Afro-Brazilians are more in number than African Americans. They are the largest body of Africans outside of Africa. Mestre Yoji Senna carries the heart and spirit of Afro Brazil in his work as a Capoeira master, instructor of the Afro Brazilian martial art that is infused with drumming and dance. He spoke to the “Conversations with Al McFarlane” broadcast recently.
I’m from Bahia. It is a state in Brazil with a population of almost 20 million that is 80% Black. Bahia is where the first Portuguese arrived. The city of Salvador, our state capital, has about 31/2 million residents, and I would say 90% are Black. The peculiarity of Brazil, it is that it is the single country in the world with the largest population of Africans, after Nigeria. So the only country where there are more Black people is Nigeria. And then it’s Brazil. Brazil’s total population is 190 million, and approximately 60% are of African descent. So we are, I think, bordering 100 million Black people in Brazil.
To survive and emerge intact has been our cultural imperative. The culture and our art serve the function of grounding us. The art and culture provide a psychodrama which gives us sanity to face oppression. So we are a culture of new world Africans and our experience as victims of the greatest forced migration in human history, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, is the foundation for the idea of globalization. The positive side of the experience is in the music, the rhythms of African descent, now from the Americas, that we now are passing from us to the other cultures.
We have in Minneapolis, Central do Brasil, a Brazilian Cultural Center, located in South Minneapolis at 2609 Aldrich. We have a Brazilian Jujitsu class, Capoeira, Samba dance, percussion, West African dance, and Portuguese classes. The Center is Afro-centrist and inclusive. We are very social, gregarious.
Zumbi do Palmares
Zumbi is the greatest figure of resistance to Afro-Brazilians. He was the leader of the Quilombo of Palmares. Quilombo means community. The runaway slaves created communities that spread out throughout Brazil. Still today you find some remnants of actual Quilombos. They recently found three sisters… the youngest of which is 80-years-old. They speak a Congo dialect that just those three can understand; It is a time capsule. So, Zumbi represents the resistance that all Africans in the Americas have. He was the leader of the first experience of a real democratic state in America. That was Palmares which accept and embrace anybody who was fleeing persecution. It was an Afro-centric community, and it was inclusive. So we had the Jews who were living there, and many Indians. The experience of Indians in Brazil is very similar to that of the Indian brothers who live here. We have the same kind of demographic components.
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