Tag Archives: eyes on salvador

The two sides of the city

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Over at The Lion’s Den, which I link to on my (in-progress) Links page, Leo wrote a great post showcasing the two sides of Salvador. I’ll borrow the first two sentences from each perspective…

Side 1

“Look. Salvador, it’s a beautiful place. From the emerald sway of the palm trees that line the All Saints Bay, to the soft pastel colored churches that fill the Pelourinho—Salvador is a city of light, a place infused with the energy of a Northeastern sun.”

Side 2

“Look. Salvador, it’s an ugly place. From the dark stains of sewage that line the All Saint’s Bay, to the prostitutes, thieves, and wicked intentions that fill the Pelourinho—Salvador is a city of darkness, a place dried and cracked by a Northeastern sun.”

One of the people commenting on the original post, made a great observation on being a foreigner in Brazil. She said that it’s nescesary to be able to come back to Side 1 after seeing/living in Side 2. I think that’s very true as it’s easy to just stay with your illusions of what Brazil is depending on your social circles and stomping grounds. What is also interesting is that one can’t say Side 2 is the real Brazil, while Side 1 isn’t. They are both the real Brazil, you just have to make the choice as to which Side sits well with you.

Lavagem do Bonfim festival

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“Time magazine has described Salvador da Bahia as the “New Orleans of Brazil” and it is well known for its festivals and annual carnival. Lavagem do Bonfim is the second largest street festival in Bahia after carnival. It takes place on the second Thursday in January and has done so every year for the last 150 years. It seems to be a spontaneous outpouring onto the streets of Salvador, not as hectic and physically demanding as Carnival, but regarded with a special reverence.

My Brazilian friends who invited me to take part in the festival said it was “religious”, but with a good “party vibe”, but could give little information concerning its significance. I decided to trust them, but was a bit worried as to how I would explain to my Portuguese language teachers that I was taking the day off to go partying in the streets of the city.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I did do some online research to find out a bit more about the history and significance of the festival. And what an interesting tale it is. It seems that African slaves were banned from practicing their indigenous religions and from participating in Catholic masses. In protest, they devised versions of Christian rituals and claimed their saints, often merging them with orixas (spirits or deities that reflect a particular energy or characteristic of the supreme being, Olodumare) and other deities. Over the years, the January festival has emerged, combining all these traditions. Cleansing and purification, as well as remnants of protest, remain central. The Lavagem do Bonfim festival fuses African religious expression with Catholicism in an intermingling so intricate that the individual parts are indistinguishable. The experience of African syncretism in Bahia, the combination of Candomblé (a religion based on African traditions) and Portuguese Christianity bears similarity to other diaspora experiences, reflecting the characteristics of symbolic reinterpretation and continued dynamism (Duncan, 2000).” – Source

O que é que a Baiana tem? – Carmen Miranda

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“A very rare document. This is the only segment left out of the Brazilian film “Banana da Terra” (1939). This is the first time Carmen Miranda* ever appeared wearing a Bahiana outfit in a movie. Americans hadn’t “discovered” her as yet. The routine from the film is shorter, this one hasn’t been edited. Enjoy!”

* – Carmen Miranda was actually Portuguese, not Brazilian.

What does a Bahian woman have?
Written by Dorival Caymmi

What does a Bahian woman have?
Does she have silk twine? She does (she does)
Does she have gold earrings? She does (she does)
Does she have gold chains? She does (she does)
Does she have fabric from the coast? She does (she does)

Dissecting the song

The importance of outward appearance and decorative costume are taken as the signifiers of a woman who carries the cargo of a rich cultural heritage - golden earrings and necklaces, a silk torçal, decorated sandals and cloth from the coast of Guinea. This in itself is revelatory of the ways in which popular culture and everyday practices were co-opted by artists to elaborate an image of the “typical” Bahian woman, who, as exemplified in this song, was seen to encompass all that was tropical and exotic about the African heritage of Bahian cultural markers. The celebration of the Bahian woman is also significant in this song, in that we are shown how the dress of the Bahian is complemented by the importance of her dancing ability - “no one’s as graceful as she / how well she moves her hips!” The question “what does the baiana have?” is answerable in that she has the rich cultural legacies of African heritage, in her dress, as well as her ability to dance. The boundaries of Afro-Brazilian culture are set out within a framework of female characteristics of beauty, performance and show, which allow her to participate both within the enclosure of Afro-Brazilian tradition (“Só vai no Bonfim quem tem” - only those with “it” can go to the feast of Bonfim), and because the song is sung by a white Carmen Miranda, also within the national culture of the celebration of diversity. In this sense, the Afro-Brazilian traditions are seen as capsules of culture both within and separate from the national culture. In celebrating the difference of the Bahian woman, and especially her beauty and sensuality, Miranda acts as the marker of these cultural boundaries, but as with “Mamãe Eu Quero”, Miranda’s performance of this song, as a white woman dressed as a black woman, and singing from the point of view of a white male, transgresses the boundaries between all these opposing subjectivities, and opens up the spaces between them. In this way, Carmen Miranda helped both to outline, and question the cultural boundaries set out within the dominant patriarchal ideology.” – Source

