Ernesto Joaquim Maria dos Santos (1889-1974), or Donga, faced a longstanding controversy over the authorship of “Pelo telefone”, which he registered under his name at the National Library, later including […]

The first recordings of “Pelo telefone” [Over the Telephone] circulated a musical genre, samba, whose origin is disputed to this day, on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Although several previous phonographic […]

Francisco Guimarães (circa 1875-1947), known as Vagalume [which means firefly in Portuguese], was one of the few black journalists of his time, and one of the few among them to […]

In a series of articles entitled “As religiões no Rio” [Religions in Rio] that were published by Gazeta de Noticias, Paulo Barreto (1881-1921), under the pseudonym João do Rio, describes […]

“The Macumba was being held out in the Mangue area in that big ol’ rowdy house run by Tia Ciata, a sorceress like no other, a renowned mãe-de santo and […]

The only known first-person statement by Tia Ciata can be found in a police report published in Jornal do Brasil. On April 13, 1901, Hilária Pereira Ernesto, the legal name […]

Tia Dodô and Tia Lúcia brought the spirit of the great Afro-Brazilian leaders into the 21st century. Maria das Dores Alves Rodrigues (1920-2015), or Tia Dodô, was born in the […]

Tia Amélia, in a rare record of her dressed in the typical clothing of the “tias”, was also born in Bahia. Her son Donga said that she carried the habit […]

If Little Africa’s capital is Praça Onze, then its main authority is Tia Ciata. Born Hilária Batista de Almeida, the Bahian woman who lived in the city for almost 50 […]

Little Africa’s formation is intertwined with the history of Rio’s port area. From the activity in the first warehouses to the inauguration of Praça Mauá in 1910, a large majority […]