All too often, the Brazilian art that gains visibility both in Brazil and abroad is that of white artists from Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo. José Lucas C. A. dos Santos challenges that hegemony by surveying the contemporary artistic production of black diaspora authors, poets, and musicians in the South of Bahia. His essay, which incorporates nonfiction, criticism, and manifesto, asks what this array of art says about Brazil’s current political moment as well as the continuities in state violence that the black diaspora has suffered in Brazil. With its intersectional content that discusses race and gender through a range of artistic genres, this piece is required reading for anyone who wishes to diversify their knowledge of contemporary Brazilian art that resists state violence.

Politicians who have not yet fallen from their respective branches
are wrapped up with those who keep their finger on the trigger.

–Augusto Boal

To understand how the Grapiúna¹ territory has been shaped, we must take a critical look at the intense process of resistance to the cultural, political, and economic imposition of the colonizer: white-European-heterosexual man. With this backdrop, we should consider the black diaspora in Brazil, which comprises a large contingent of ethnic groups uprooted from different parts of the African continent, especially those ethnic groups whose languages belong to the Bantu linguistic family. The artistic production developed by black diaspora artists in the South of Bahia reflects this consideration of the amalgam of cultures that form Brazil. But what does the South of Bahia have to say about this dramatic scenario?

Within the conservative and fascist framework that has quickly taken shape in Brazil, the urgent discussion of artistic production in the South of Bahia allows for a lateral rendering of power structures. The political self manifest in these artistic productions shatters the masks of silence² that have been imposed throughout the Western tradition. In this sense, the intense process of resistance to the colonizer’s cultural, political, and economic imposition makes the black diaspora artistic discourse in the South of Bahia corrosive to power structures. Brazil needs the South of Bahia!

No wonder the result of the last presidential election puts the Northeast, and with it the South of Bahia, in the sights of those who defend legalizing firearms; they’re the same as those who defend the notion of “a good criminal is a dead criminal,” and the obtuse and ignorant discussion about “gender ideology” in schools, as well as the fake news about the “Gay Kit” associated with the figure of former federal deputy Jean Wyllys, who was forced into exile because of threats and political persecution. The murder of his ally, the councilwoman and defender of human rights Marielle Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes, has gone more than 12 months without leads. It is in the context of this political landscape that the black diaspora in the South of Bahia brings forth identities that, through art, rethink the structures of Brazil, which has the third largest prison population in the world, with more than 726,000 prisoners, high rates of femicide and violent discrimination against the LGBTQ population. This discrimination claims the lives of gay and transgender people, with a life expectancy of 35 years for this latter category, well below the national average of 75.5 years. What is taking shape before us is a country that kills the most transgender people and at the same time consumes the most pornography involving transgender people! The Latin American sun that shines down on this tropical country also sets the stage for a regressive and destructive moment in the face of the idiotic rhetoric of the Brazilian elite.

On only the second day of his term, the recently elected president eliminated the Ministry of Culture. Attacks on diversity in cultural production, specifically targeting the “communist” nature of the Rouanet Law, Brazil’s main tool for promoting culture, enables the hate speech that leads to acts of violence against minorities. Still during the elections, Dayane Pimentel, the president of Jair Bolsonaro’s political party (PSL-RJ) in Bahia, announced the censorship of the Federal Government of Bahia during one of her unfortunate statements: “Bolsonaro will take great pains to inspect the cultural and intellectual agenda. The use of human rights to push gender ideology and indoctrination in schools will be monitored,” the teacher said. “This will be an area subject to regulation, on these terms, for the benefit of society.” The speech by the president of the PSL-BA Social Liberal Party reminds us of the tragedy that occurred when the Fifth Institutional Act was signed on December 13, 1968. In addition to foretelling the permanence of military rule, the decree put forward censorship as an efficient mechanism of violence and repression. The current foreshadowing of control over Bahia’s cultural agenda demonstrates that censorship is once again being institutionalized in Brazil 50 years later.