Moqueca Baiana

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Moqueca (mo-ke-ka) is a traditional Brazilian seafood stew. Brazilians have been making Moquecas for 300 years. It basically consists of fish, onions, garlic, tomatoes, cilantro, chili pepper (pimenta malagueta) and additional ingredients. It is cooked slowly, with no water added.

Its two variants are Moqueca Capixaba from Espírito Santo state in the Southeast, and Moqueca Baiana from Bahia state in the Northeast. It is common for people from these states to claim that their moqueca is the “only true” moqueca.

If you are going to make moqueca, you must not forget three basic things: A clay cooking pot, fresh ingredients and palm oil. Here’s the recipe.

Salvador Shopping forgets apartments

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Salvador Shopping just began adding 201 new stores, bringing the grand total to 461 stores within the soon to be 298 meters sq. property (from its current 180 meters sq.). The parking complex will also be amplified, going from 4.2 thousand spaces to 6 thousand. Costwise, R$150 million is being invested with the new additions, which when added to the original cost, will total R$500,000,000. I think the only thing they forgot to add are apartments inside the mall.

Salvador has no shortage of malls (or shoppings, as they are called in ‘Portuguese’). The city is served by: Aeroclube Plaza Show, Caboatã Shopping, Casa Shopping Cidade, Out Let Center, Salvador Shopping, Shopping Baixo Dos Sapateiros, Shopping Barra, Shopping Boulevard 161, Shopping Brotas Center, Shopping Center Iguatemi, Shopping Center Lapa, Shopping Do Pelô, Shopping Imbuí Plaza, Shopping Itaigara, Shopping Orixás Center, Shopping Piedade, Shopping Sumaré.

My Take

Isn’t there something better to spend 500 million reals on? Education? Community-based projects like participatory budgeting? I find malls overrated and useless, much like my opinion of consumerism itself. They destroy the mom and pop stores and amalgamate the population against individualism and self-sustainability, not to mention turning them into zombies, fascinated by the bright lights and shiny things. If a product made anyone happy, as the marketing suggests, no one would need any other product for the rest of their life. Consumerism is nothing more than modern-day enslavement. I think Salvador already went through that in the colonial times.

Pelourinho – The Colonial & Cultural

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The word Pelourinho, in a broad sense, corresponds to a wood column normally placed in the center of a plaza, where criminals were exhibited and punished. In Brazil, and especially the pelourinho in Salvador, the principal use was to punish slaves with lashings of a whip during the colonial period. In the era after slavery in Brazil, this place in the city started to attract artists of every type: cinema, music, painting, etc, turning Pelourinho into a cultural center.

Pelourinho was an entirely residential neighborhood, where the best living quarters were located, all the way up until the start of the 20th century.

Starting from the 1960′s, it suffered a strong process of degradation, with the modernization of the city and the transference of the economic activities taking place in other regions of the Bahian Capital. This transformed the Historical Center into a den of prostitution and marginality.

In 1991, there was a massive State investment in security and financing in the areas of hospitality, restaurants, dance schools and other areas of art, in addition to a grand restoration of villas throughout the city. However, certain buildings were not repaired internally, as only the façades were prioritized, among other reasons, due to the interior state of the villas which impeded a faithful reconstruction. With the restoration, the search for national and international tourists was amplified. Furthermore, the restoration caused those who once lived in the villas to be relocated elsewhere within Salvador.

The Pelourinho of Salvador is a place full of colonial buildings of differing tones and colors. Because of its culturally historic value, the place is included on the National Historic Register, and called a World Cultural Site by UNESCO, which certified the location as a Patrimony of Humanity. Pelourinho is located within the Historic Center of Salvador, which due to UNESCO, allows Salvador to be a member of the Organization of Cities of Worldwide Patrimony.

Michael Jackson in Pelourinho?

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Apparently, in Febuary of 1996, Michael recorded the song “They Don’t Care About Us” in Pelourinho with the participation of Olodum and his friend Spike Lee directing. Judging by most of his outfits, I would have guessed it was in the late 80′s.

Sure, it’s a cool song and even better with Olodum coming through on the drums but there’s something strange about a former black man, who millions of people adore, singing “they don’t really care about us”.