Michael Iyanaga

When Caboclos Sing Catholic Sambas: Reimagining the African Religious Legacy in Bahia, Brazil

Abstract

In this paper I analyze the historical, cosmological, and musical-choreographic dimensions of the Caboclo deity as it appears, exists, and acts within the context of Catholic saint festivities in Bahia, Brazil. As part of this analysis, I argue that the central African-derived aesthetic and cosmological qualities of the Caboclo represent an often neglected facet of African-derived spirit possession in Brazil. After all, many Catholic devotees understand the Caboclo in ways that diverge––though never entirely––from the more orthodox view of the Caboclo held by many practitioners of other Black religious traditions, such as Candomblé and Umbanda. This more typical view, time-worn in the literature on Black religions in Brazil, presents the Caboclo pantheon in opposition to that of West African-derived Orixás: instead of regal African gods with names in Yoruba or Fon, Caboclos would be bawdy sailors, Indian chiefs, cowboys, sultans, and other post-Middle Passage Brazilian figures who use their human mediums to sing, samba dance, and offer council. Meanwhile, “Caboclo” is understood by countless Catholic devotees in Bahia as a designation of a broader ancestral pantheon that includes not only sailors, sultans, and cowboys but also Orixás and even Catholic saints. Importantly, this alternative Caboclo cosmology reveals one of the many ways certain Catholic cosmologies in Bahia overlap with those of other Black religions. Drawing primarily on over a decade of ethnographic and archival work in Bahia, this paper offers an ethnographic overview of Caboclo veneration among Catholic devotees in Bahia before tracing its antecedent practices back through time and space, looking not only at the calundu––a central African-derived musical healing ritual practiced all over colonial Brazil––but also at important precolonial and early modern central African practices and cosmologies. With this historically-informed and geographically expansive ethnographic understanding of the Caboclo in Bahian Catholic contexts, I hope to offer a frequently neglected view of the depth and diversity of the African  legacy in Bahia, Brazil, and the Americas more generally.

Bio

Michael Iyanaga (PhD Ethnomusicology, University of California) is Associate Professor of Music and Latin American Studies at William and Mary. His primary interests include Catholic saint festivities in Latin America and Africa since the 15th century, though he also publishes frequently on issues of intellectual history and translation theory. Iyanaga’s first book, Alegria é devoção: sambas, santos e novenas numa tradição afro-diaspórica da Bahia (Editora da Unicamp, 2022), is a musical ethnography about domestic festivities for Catholic saints in Bahia, Brazil.