Ladies and gentlemen, big brother has his eyes on me!³

Those who feel nostalgic for the Civil-Military Dictatorship (1964-1984) legitimize their fascist discourse through the relativism touted by mainstream media as well as the public support for violence. In the words of South Bahian rapper Cijay, we’re all in a crisis of intellect! In this context of proclaimed censorship, the class at the Postgraduate Program in Teaching and Ethnic-Racial Relations at the Jorge Amado campus of the Federal University of Bahia, developed the First Forum on Femicide and the Racial Question in the South of Bahia as part of research within the discipline Gender, Sexuality, Négritude, and Poverty. Women representatives from feminist collectives, candomblé temples, and indigenous as well as Romani communities attended the event. In the face of the violence imposed on these bodies, this forum opened up space for the demands of civil society. The prosecutor for the state of Bahia Lívia Vaz, public prosecutor for the city of Itabuna Cleide Ramos, and military police officer Renata Rodrigues Mendes Mattos Santos from the Ronda Maria da Penha barracks made up the Voice of the State round table and responded to demands for the end of violence against women.

The discussion took place after the Cia Trapizonga de Teatro performance art piece Between My Sex And My Syntax: My Cry, composed by Tereza Sá, Telma Sá, Luan Bencos, and special guest Vinicíus Souza. They invoke Afroscenic theatricality, and through the syntax of their bodies, they manifest the cacophonous cry of diasporic, Latin American women. The performance, which relies on the performatization of contemporary poems, includes songs by Luedji Luna as well as the theater collective’s original compositions; it sheds light on countless cases of domestic and urban violence against black bodies. The scene features four vocal bodies transposed to the feminine, in which the condition of Brazilian black women mirrors the legacy of slavery, showing how they disproportionately suffer from domestic violence as well as from symbolic, psychological, physical, and intergenerational violence. The intersections of gender, race, and class provided the framework for identifying the black woman’s body as the main target of this violence, reflecting institutionalized racism in Brazil.

This reality calls to mind the slave-based society of the past and perversely imposes itself on black women. According to data from the 2015 Violence Map, cases of femicide in Brazil increased by 54.2% between 2003 and 2013, while femicide of white women fell by 9.8% during the same period. The cry that echoed silently through the auditorium expressed the extreme urgency of the forum, facilitating a reflection on the need to combat femicide and all other machista and misogynist forms of oppression. There were 980 cases of violence against women registered in Salvador this past January alone!

In 2016, a year after the promulgation of the Domestic Law signed by Dilma Roussef, the great feudalist sectors conducted a legislative-parliamentary-media coup, which deposed the president through a process of impeachment. The coup also had the support of the Brazilian middle class who routinely discussed the “difficulties” and “inflexibility” of paying a maid. In Brazil, domestic workers are primarily black women with low levels of education. Often falsely promised the opportunity to study and advance economically by white families, they end up enslaved, providing domestic service in exchange for room and board. One example is the case of girls from the Kalunga Quilombola being exploited sexually and for domestic work in Cavalcante, Goiás. They are the young—or not so young—chambermaids and wet nurses who represent the exploitation and conditioning of black women as domestic servants and nannies. It is in this context that the president-elect shouts atrocities about the history of the populations uprooted from Africa: “The lightest Afro-descendants there weigh seven arrobas; they do nothing! They are not even good for procreation,”⁴ or he claims that Africans embraced slavery. The conservative racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and misogynist insurgency represents the turn towards Tupiniquim fascism, exacerbated by a complete ignorance of Brazil’s history. With this ignorance comes the conservation of structures rooted in colonialism. As if the dissolution of important ministries that fight oppression were not enough, Damares Alves was appointed to misrule the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights. Not only did indigenists and the Public Prosecutor’s Office accuse the NGO founded by Alves for trafficking indigenous children, but Alves also advocates for biblical values and claims to hold the false title of Master, which she asserts was bestowed by God… A disaster! The following reflection from a conversation with Joalisson Oliveira about this administration’s idiocy⁵ sums up the motivation behind the choice of such a minister:

