Aside from the Flickr Salvador da Bahia pool I link to on the sidebar, I’d like to share another set of really nice Flickr photos taken by user Fonseca which add up to almost 2,000 photos. It seems he is part of a photo association in Salvador called Salvador Foto Clube (in PT), which you can check out here (try out their gallery).
Festa Junina, typically termed São João (Saint John) as it is centered on that saint’s day, is the name of annual Brazilian celebrations (historically related to the Midsummer and Saint John festivities in Europe) which take place in the beginning of the Brazilian winter, consequently during the European summer. These festivities, which were introduced in the country by the Portuguese during the colonial period (1500-1822), are most associated with Northeastern Brazil, but today celebrated in the whole country. It’s mainly celebrated on the following days of the Catholic feast of Saint Anthony, John the Baptist and Saint Peter.
As the northeast is largely arid or semi-arid these popular festivals not only coincide with the end of the rainy seasons of most states in the northeast but they also provide the people with an opportunity to give thanks to Saint John for the rain. They also celebrate rural life and feature typical clothing, food, dance (particularly quadrilha, which is similar to square dancing). Like Midsummer and Saint John’s Day in Portugal and Scandinavian countries, São João celebrates marital union. The “quadrilha” features couple formations around a mock wedding whose bride and groom are the central attraction of the dancing. Usually taking place in an arraial, a large, open space outdoors, men dress up as farm boys with suspenders and large straw hats and women wear pigtails, freckles, painted gap teeth and red-checkered dresses, all in a loving tribute to the origins of Brazilian country music, and of themselves, some of whom are recent immigrants from the countryside to cities such as Olinda, Recife, Maceió and Salvador, and some of whom return to the rural areas during that season to visit family. However, nowadays, São João festivities are extremely popular in all urban areas and among all social classes. In the Northeast, they are as popular as Carnival. It should be noted that, like during Carnival, these festivities involve costume-wearing (in this case, peasant costumes), dancing, drinking, and visual spectacles (fireworks display and folk dancing). Like the original European Midsummer celebrations, during the two-week June festivities in Brazil, bonfires are lit. They can be seen everywhere in northeastern cities. Two northeastern towns in particular have competed with each other for the title of “Biggest São João Festival in the World”, namely Caruaru (in the state of Pernambuco), and Campina Grande,in Paraíba state. In fact, Caruaru features in the Guinness Book of World Records for holding the biggest outdoor country festival.
São João coincides with the corn harvest. Special dishes served during São João are made with corn, such as canjica and pamonha. Dishes may also include peanuts, potatoes sausages and rice. The celebrations are very colorful and festive and include amazing pyrotechnics. Bonfires and fire in general are thus one of the most important features of these festivities, a feature that is among the remnants of Midsummer pagan rituals in the Iberian Peninsula.
“Sean Goldman, the focus of an international custody battle between his father, David Goldman of Monmouth County, N.J., and his mother’s family in Brazil, has told a psychologist he doesn’t want to return to the United States.
The interview, conducted in Brazil at the request of his mother’s family, was filed in federal court in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday.
David Goldman’s attorney, Ricardo Zamariola Jr., said in a Supreme Court hearing in Brazil last week that the 9-year-old was under pressure from his mother’s family and was unable to decide for himself whether he wanted to stay in Brazil.
A Brazilian judge ruled this month that the boy would have to come back to Tinton Falls, where his father lives.
Joao Paulo Lins e Silva, Sean’s stepfather, obtained a decision in a court of appeals in Brazil to delay the boy’s immediate return to the United States. Sean’s mother, Bruna Bianchi, died last year.
It is unclear when the court will issue a final decision on custody.
Arranged by the Brazilian family, the interview occurred in a hospital in Rio on Monday, and was witnessed through a one-way mirror by 13 people, including a family judge. The transcript, released by Lins e Silva’s attorneys, revealed a boy upset with the possibility of leaving his Brazilian family.
“I want respect. I want to stay in Brazil,” Sean said. “If I go there [to the United States], I’ll start to break everything. . . . I will go crazy.”
- Source
Sounds like the pressure from his Brazilian family includes being told what to say. A 9-year old doesn’t say things like “I want respect” nor the other things he said. Sounds quite fishy to me.
I did a quick search for Bahian slang and found a site called FolderPark which contains three different parts, one on Bahian slang, another said to be the largest collection of cachaça labels online and another section for a musician named Alceu Valença. Check it out, despite the interesting name, it’s a nice site!
