2023-10-31 09:24:30
Launched in 1976, Africa Brazil is Jorge Ben’s most iconic and acclaimed album in his discography. An electrifying fusion of Brazilian sounds, hypnotic Afrobeat and American soul funk, it celebrates black identity and Afro-Brazilian consciousness. Inspired by a recent trip to Ethiopia, his mother’s country of origin, Ben recounts the epic tale of these black heroes long sidelined in history books, such as the torrid Xica da Silva, first a slave then woman of power following becoming, in the 18th century, the concubine of João Fernandes, a wealthy dignitary of the regime.
The piece was commissioned by filmmaker Cacá Diegues for his eponymous film, and sums up in an affectionate, even loving way, the festive and tumultuous life of this hypersensual Brazilian Cinderella. Using the sound of bells agogôs and the rolling of the drums atabaques to reproduce the sound ambiance of the senzala (dwelling intended for slaves) at the time of slavery, Jorge Ben details the character’s environment, repeating almost word for word the presentation text of the film that the director sent him by email. job. It especially highlights the successful emancipation of a freedwoman with an exuberant appearance who was to be treated like a queen, and dwells on the image that Xica da Silva sent back to the nobles and bourgeois of the time: respected , but also envied, feared and hated.
It is the actress Zézé Motta who plays Xica on screen. Icon of black beauty with a warrior smile, muscular body and frizzy hair, she plays a character very different from the slaves present in Brazilian cinema, until now described as victims or mothering servants: a seductive, sexually insatiable black woman, who chooses his partners and who goes following his desires. An uninhibited woman typical of the 1970s, with an assumed sexuality, who parades in the street in extravagant outfits under the gaze of stunned residents.
In cinema and on TV: a controversial figure
Selon Cacá Diegues, xica da Silva does not talk regarding slavery but regarding the right to pleasure. “ My wish was to break with the melancholy of my generation and to create a political fable », he wrote in his memoirs. A position criticized by part of the radical left, who consider the representation of the black slave too equivocal and above all too erotic. This will once more have the opportunity to be unleashed a few years later during the broadcast from September 1996 to August 1997 of the 231 episodes of the TV Manchete telenovela, xica da Silvataken up in 2005 by the SBT channel, accumulating stereotypes of the lascivious concubine.
In the Brazil of 1976, the story of this interracial scandal and this social ascension might only end badly. Since the coup d’état of 1964, the country has remained ruled by a military junta, even if serious economic difficulties forced it to ease a little authoritarian pressure. Feminist movements and black consciousness are only just beginning to emerge and only the evocation of a fleeting experience of liberation in a slave world is tolerated. Under these conditions, Diegues’ film features a fictional character, that of the Count of Valadares, hired to restore order in the colony. The latter forcibly brings João Fernandes back to Portugal and Xica is chased out of the city. Morality is saved: oppression and exploitation take over.
Carried by its carnivalesque treatment and the charisma of Zézé Motta, Cacá Diegues’ film is a huge success. Poems, novels, children’s books, telenovelas, documentaries and plays in turn take up the character of Xica. In 1977, Zézé Motta resumed on the B side of Baba Alapala (Gilberto Gil) the song by Jorge Ben which suits him so well, followed the following year by Miriam Makeba, and by the duo Gilberto Gil/Milton Nascimento in the year 2000. Without forgetting the disco combo Boney M, which, on an original text and music, made the freedwoman in the mid-1980s a spy in the service of opponents of slavery and racial oppression.
Xica, from myth to reality
With Xica da Silva, Brazil rediscovers one of its mythical figures, who will become the subject of much research over the years. But who really was Xica da Silva? Thanks to Júnia Ferreira Furtado, professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, who published in 2003 Chica da Silva and the diamond contractor: the other side of the myth (Chica da Silva and the diamond merchant: the hidden side of the myth), we now know a little more regarding this slave who became a figure in high society. The historian relies on maps, wills, letters, commercial contracts, censuses, manumissions, baptisms and ecclesiastical registers to disentangle myth from reality and show how the freed slave used her sexuality instead of armed rebellion to improve one’s social status.
Francisca da Silva was born around the 1730s in the community of Milho Verde, in the state of Minas Gerais, known for its gold, precious stone and diamond mines, to a white Portuguese father and a mother African slave from “Guinea” herself the slave of an ex-slave (the Portuguese called the region of the Costa da Mina, between Ghana and Nigeria, Guinea). So she is mixed race. In 1749, she was sold to Manuel Sardinha, doctor, judge and owner of a gold mine, for whom she worked as a servant. Two years later, Sardinha accused of concubinage with three of his slaves including Chica, with whom he had a son, sold her to a priest, José da Silva Oliveira, whose name she kept. He in turn sold Chica to João Fernandes de Oliveira, governor general of Tejuco (the former name of the district of Diamantina), who also owns a gold mine, controls all diamond extraction and is also rich as the king of Portugal.
In 1753, João Fernandes granted freedom to Chica who became his concubine, thus acquiring the privileges of the white Brazilian elite. She is 23 years old and will spend 17 years of her life alongside her partner, both of whom are served by numerous slaves. She will give birth to 13 children, including five boys whom she will send to Portugal to study in schools and universities reserved for whites, and who will attain a high social position, jobs as judges or officers. All of them will inherit the couple’s immense fortune, as will their sisters, who became nuns or concubines of rich Portuguese people.