The fact that she [Alves] is laughable is a political ruse that his excellency the president has concocted. Since he cannot simply wipe away the ministry of human rights without being questioned internationally, he does this: he subjugates the ministry to a freak show, a fearful effort to ridicule, discredit, and transform it into a laughing matter.⁶

At the beginning of the deep-seated political crisis initiated by conservative and reactionary sectors of the Brazilian right after losing the election to Dilma Rousseff and the Workers’ Party (PT) in 2014 (it is worth remembering the US imperialist actions in a certain oil-rich Latin American country, since the reelection of its current president in 2017), the book Profundanças (Depths) was published. The volume is a poetic and photographic anthology, organized by Grapiúna professor Daniela Galdino, with the participation of women from every corner of the country. The work discusses, through poetry, prose, and photography, the history of the bodies of these women and the resignifications that they assume as political identity. The texts speak from the point of view of interdicted and silenced sexuality, exploring the potentialities of the female body, reflecting on its ancestralities, subjectivities, and place in society. The South-Bahian’s Profundanças is a literary milestone. It places alterities in a liberating light, stressing that the writings of female authors are to be read and discussed! Profundanças 2 was launched on July 6, 2017 in celebration of Frida Kahlo’s birthday and in response to the 2016 legislative-parliamentary-media coup, which deposed the country’s first female president:

More than ever before, we must cry out. This coup has slashed our country’s throat. A state of exception, orchestrated by legislative-parliamentary powers in unison with hateful segments of society; it has violated our sensibilities and usurped our rights. We—women—are always targeted, especially if we’re black, indigenous, trans, lesbian, or poor. Either we succumb to their gaze, or invent ways of re-existing.

(Daniela Galdino)

The struggle for the right to exist is reflected in the mighty verses of JeisiEkê de Lundu, who is a black, non-binary person from Salvador. Lundu’s poetics draw on Djamila Ribeiro’s theory of “the standpoint of speech”⁷ in order to grasp the condition of the trans body, the voice, and the color, shape, and setting of words:

Born without territory,
raised on the border,
neither Bahia nor Minas.
Neither boy nor girl,
always on the outside, always on the margin.

Neither overalls nor dress.
Fluid body, desire pulsing,
loose gear, delirium’s creation, life Spectacle, this is not theater,
this is not a performance,
my gender is fluid,
my body is wave, chameleon unprecedented.

Reflection without mirror.
Meaningless anthropophagy.
My motive here is not to affirm anything,
but to confront your consecrated certainties.
My desire is not to break or to join, but to exist.
This is a cry of warning, not help.

(Excerpt from “While My Feet Swing” by JeisiEkê de Lundu)

Confronting these consecrated certainties entails the method of counterculture as a point of departure, deconstructing the humanist and universalist vision that placed the meanings of the whole over those of the individual, and as a result, deconstructing the essentialist discourse that maps and crystallizes identities. This is the cry of warning, for those whose hate speech is the driving force in preserving a binary logic of the sexes and gender, currently justified by such “gender ideology.”

Discourse for deserts, for bones and rocks,
For deaf men and apathetic women.
We are a Paraguaçu of fossils, of marine memories.
In addition to the devastation on our banks,
No tilling can smooth the pains of the present.
I can’t make out any new galaxies.
Only suicidal convicts in the gallows.
Only judges and informers,
Only convenient secrecies.
There is a spill of sorrows in our eyes,
Mute cataracts await the vertigo of the Spirit of Time.
And our walls grow moldy with disillusion.
As a woman, I dilate!

