My second day back in Brazil: basking atop Salvador da Bahia's Cidade Alta, or High City, originally a reinforcing wall built to protect Brazilians from Dutch invaders in the 17th Century. This is the city where Brazil began.
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After a four-year hiatus, I have landed back in Brazil--Salvador, the capital of my birth state of Bahia, to be exact. In fact, I am now one month into my experience here, and though in some ways it feels like it's been one year while in others it feels like it's been two days. In all, this this is Brazil's decade: it is just now cooling down from economic growth that reached up to 7.5 percent in the last four years, it holds the city that is South America's number one recipient of Foreign Direct Investment (Rio de Janeiro) and it will host both of global sport's two Megaevents, the World Cup and the Olympics, in the next four years. Needless to say, that makes it the most exciting time in my life thus far to be in my native country.
Meanwhile, the state in which I entered the world as a cultural polyglot 23 years ago remains quite the same as the last time I was here, during my sophomore year of college: Africa in Brazil. I know some folks like to get extra sensitive and/or offended when I say things like "Africa in Colombia" and "Africa in Brazil." So allow me to get this off of my chest: please, my friends, let's quit pretending I am a racist: to say nothing of my 18 years of culturally tolerant service to international students, the odd bi-racial conditions of my birth preclude me from that in the first place. Let us cut the nonsense and look at demographic matters from an objective, statistically-informed point of view. First, with nearly two million self-described pardos (brown folks) and nearly an additional one million self-described pretos (Blacks) in a population of some 3.5 million, Salvador is the Brazilian city with the highest proportion of Afro-descendants in Brazil, hands down. What is more, if you read this article regarding Brazil's modern Black majority, it is easy to see why a country with some 100 million Afro-descendants, more than in any country in the world outside of Africa, should not be looked at through the same demographic lens as other countries in the Western Hemisphere; in that context, we should reflect upon the fact that Bahia is the Brazilian state with the greatest share of those 100 million Blacks!
If we dis-aggregate indicators of socioeconomic development for Brazil, considering criteria of public health, disease, and public education, Bahia and Brazil's Northeast are much more comparable to parts of sub-Saharan Africa than they are to well, Europe--or even than to the more developed Brazilian Southeast or still more developed Brazilian South. (Because I am planning another entry that focuses solely on this regional divide, I will not showcase statistics in this entry; for now let me just refer you to the Brazil page of the World Bank's World Development indicators, so you can have some fun running a few macro comparisons of your own.) Today Salvador has some of the highest rates of violent homicide, violent theft, labor strikes, and traffic congestion, and some of its lowest inflation-adjusted wages as well as the worst public transit infrastructure of any large city in Brazil. In this light, the truth of the "Belindia" stereotype--the concept of Brazil being so unequal that some parts appear as opulent as Belgium, and others, as wretched as the poorest parts of India--stares us down in the face, perhaps more than some would like to admit. Let's just say that there is good reason that one of my new professors at the Federal University of Bahia, a political scientist who got his Bachelor's in Bahia, his Master's in Rio, and his Doctorate in Brasília, this morning proclaimed: "There is nowhere in Brazil worse to live than Salvador. There is a high social cost of living here: people don't respect public space, there there's no planning, [public] services are awful, and everything is awful." Hence, I find it ironic, at a minimum, that many I've run into assume that Brazil is, across the board, wealthier and more developed than supposedly poorer Western Hemisphere nations, Colombia being my most beloved reference point. In reality it is painfully obvious that Brazil's lesser-developed cities have a lot to learn from a place like Medellín, the Andean Region's shining star of urban planning. Taking a glass-half-full approach, let's say that Bahia is an ideal Brazilian state to be in when carrying out a Rotary grant based on community service. Maybe I didn't sufficiently anticipate what it takes to re-learn how to live amid Salvador's relative filth and clamor while preserving a state of mental tranquility. Yet here it goes: I will spend the remainder of this year digesting the urban disorganization--but also charm--that results when a region is historically neglected amid a nation's development priorities.
...And what about the charm? Let's forget about some of the social costs of living in Brazil for a moment and focus on some of the social benefits. Let's forget about Brazil's desperate inequality for a moment, and focus on its greatest annual distraction from its socioeconomic ills (one even greater than the country's infamous telenovelasor soap operas)--Carnaval. In the capital of Bahia, every February around two million locals, or baianos, along with 400,000-500,000 tourists from around Brazil and the world, flood the streets to hear some of the world's best live music, dance and jump energetically to heavy percussion-driven beats, find new significant others, drink and revel and drink and revel and drink and... For six hearty and passion-filled nights oceans of people gather at two different party circuits, principally on the avenue that runs along the, um, ocean, to dance to the greatest hits of the year. In this scene, songs like the following are all part of the pride and joy of being baiano:
"Guanabara" by Timbalada, probably the greatest percussion group in the world, originally popularized by the drumming and production legend Carlinhos Brown:
"Circulou" by the all-influential Banda Eva, and the honored Carnaval Song of the Year in 2012:
"Colorir Papel" by Jammil E Uma Noites:
"Que Belê," by Ivete Sangalo, arguably the Queen of Bahia's songstresses:
The last live show of the celebrated Afro-Brazilian acoustic group Exaltasamba, whose lead singer, Thianguinho, is parting for a solo career this year:
So why, again, do I say Africa in Brazil? Because that is also a wonderful thing, something to be cherished, and something of which we can all be proud. Because even the musical styles and foods popular in Bahia--whether practiced or enjoyed by Whites, Blacks, or any of the dozen-plus racial categories in between on the Brazilian census--have their roots inextricably founded in African rhythms. Because Salvador, Brazil's first capital, is the cultural and historical heart of Brazil, the primary receptacle of the largest volume of slave importation the world has ever known, which generated the intense miscegenation and unique phenotypical rainbow that make Brazil one of the most demographically diverse countries on earth. Because in the city and state in which Brazil was born, in which the Portuguese built some of the world's most ornate churches and innovative forts of their day, a mysterious spirit of the collision between the Old and New Worlds persists. Because in a city that withstood attacks from Dutch invaders trying to steal Brazil from the Portuguese, and that has survived 500-plus years of brutal colonial and post-colonial history, one is bound to find some of the most confounding yet fascinating modern social dynamics, and some of the most energetic expressions of what it means to be alive that exist, anywhere.
Okay, now pictures:
A collection of timbaus, the high-pitched drums that Timbalada founder Carlinhos Brown revived in the early 1990s when he founded Timbalada, and that today form one of the global symbols of baiano music
An Afro-Brazilian artist holding a cavaquinho, the high-pitched, four-string "mini-guitar" that forms the backbone of Bahia and Brazil's ever-popular pagode, which I roughly translate as "street music," of which Exaltasamba, above, is one primary example
Leading up to Carnaval weekend, thousands of revelers formed lines to retrieve their abadás, or parade costumes, at the bustling Central do Carnaval party headquarters, in one of the greatest logistical feats I've seen.
Finally reunited: with my godmother's son and close childhood friend, Vinicius Araújo Marques, now residing in Salvador, on Night One of Carnaval 2012
Rocking outrageously to the thumping African-influenced drumbeat and sophisticated acoustics of Banda Eva
You can run but you can't hide! Mud, sweat, dirt, trash, beer, urine and merriment covering the streets of Avenida Oceânica, the main seafront strip that spans Salvador's famous four-kilometer Barra-Ondina party circuit
The moment to cash in: in a vein similar to the Superbowl in the US, Carnavals across Brazil are primetime for local corporate marketing
Right to left: local friends, family and I sport our abadás in preparation for our second night of Carnaval, our fifth in Africa in Brazil
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