If the real Chica is prudent in managing the future of her children, she benefits greatly from João Fernandes’ fortune, spending lavishly as told in the film, and having a sumptuous palace built for herself, with a dug interior lake. in the middle of the mountains: As a freedwoman, she lived in a two-story mansion, had beautiful jewelry, a complete wardrobe, including cape, silk shoes and high hats, nominate Júnia Ferreira Furtado. She had 104 slaves for domestic work, cattle breeding, agriculture and mining. » So much so that she is nicknamed girl-in-charge (Chica the boss), not only by those who take a dim view of the disproportionate rise of this former slave, but also by a whole part of the community who, on the contrary, respect her.
The union with the powerful governor effectively allowed Chica to rise socially and gain privileges. In particular, that of attending churches and religious brotherhoods that support people of color. Although she herself owned many slaves, black or mixed-race, she granted them certain freedoms (baptisms, marriages, Christian burials and manumissions), made donations to religious orders, gave balls and promoted plays, in short everything that was expected of a woman from good society of the time.
Contrary to the image conveyed, the real Chica is not a man-eater. She is and will remain faithful to João Fernandes until the latter’s departure for Portugal in 1770 to settle the family succession. He never returned and died in 1779. Chica survived him for another 17 years and died in 1796. Her burial in a white church, with great pomp, was the last act of a woman who wanted to integrate. in white society and who managed, thanks to a perfect mastery of systems of domination, to maintain power and honor for herself and her descendants.
Where does this myth come from of the woman, black in addition, who conquers her freedom thanks to her ability to seduce the white man? The first traces of a manipulative Chica appear in the writings of Joaquim Felício dos Santos, one of her distant descendants, who published in 1868 Memories of the diamond district (Memories of the Diamantina district). She is represented there in the guise of a corpulent and unattractive shrew, brutal, haughty, Machiavellian and capricious, who bewitches a João Fernandes defying, like a despot, the authorities of the metropolis, until his arrival, in the colony, of the Count of Valadares, a character completely invented by the author, who brings the governor back on the right path.
Carnival dedicates rebel Xica
In 19th century slave-holding Brazil which still resists abolition, where sexual relations between slaves and white masters tend to be rape or exploitation, this kind of story is perfectly suited. If Chica fascinates for her extraordinary destiny, she remains the stereotype of the sensual and rebellious slave who ends up losing everything and who disappears from the colony. Many in fact were the Chica, these former slaves who lived like bourgeois women, mingling with white society, married or cohabiting with men of power. Others worked and traded, but Brazilian society managed to erase their memory and only the trace of Chica remained.
A figure of the national imagination since colonial times, the myth of Chica eventually died out only to resurface almost a century later in the guise of a black, seductive and refined Chica in Cécilia Meireles’ collection of poems Romance of Inconfidencepublished in 1953, then mixed five years later in a play by playwright Antonio Callado. The Treasure of Chica da Silva highlights this heroine victorious over her condition and makes her a symbol of the fight once morest racial discrimination.
This is also the point of view adopted by Fernando Pamplona and his partner Arlindo Rodrigues, the scenographers of the Rio samba school Acadêmicos do Salgueiro, for their plot (theme) from 1963 dedicated to the character of Chica da Silva and constructed from the writings of Cécilia Meireles. Negritude in samba enredo is an invention of Salgueiro: samba schools have always been a place of black affirmation, but culture and black identity are the hallmarks of the school, which has declined this theme during previous parades with Pilgrimage to Bahia (1954) Slaveship (1957) Quilombo dos Palmares (1960) et Life and work of Aleijadinho (1961).
Pamplona is a black intellectual, professor at the School of Fine Arts and pioneer of popular culture studies. To illustrate Chica da Silva, he called on Mercedes Baptista for her Afro-style ballet choreographies. The first black woman to enter the Municipal Theater, her career was influenced by the Black Experimental Theater of Abdias Nascimento. It is Isabel Valença, the wife of the president of Salgueiro, who plays a black Chica who became Xica, majestic and imposing with her French nylon wig 1.10 m high decorated with semi-precious pearls. Her disguise weighing more than 25 kg, adorned with sequins and multi-colored crystals, was eye-wateringly expensive. Around her, 12 couples dance the minuet in period dress, while the drums sound. Great show! The public is delighted, the photographers and the journalists too. The next day, the entire Carioca press will return to the journey of the beautiful black slave forgotten by all and to her love story with João Fernandes. The Salgueiro parade was so significant that no less than 12 other samba enredos will subsequently evoke the myth of Chica da Silva.
In 1963, Acadêmicos do Salgueiro won the title of carnival champion hands down. That year, in Rio, samba schools paraded for the first time on the broad President Vargas Avenue. In the stands, not far from Kirk Douglas, young Cacá Diegues watches the show. He has just finished Ganga Zumba, his film dedicated to the epic tale of Palmares, a kingdom of maroon slaves who stood up to the Portuguese colonial armies in the 17th century. Packed by the first black is beautiful of the history of carnival, Cacá Diegues will never cease to parade Xica once more. Thirteen years later, it’s done, this time in the cinema, to the sound of a heady theme by Jorge Ben. A powerful and radiant Xica, a queen with a name chanted and repeated as if to rediscover the memory of the past of black civilizations before slavery.
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