(Excerpt from “Pamphlets for Fireflies and Magnolias” by Rita Santana)

This excerpt from “Pamphlets for Fireflies and Magnolias” by Rita Santana embodies the Paraguaçú River in an analogy to the drifting body, devastated margins, memories of a past whose wound is open in the present—not a glint of utopian futures. The connection between body and water, which serves as a healing agent in some cases and a repository of memories in others, reminds me of Conceição Evaristo’s short story A gente combinamos de não morrer (We Agreed Not to Die), and the character Dorvi’s relation to the sea: “I’m going to kill, I’m going to die. It’s out there in the sea that I’ll be dying, Love-sea, loving-sea, dying-sea. It is in the depths of the deep, where I will always keep memories …” And, immediately, Djamila Ribeiro’s ideas about black feminism grow dark:

In the end, we seek to broaden the concept of humanity. By not being afraid of black feminism, privileged people will realize that our struggle is essential and urgent, because as long as we—black women—continue to be the target of constant attacks, humanity is in danger.

(Djamila Ribeiro)

The intersectional reflection on this social problematic opens up a horizon of responsibility for the violence inflicted on these bodies:

I get tired of men
And their stupidity of stone
From their grotto of obscurity,
Their state of inertia,
Their premature old age,
Their perpetual adolescence.
Their cowardice in the face of demons.
Their surrender, their lack of love.
I’m a woman from Latin America! I am a diasporic, black voice! I come from an Africa that seeks me.
And what I do is cross oceans, Decipher it in me, in my territory. My pain is my oar.
My pain is my compass. My pain is also my ship.

(Excerpt from “Pamphlets for Fireflies and Magnolias” by Rita Santana)

This move to displace the contemporary narrator began to gain strength in Brazil in the second half of the twentieth century. In this period, imported European aesthetic ideas sowed the seeds for a counter-cultural movement. Narratives like those composed by Plínio Marcos, Caio F de Abreu, Maria Carolina de Jesus, Glauber Rocha, and Cinema Novo set the stage for a new kind of narrator. This means speaking about daily anguish, the scabbed-over wounds on bodies. This enunciative locus becomes performative through the experiences/perspectives of the characters marginalized by the state and society: black women, homosexuals, lesbians, communists, prostitutes etc, who shatter the masks of silence through the arts, as Profundanças attempts today. This reflection concerns specific groups throughout the Western tradition that have occupied the positions of power, reserving spaces of subalternity for those who do not assimilate to the logic imposed or even those who refuse to conform to standards. This standardization comprises the underpinnings of Western tradition, which is woven together by ontology/epistemology/ethics/aesthetics and becomes explicit in the dichotomous relations of power, as represented in pairs: beautiful/ugly, being/not being, reason/non-reason, fair/unjust, center/periphery, black/white, man/woman, etc.

Do not fear the tyranny of authoritarian rule

In the Bahian rap scene, the women of the collective Xota 073⁸ produce and combine songs, fanzines,⁹ as well as poetry with black women protagonists, spreading South Bahian hip hop culture. The collective visits schools and participates in poetry battles; with the performance of their bodies, they confront the contradictions of the Brazilian State for its denial of women’s rights, especially the rights of black women, mothers, and unmarried women, who represent a large part of the population in this condition. Prominent themes in the collective’s projects and rap lyrics include the legalization of abortion and the struggle against the patriarchy. Karen Oliveira, also known as Má Reputação (Bad Reputation), is one member of the collective. She politically affirms the amalgam of her identities through social networks and public spaces, using her art to fight against machismo, racism, discrimination against the LGBTQ population, and all kinds of oppression. The Instagram profile @projeto_tmj unites black women composers. Karen Oliveira, also known as Má Reputação (Bad Reputation), is one member of the collective. She politically affirms the amalgam of her identities through social networks and public spaces, using her art to fight against machismo, racism, discrimination against the LGBTQ population, and all kinds of oppression. The Instagram profile @projeto_tmj unites black women composers. This activist for black women, mothers, bisexual people, journalists, stoners, fanzine producers, and followers of Macumba believes in art as a device of female liberation and as a means to denounce Brazilian structural racism. In the virtual environment, she publishes her texts in verse and prose on the page that bears her name, Má Reputação:

