Clementina de Jesus (1901-1987) began her career in Rosa de ouro [Golden Rose], a show created by Hermínio Bello de Carvalho that premiered at Rio de Janeiro’s Teatro Jovem in […]

Heitor dos Prazeres is one of the fullest manifestations of the possibilities that opened up in Little Africa for Afro-descendant people to exercise their creativity and citizenship. Composer, singer, painter […]

In February of 1922, the Oito Batutas [which roughly translates as the “Eight Conductor’s Wands”] (though there were actually seven of them, later renamed Les Batutas) did a 6-month stint […]

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 […]