“The French artist JR first made his mark in Rio de Janeiro last year, as giant posters of staring eyes started appearing on buildings in the city’s oldest favela.
He was drawn there following the controversial deaths of three young men, amid alleged collusion between Brazilian soldiers and a drugs gang.
But now JR’s work has made it on to some of Rio’s grander structures. Take a tour of the city with the artist himself, and meet the people who inspired him.”
- BBC (see the video of the project here)
Eu Quero Voltar pra Bahia
Paulo Diniz
I don’t wanna to be here*
I want to go back to Bahia
I have been walking around so lonely
Others look but they don’t see
The silence in my guitar
Not even I know why
All of a sudden it became cold
I didn’t come here to be happy
Where’s my golden sun?
Where are the things of my country?
* – When using the informal ‘wanna’, the correct formal translation would be ‘want to’ therefore ‘wanna to’ doesn’t make sense…but who cares, it’s a great song!
“It’s hard not to like them; strong, masculine, they drink, smoke, and can even dance. They may remind you of the American Cowboy. Instead of rustling cattle they wrestle 500 pound wooden rafts up and over crashing waves to harvest shark, eel, stingray and more. Like the West, the wilds of Brazil are finally being tamed but not without a price.” – More here
A Jangada is a watercraft made of wood used by fishermen from the northern region of Brazil. Some claim the historical legacy of the jangada dates back to the ancient Greeks and that it was Ulysses’ vessel in The Odyssey.
All of the traditional jangada’s components are hand-made, from the mast to the sail, the ropes to the sailing seat, fishing nets, fishing hooks, anchors, and the boxes used to keep fish and belongings. Its crew, on the traditional versions of the jangada, ranges from 3 to 5 people. This group works on a space of approximately 5 to 7 meters, on average.
The jangada reached Brazil as a part of the rich exchange between India, Africa, China, and Japan, mostly in the two first centuries of the Brazilian colonization by the Portuguese people. It also uses native Brazilian techniques for the cutting and processing of wood, and the weaving of fibers into rope. It comes from the people involved with shipping other people, goods, animals, plants, knowledge, and of course, the knowledge from the sailors of the Indian ocean and the Mozambique coast, who used fishing boats similar to the Brazilian jangada.
Today it appears that the jangadas only show up in the northern region of Brazil starting at Rio Grande do Norte and ending at Piauí for curious historic reasons. This was due to the systematic elimination of all sailing craft that weren’t controlled by the Portuguese, a law applied since the 17th century with the exploration of Minas Gerais (central-southern area of Brazil). The law was in place to halt illegal gold trafficking. This part of the north Brazilian coast was unpopulated and impassable for the transatlantic sailing ships, since it is brushed by the powerful ocean currents from Guyana, which made it very difficult for the European boats to sail in.
“Did you know the postcard was invented by Emmanuel Hermann? The Austrian professor first put a paper backing on a photograph and tossed it in the mail in 1869. By 1880, they were legal post in Brazil. In 1904 the first colored card appeared. Useless trivia? Well, maybe. But considering how many of these things are sent and received throughout the world, it’s a wonder how little thought they get. This fun little museum boasts a large collection of postcards dating from the 1880s to the 1990s. Most are of Salvador itself; viewing the collection is a wonderful way to see how the city grew and changed. Indeed, it’s much better than the city museum. There’s also a collection of cards from the turn of the last century; even during the Belle Epoque people liked to have photos taken of themselves in silly costumes.” – Source
The Museum Tempostal holds around 45,000 postcards, collected by a native of Sergipe who grew up in Salvador. The postcards mainly cover the transformation of Salvador as a city, including bairros like Rio Vermelho, Cidade Baixa and Graça as well as some areas around Salvador, such as the Recôncavo region. Aside from postcards, one will find old photos and stamps in the restored colonial building which houses the museum.
Open: Tues-Fri 10am-6pm; Sat-Sun 1pm-5pm (call for exact hours)
Address: Rua Gregório dos Matos 33, Pelourinho district
Phone: 071/3117-6383
Admission: Free
Reginaldo Lima, who has spent the last 5 years bringing Brazilian culture and music to Madrid via his radio show, was recently featured on Spanish television. As you may know as well, his site La Movida Brasileña is on my links page and I posted an interview he had with Lenine a few months back.
Parabéns, Reginaldo!
Here’s a few of the colorful matting laid down all over the country in honor of Corpus Christi (number three, perhaps not for kids). Picture credits: O Globo.