In the alley the conversation echoes
Each one in her home
from window to window,
unburden the weariness,
the neglect of the state,
the low wage,
the three-fold commute,
outsourcing.
One welcomes the other,
she listens
she gives advice,
we mock the rules,
we create our own.
It’s not a recipe book!
It’s need knocking on the door.
It’s word of mouth,
it is the lesson screaming.
There in the barrio, the revolution has already begun …
And it’s every day!
You know what it’s like to live facing the cowardice of those who take everything from us
and flaunt hypocrisy.
They talk about merit, democracy.
A traditional family
that invaded,
abducted
and considered black and Indian animal.
Considered and still considers
We are cockroaches to them
They’re disgusted; they crush us
With their centuries-old racism
Prepare yourselves
because the Ghettos are taking up arms
They’re getting informed
And forming the quilombo
We cast spells
and rise up to confrontation
Because that’s where they will fall
The black woman is on the front lines
With strength to fight
and so much intellect!
Don’t come asking for mercy
Because what is ours
They won’t take anymore!

(Poem by Má Reputação)

From this artistic and cultural effervescence in South Bahia, the sound of Cijay emerges in defense of black youth, echoing the voices of the community. Cristian Jesus exposes the contradictions of a flawed system, recognizing and explaining a crisis of intellect in Brazilian society. The rapper’s first album, Estamos Aqui! (We are here!), raises issues of social and racial inequality resulting from 300 years of slavery of African populations who were kidnapped and then enslaved on Brazilian soil. The name of the album stands as a reaffirmation of the majority black population in Brazil, people who have resisted Eurocentrism through successive processes of racial cleansing and whitening. These processes range from substituting slavery of African populations with the immigration of light-skinned ethnic groups (incentivized with government-donated land to work in Brazil) to the sterilization of black women as late as the 1990s. Since the second half of the 20th century, mass imprisonment and the genocide of black youth at the hands of the Military Police have been the main instruments of the barbarism that is the racist Brazilian state.

“Aquele Salve,”¹⁰ the first track of the album, employs elements of Afro-Brazilian culture to examine the ancestry that not only demarcates these subjects politically, but also geographically demarcates the cities of the diaspora. The North Zone of Ilhéus, Bahia becomes a stage for the false idea of ​​Brazilian racial democracy, in which black people and white people coexist with equal rights and their relations are supposedly constructed in a harmonious and non-racist way. The myth of racial democracy, as named and defended by privileged sectors of society (which are, in turn, supported by a social hierarchy that places black women at the base of its social pyramid), has not even touched the peripheral neighborhoods. Thus, the Brazilian State, through the Military Police, promotes the genocide of Brazilian black youth; while the spectacle goes on in congress, there on the stairwells of the favela, the funeral march proceeds.¹¹

In view of this devastating scenario for black lives, Afro-Bahian artists organized the First Afro-Bahian Meeting of Arts, in the Tenda Teatro Popular de Ilhéus, with the aim of boosting and giving voice to the dissident artistic productions in response to an ethics and aesthetics dominated by Eurocentrism. In the opening presentation for the event, the South Bahian rapper introduced an acoustic show with lyrics by Gilberto Gil, Luiz Gonzaga, and songs from his new album coming out this year. The performance demonstrated the character of his new album, which drew on different rhythms and sounds, and maintained a flow that other Afro-Brazilian artists have adopted in their productions. The show was followed by speeches about diversity in musical production. The amalgam of genres that intersect to solidify and give voice to the discourse of his lyrics reminds me of the recent album released by fellow Bahian rapper Baco Exú do Blues. The reflection on the communal spaces of black people of the African diaspora is central to BLUESMAN. In his new album, Baco incorporates slavery as well as a range of symbols and allegories into the black Brazilian identity, using the emotion of blues and the sonority of jazz, diversifying and experimenting with various influences.

