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Black Sun Shining

Afro-samba songs of Virginia Rodrigues express social and lyrical themes of modern Brazil

Virginia Rodrigues

Called the "new voice of Brazilian music", Virginia Rodrigues burst upon the international scene in 1997 with what the New York Times called her "stunningly evocative voice".

Born in 1964, Ms Rodrigues was a school drop out at twelve. Like many Brazilian girls of humble origin she eked out a living as a domestic servant.

Drawn to the sounds, music and colour of the streets, she says with passion "I discovered my singing voice in the female vocal traditions of Bahia's faiths: Catholic, Pentecostal and Yoruba-derived Candomble". They were the roots of her alma baiana, Bahian soul.

The Bahian soul reflects lifestyles generated from a common heritage, all pointing back to African roots. Four centuries ago, Africans in the city of Salvador, Bahia outnumbered the Portuguese masters, and though enslaved, founded the most significant centre of Yoruba culture in the Americas.

Today, Bahia is one of the poorest states in Brazil. But, in an unbroken musical tradition, Bahia is a superpower. And, a Black woman raised poor in the favela shantytowns leads the way with a social and lyrical freedom challenge.

Ms Rodrigues drew her influences from an extraordinary range of sources. As a young woman she danced and sang to the voices of the legendary Brazilian singers Gal Costa, Maria Bethania and Clara Nunes. She was thrilled by the African-American jazz greats: Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. The classical divas Marion Anderson and Jessye Norman influenced her too.

Then, Caetano Veloso, Brazil's foremost singer and songwriter found her performing with the Bando de Teatro Olodum, an artists collective, and offered to record her. She agreed and the rest is history.

Voice and music
Steeped in the rooted rhythms of the crowded streets, she acknowledges that she sings for her people of African descent. Hers is a yearning restatement of African and Black New World music, all powerful rhythms of resistance that have made their way through enslavement and colonialism. The Boi-bumba mocked the masters. The Quilombo celebrated the rebel settlements of Palmares. And, the Candomble liturgy sought protection in the power of the gods Xango (fire) and Iemanja (the sea).

What surpasses expectations is the way Ms Rodrigues has raised Afro-samba songs (that originated among the poorest of the migrant Black poor in early 20th century urban favelas) to an art form of world renown.

You can trace in her recorded albums the multi-faceted aspects of her heritage and experience. Her first, Sol Negro (Black Sun), is a heart-rending rich mix of African and Portuguese influences and Afro-Brazilian samba. They mark, wrote the New York Times, the convergence "where nature and the spirit worlds meet and where the songs of the Afro-Brazilian pantheon share the purity of Gregorian chant."

In the wake of that success, her later albums were a perfect vehicle for her talents. In Nos (Us), she interpreted the sounds of axe music, a musical genre known for its infectious, thundering rhythms.

Her third album, in 2003, called Mares Profundo (literally Deep Ocean; or poetically, Strong Feelings), showed off her voice to perfection. In it she sings a "cycle of Afro-samba songs" created in the Sixties by composers Vinicius de Moraes and Baden Powell. Uniquely, she blends the bossa nova with devotional prayers to Yoruba deities common to Salvador da Bahia.

Ms Rodrigues has sung to enthusiastic audiences from Lisbon to Sydney, performing at the Hollywood Bowl, New York's Town Hall and London's Barbican and won critical acclaim.

Ecstatic rave notices welcomed her to the world stage: "Virgínia's voice is an ethereal pure contralto with almost sacred overtones . . ." Classic CD; "The authority of Rodrigues's voice fills up the room . . ." Time Out; and "Her achingly pure voice is that of a miscreant choirboy, albeit one as comfortable with the percussive power of Bahia as churchy yearnings." The Observer.

Other reviewers have said "Brazilian diva Virgínia Rodrigues has a sort of angelic gravity: Her rich, pure contralto seems to bear the weight of the world without a hint of strain." Pulse!; and "Virgínia Rodrigues has emerged as one of the world's most enchanting voices." San Francisco Weekly.

Joe Boyd, her UK marketing manager says "Her greatest strength lies in the remarkable dignity and lyrical quality of her voice". Even when standing still, hands clasped to her face reverently, a mask of calm and poise, she held the rapt attention of world music aficionados at Queen Elisabeth Hall in London in March 2004.

Her confidence and enthusiasm are evident from the start. "She sailed majestically on stage, beaming like the sun. Her opening notes pealed out as if flung from a mountain top·a cascade of swooping notes sung with audacity and total control," The Observer (London) wrote of one of her performances.

Message in the lyrics
But the success of Rodrigues' artistry is for many of her fans based upon her music's message. "Unadorned purity is only part of it", says Michael Church in The Independent, "the magic resides in how she uses that quality to express the savage realities of her early years".

That reality is fundamental to her persona. "I have three strikes against me," Ms Rodrigues once said. "I'm a woman. I'm Black. And I'm poor". Nevertheless, her pride in her Afro-Bahian and African roots gives her sustenance, and she is a fierce critic of Brazil's covert racism.

By affirming her identity, she has grafted a progressive meaning onto her songs. She recognises that Black Brazilians may have legal equality, but along with many of their poor white and indigenous compatriots, they are virtual second class citizens.

Sombre sounds of the streets
Despite some calls for "racial democracy" and loosening of the rigid social order economic apartheid is rife in Brazilian society. Ignorant and prejudiced attitudes against Afro-Brazilians remain close to the surface of popular beliefs. Evidently, there has been little change in race relations from sociological observations made 50 years ago in the "Negro Worker in Urban Brazil" by Thomas L Blair in The Crisis magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), USA.

A report in 2004 by Bahia Street, a refuge in the city centre for poor and abused women, tells a tragic story of lives no different than Ms Rodrigues' early years. Its authenticity is vouched for by Dr Rita Conceicao, an African Brazilian sociologist who was born in the shanty towns of Salvador.

Afro-Brazilians make up 80 per cent of the city's population; and most of them live in self-constructed shacks along side open sewers. Life is hard, especially for the young. Only thirteen percent of children complete elementary school and they are 50 per cent more likely than white Brazilians to leave without learning to read. Male unemployment is endemic.

Young women face violence, sickness and death as part of their daily lives; prostitution and domestic service are often the only options for survival. Many, like Ms Rodrigues are only saved by finding refuge in safe houses, or joining experimental theatre groups that attempt to channel Black religious and dramatic traditions into constructive social programs. Increasingly, females are coming together in assertive working class Black women's' groups, or frente negrinas.

Unique lyrical and social perspective
Though Ms Rodrigues, the singer, does not express any political goals (she is no Benedita da Silva of Rio de Janeiro, the favela-born political organiser and Brazil's first Black woman senator), nevertheless her music is infused with a message that will encourage women's groups around the globe.

"She moved me," says Margaret Busby, well-known writer-publisher, following the London concert. Indeed, she says, "If I were to expand my literary Daughters of Africa book to include Black women singers and musicians, Ms Rodrigues would have a prominent place".

No doubt Virginia Rodrigues has raised the Afro-samba to another level. musically as well as socially. "If we had Black opera in Brazil," said an ecstatic Bahian lady in the audience at Queen Elisabeth Hall, "this performance would be the closest thing to it. And Virginia Rodrigues would be honoured as the premiere Black Diva."

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