature black and white style to his son, Christian Cravo.
Born in 1947 to Neto and his Danish mother, Cravo spent his childhood between Denmark and Brazil, eventually returning to his hometown of Salvador
to pursue his artistic ambition. Christian, like his father, took an interest in religion and uninhibited human behavior. The two images shown here, taken from
Christian’s book “Irredentos“ (literally translated as “Unredeemed”), were shot
in the badlands of Brazil’s NorthEast in an area called Sertão. “My intention as
a photographer is to register and focus in black and white a Christian society,
living and worshipping an archaic religion with roots going back as far as Africa," Christian explains in his book. Here, he dives deep into an exploration of
human spirituality, tradition, trance and ritual – furthering the dialogue about
the tension between old and new systems of belief and religious heritage in
Afro-Brazilian culture. Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles admired Christian’s
ability to “eliminate the distance between the photographer and object photographed”, arguing that Christian had the ability to capture a people “ethically
and sympathetically without manipulation or paternalism.” And it’s true – when
one observes Christian’s work, it’s obvious that he is capturing Brazilian society
with insider’s eyes rather than an outsider’s “ethnographic” lens. The viewer
immediately feels transported into this culture, mesmerized by the rich expressions of his subjects, captivated by this presentation of “life as it is”.
Christian continues to honestly capture the essence of humanity in countries
like Haiti and India. Like his late father Mario Cravo Neto, whose work exhibited
worldwide, Christian’s photography has been on display everywhere from the
Netherlands to New York City. In honor of his father’s legacy and for his own
love of Afro-Brazilian culture, Christian continues to document the dynamic
convergence of Indigenous, Portuguese and African cultures in his hometown
of Salvador.
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“Sem Título” (“Untitled”), 1995, Christian Apueno Cravo
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“Sertão” (“Backlands”), 2000, Christian Apueno Cravo
"My intention as a photographer is to register and focus in black
and white a Christian society, living and worshipping an archaic
religion with roots going back as far as Africa" - Christian Cravo
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Conc r ete J u n gl e
Bold prints and bright colors make a statement in the streets of Salvador
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photography_Paolo Zambaldi
fashion_Christine de Lassus
Body suit_Osklen,; Jacket_Maison Martin Margiela; Sandals_Barbara Bui; Ring_Noir; Mask_Lost Art
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Coat_Paule Ka; Bikini_Osklen; Sandals_Barbara Bui; Bracelet_Noir.
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Skirt and top_Paule Ka; Bikini bottom_Rosa Cha; Sandals_Barbara Bui
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Bodysuit_Maison Martin Margiela; Sandals_Top Shop; Sunglasses_Marc Jacobs
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Dress_Philosophy by Alberta Ferretti; Bikini_Crystal Jin; Shoes_Barbara Bui; Bracelet_Noir
Top_Osklen; Shorts_Cushnie and Ochs; Bikini_Crystal Jin; Sandals_Giuseppe Zanotti; Bracelet_Noir
Top_Y3; Brief_Top Shop; Ankle boots_Giuseppe Zanotti
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Top and shorts_Prada; Sandals_Barbara Bui
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Leggings_Osklen; Bikini_Crystal Jin; Sandals_Giuzeppe Zanotti; Purse_DSquared 2
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Coat_Prada; Bikini_Crystal Jin; Mask_Lost Art
Fashion Assistant_Camille Zarsky
Model_Lorrayne Vidotto @ Ford Models Brasil
Producer_Andris K. Walter for AKW productions
Digital retouching_digitalartwork@studiozat milano
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SLEEP - Featured resort: The Gran Hotel Stella Maris
From the Latin phrase meaning “Star of the Sea”, the Stella Maris is a 3.5-star hotel situated about 7 kilometers from the airport and right next to two of Salvador’s prime surfing beaches: Itapua
and Jaguaribe. Take a dip in the salty Atlantic, or refresh yourself in the stunning blue outdoor pool. Additional recreational amenities include tennis courts and a games room. The Stella Maris
features three restaurants, including a delicious buffet of local and international dishes, an Italian restaurant, and a Japanese-inspired dining experience, as well as a fully equipped bar with
lounge area. And if you feel like really living like a local, there are many beachside bars lining the sand only a short sandy distance away from the hotel property where you can order a Sol beer
or a caipirinha, which is a Brazilian drink made with a type of rum made from fermented sugarcane called Cachaça, a whole lot of sugar and a bunch of lime. The only real downside is that the
historical center of Salvador is about 30 kilometers away, so if you plan on staying out late in the city, make sure you pre-arrange a taxi to take you back.
text_Mikaela Gauer photography_ Marc Baptiste and Mikaela Gauer
The Best of Bahia
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EAT - Featured restaurant: Axego
There’s a bit of a story behind Axego, a little local restaurant tucked away on the side street Joao de Deus, in Salvador’s Pelhourino district. The name Axego, derived from the word aconchegado, is supposed to mean “cozy”, and cozy it is. Rumor has it that one day, a man on vacation from France wandered into what appeared to be a lively restaurant off the beaten path on
the local island of Itaparica, just off the coast of Salvador. He ordered moqueca de aratú, a red crab dish, and the chef happily brought it to him. At the end of the meal, as the man tried to
pay, the chef, who was a man named Manoel dos Santos Pereira, stated that the meal was free, as the Frenchman had actually wandered into Pereira’s summer house, which was really not a
restaurant at all. The man insisted on paying, because the food was so delicious, and the next week came back with friends. Their meals were served, and Axego was born. Eventually, Manoel
dos Santos Pereira and his wife moved the restaurant to the mainland of Salvador, and the people of the town began talking about his delicious recipes. Featuring typical Bahian dishes such
as moqueca, which is a stew containing dendé oil, coconut milk, and usually some type of seafood; feijoada, which is a bean and beef stew; or Acarajé, which is a delicious bread-like, deepfried dish made from peas.
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