The practice of reducing the image of African people to the childish, docile, and creative is endorsed and legitimized in nineteenth-century Romantic literature (Adolfo Caminha’s Bom-Crioulo, for example). In this sense, the narratives of the Western tradition imposed homogenization on the subjectivities, complexities, and diversity of black identities. Today, BLUESMAN highlights, above all, the resignification of elements of culture. In saying that everything appropriated by the white man turns into blues, foundational elements of black diaspora creations appear on the scene: jazz, blues, funk, samba, the very Orisha that bears the name expands its semantic field by assuming the pseudonym Baco Exú do Blues.

1903:
The first time a white man observed a black man, not as an aggressive “animal” or laborer devoid of intelligence. This time he saw the talent, the creativity, the music! The white world had never felt anything like the blues. A black man, a guitar and a knife. Born in the struggle for life, born strong, born sharp. For the actual need to exist! What does it mean to be a bluesman? It means being the opposite of what others think. It means going against the current, being the force itself, being our own root. It means knowing that we were never an automatic reproduction of the submissive image that was created by them. Fuck the image you created. I’m not legible. I’m not comprehensible. I am my own god; I am my own saint; my own poet. You look at me like a black canvas, by a single painter. Only I can do my art. Only I can describe myself. You do not have that right. I am not obliged to be what you expect! We are much more! If you do not fit into what they expect … You are a bluesman (you are a bluesman, you are a bluesman, you are a bluesman).

(Excerpt from “BB King,” last track of BLUESMAN)

Casting this hybrid look at the cultural amalgam that composes him as a subject, Baco adopts elements of European culture imposed on the African and indigenous peoples, but gives them new meanings. Here, Jesus is blues. This reminds me of the importance that Jesus has for people in peripheral neighborhoods—the tattoos with the name and face of the European Jesus. While on this subject, we should also reflect on the role of neo-Pentecostal religions, especially in relation to the election of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency of the republic. The discourse of sustained hatred supported by religious racism, discrimination against the LGBTQ population, misogyny, and machismo in these spaces is evident from the statements leaders make to the masses who blindly followed and follow the call of these false prophets. The influence of neo-Pentecostal religions in the election of the current head of state, a potential fascist, occurs even with a majority black population occupying these spaces, leading us to a debate about the discursive field of black people’s subjection to a logic of denial of their selves and their history. The twists in the branches of oblivion and the name given through Christian baptism are some of the principles of this racist logic impregnated and imposed with all sorts of symbols and allegories in the minds of the black Brazilian population; since the beginning of the European colonialist and imperialist journey in the world, Christianity has had a fundamental role in this imposition.

Another interesting dialogue within these artistic productions is evident on the cover of Baco Exú do Blues’s first album, Esú (2017), and the cover of Sobrevivendo ao Inferno¹² (1997) by the Racionais MC’s; they unveil the relations between the Western religious model (Christianity) and African religious models, as well as the meanings that these subjects have engraved in the world. On the cover of Sobrevivendo ao Inferno, a cross and a psalm appear as representations of the colonizer’s cultural imposition and the resemantization of these allegories in symbols. On the cover of Exú do Blues’s album, Esú, a black body opens up his arms like Christ crucified on the cross in front of Salvador’s Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis, which was erected under the salt and sweat of enslaved Africans in the eighteenth century, “a period in which almost half of the total number of Africans entered the country, approximately 68% of them from Angola and 32% from the Costa da Mina (Bight of Benin).”¹³ In Baco Exú do Blues, the noun Baco (Bacchus), Roman god of pleasure and wine, functions to affirm the cultural identity of the Orisha of communication, paths, and crossroads, Eshu. Interesting reflection when interpreting the psalm on the cover of the album mentioned above.

Experiences are not the same. The experience of gender for black women is completely different from that of white women; faith and religiosity are constructed from different enunciative loci; it is in the order of discourse! On this topic, Judith Butler helps us reflect on cultural data, a practice she understands as significant and, therefore, linguistic. It is at this point that the resignification of certain elements, those corresponding to the routine of linguistic life, ties into the discourse. Or as Baco says, culture is my fever! in the lyrics of the first track, “Bluesman.”

The artistic and cultural power that Cijay represents in the community is transformative. In an interview with the Department of Cultural Affairs of Ilhéus (SECULT), Cijay, representing the Coletivo Rap de Rua (Street Rap Collective), discusses the potential for hip hop culture to transform realities:

More than making rhymes, than singing, than rapping (+) We hip hop culture people, with the hip hop movement, want to attract people to cultivate hip hop culture themselves, to make rhymes, to make poetry. And to this end, I ally myself with my collective, coletivo rap de rua (+) that undertakes actions in the socio-cultural field ::: (++) Workshops (+) We make poetry on the bus; we also bring culture to communities and to the Ariston Cardoso penitentiary, because we believe that art has the power to transform people’s lives, to transform people’s reality.¹⁴

(Cijay in an interview for SECULT-Ilhéus)

In this spectrum, the Coletivo Rap de Rua, founded by the MC’s, Cijay, and Pawlista PDF (Mateus Jordão) in 2013, is a black political organization whose main objective is connecting and organizing black and peripheral youth. For this purpose, the project Poesia no Busu (Poetry on the Bus) emerged as one of the main tools for making citizens aware of the community, taking protest poetry to public transportation in Ilhéus. In conversation with Emilly PDF and Pawlista PDF, the artists discuss how the presence of the collective within the bus has brought about changes in the city’s political landscape. The contributions of the collective range from boycotting the reelection of state representative Ângela Souza, who was accused of active corruption and fraud—and who is, not coincidentally, the mother of the current mayor of Ilhéus, with whom she stood side by side during the electoral campaign for mayor in 2016—to visiting and performing in numerous schools in the municipalities of Ilhéus and Itabuna, as well as appearing at UESC and UFSB,¹⁵ private colleges, and the Ariston Cardoso Prison. The poets recite on the swaying bus, kept in balance by inspiration and responsibility for the reality that they share, using poetry to transform and overthrow structures, reworking narratives and promoting reflection on the relations of control and power in the realms of class, race, gender, and sexuality.

It is the fundamental part of the revolution: It is this idea of poetry on the bus (+) It is our way of making people listen to us. Our target audience is the community (+) And where is the community? On those buses that go by day after day (+) It was the way we found to talk about what happens in the favela, what happens in the ghetto, what the police do to us. So there is no better way to enter into dialogue with the community, with society. That is where the next stage of our revolution begins.¹⁶

(Emilly PDF from the Coletivo Rap de Rua and Grupo Poesia de Favela—Collective for Poetry of the Favela)

In addition to the Coletivo Rap de Rua, Emilly PDF and Pawlista PDF are allied in Grupo Poesia de Favela, which wields the literary-musical genre to articulate silenced and interdicted narratives. Emilly PDF is a professional axé singer as well as an Afro dance and pole dance instructor; in her performances, she emphasizes the experience of being a black woman, a single woman, a mother, and a follower of candomblé in the fight against the suppression and subservience of these bodies.

The multitudes of voices that are heard through artistic production in the South of Bahia open up a horizon of possibilities for enunciation in spaces of power. Written productions by female authors, as with Profundanças, open up space for the publication of diasporic women, who from their different perspectives speak of their life experiences to illustrate the realities they share. In the walls and street corners Mulheres Sem Medo (Women Without Fear) is the tag that shouts out to the city; the poets of the streets and buses make their bodies’ transit the starting point of the constant displacements of their reflections. Cia Trapizonga de Teatro uses the medium between voice, body, image, and word to contemplate African ancestry making silenced voices echo in time and space, politically demarcating the territories of squares, schools, universities. The power of Cijay’s music and the collectives Coletivo Rap de Rua, Xota 073, and Grupo Poesia de Favela work on top of the open sutures of the Brazilian State. The overhaul of ethics that these artists propose decentralizes the hegemonic discourse and invites reflection on what is evident and wide open, lacking scruples, lacking shame, and to this end it is enough to recognize that the color of the hand of those who collect cans during carnival is the same as those who sleep on the street, the same as those who wash the dishes in middle-class homes, and the same as those who are imprisoned en masse.

The redirection of the gender debate, allying it with issues of class, race, and sexuality, illustrates a new moment in the construction of art that does not pledge allegiance to the Western tradition, sending tremors through existing ethics! The artistic-intellectual productions of the black diaspora in the South of Bahia, with their discourses allied in the fight against a genocidal and dictatorial system, cross out the narratives of Eurocentrism. Conversations about ethnic-racial relations, gender and sexuality in the field of music, the performing arts, visual arts, and literature, as well as the control of university space (as is the case with UFSB with 80% of places reserved for quota holders: black, indigenous, and transgender people as well as residents of quilombolas) are a revolution from which there is no turning back. The agenda has been set! The production of African diaspora artists in the South of Bahia shows us that it is during moments of crises that we lay our foundations, and rethink power structures. And for those who didn’t believe us, we are here!

1. Adjective used to denote Itabuna, Bahia
2. Quote by Conceição Evaristo, black writer from Minas Gerais, in reference to obstacles black writers face when publishing their writings. See http://afrobrasileiros.net.br/index.php/2017/05/16/conceicao-evaristo-nossa-fala-estilhaca-a-mascara-do-silencio/
3. Interpretation of a verse from “Tropicália” by Caetano Veloso
4. The racist statement was delivered during a speech at the Club Hebraica in 2017. Ironically, if not tragically, it was applauded by the audience present.
5. Interpreted from “parassé,” a noun that means disorganization/disorder according to Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira’s Mini-aurélio: o dicionário da Língua Portuguesa. eighth edition. – Curitiba: Positivo, 2010
6. Excerpt from conversation with Joalisson Oliveira Araújo, Bachelor of Laws from the State University of Santa Cruz (UESC), February 8, 2019
7. “Standpoint of speech” in Portuguese is “Lugar de fala.” The philosopher Djamila Ribeiro goes into depth on the meaning and connotations of the term in her book O que é lugar de fala? (What is the Standpoint of Speech?). To simplify, “the standpoint of speech” refers to the oppressed position of certain groups within the societal power structures and social environment.
8. 073 is a reference to the area code in the South of Bahia. “Xota” could be translated as “Vulva.”
9. The term denotes the emergence of a new literary medium that aggregates a plurality of textual genres. In a fold-out magazine format, the fanzine can give form to comics, poetry, short stories, collages, graphic experiments, etc. The artist who produces fanzines is called [in Portuguese] the fanzineira or fanzineiro.
10. The track title translates figuratively to “That communion.”
11. Excerpt from the song “Crisis of Intellect” by South Bahian rapper Cijay
12. “Surviving Hell”
13. LOPES, Nei. Dicionário escolar afro-brasileiro. -2 ed. São Paulo: Selo Negro, 2015
14. Transcription based on conversational markers by Luiz Antônio Marcuschi in Análise da Conversação (Conversation Analysis)
15. The State University of Santa Cruz (UESC) in Ilhéus, Bahia, and Federal University of Southern Bahia (UFSB)
16. Interview on February 11, 2019 with José Lucas Campos and Emilly PDF and Pawlista PDF, members of the Coletivo Rap de Rua and Grupo Poesia de Favela; Ilhéus, Bahia.