Cody Case

University of Florida

Few musical organizations have accomplished more to combat racial discrimination in Brazil than Blocos Afro in Salvador, Brazil. Salvador is the capital of Bahia, one of Brazil’s 26 states, and commonly known as the Blackest city both in Brazil and outside Africa. A Bloco Afro is a community music organization composed of a board of directors and coordinators, musicians, vocalists, dancers, artists, neighborhood residents, and fans who select an Afrocentric topical theme to celebrate Carnival each year. This short documentary aims to convey what Black resistance (resistência negra) means to the directors of three pivotal Blocos Afro while interweaving live footage of performances leading up to their Carnival processions in 2023. The film presents an example of how these Afro-Brazilian grassroots musical organizations engage in activism against racial and gender discrimination through community music. Further, my project demonstrates how ethnomusicological fieldwork may partake in activism through a constant exchange (troca) between the ethnographer and collaborators. The Portuguese word troca is a common term and concept in Bahian culture—expressing a mutually beneficial, symbiotic exchange.  

On that note, before filming anything, I negotiated with each Bloco Afro director to earn authorization and conduct my fieldwork research project. I obtained signed consent forms (in Portuguese) from each interviewee. Prior to interviews, I secured research clearance from Brazil’s National Commission for Research Ethics (CONEP) and the US Institutional Research Board (IRB) at the University of Florida to comply with requirements of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award (which funded this research for twelve months from 2022-2023). As part of these agreements, I offered support to the Blocos Afro coordinators, such as writing and editing international grants in English, adding video subtitles, translating for international visitors, and creating bilingual videos and flyers to promote events. The needs were identified by the leadership of each bloco and communicated to me in the beginning when I simply asked, “How can I help?” After building trust with coordinators, I received more calls for assistance, in which I always learned a great deal in the process. I became a part of the team in each Bloco Afro despite my lugar de fala (positionality, or “place of speaking”) as a white American researcher. In my experience, as ethnomusicologists, rarely do we stop and consider the value of simply asking how we can help and serve the communities with whom we work. 

After proving my work ethic for several months, members invited me to attend and record many special events, granted me access to online and physical archives, and swiftly agreed to participate in interviews and an online survey. These perks helped me immensely to provide critical ethnographic experiences and insightful evidence in my dissertation, “Drumming in the Breaks of Blocos Afro: Ancestrality and Black Resistance in Salvador, Brazil.” 

Additionally, the audiovisual recordings I collected from these fieldwork experiences serve as the foundation for this short documentary. Through interviews and performances, the film conveys the subtle nuances and musical manifestation of Black resistance. Propelled by captivating rhythms of samba-reggae and samba-afro, leading Blocos Afro Ilê Aiyê (founded in 1974), Olodum (founded in 1979), and Didá Banda Feminina (founded in 1993) continue to engage in activism against racial and gender discrimination. As Blocos Afro leaders describe in the film, Black resistance is a core principle with deep historical roots in Brazil that celebrates Black pride, culture, and history while actively opposing structural racism, anti-Black inequities, and violence against Black communities. 

Salvador harbors a proud reputation as Roma Negra (Black Rome) with the largest Black and Brown population percentage in Brazil at roughly 75%, but deeply systemic racism still haunts the city and state. For example, according to annual national government reports, the state of Bahia ranked second highest rates for homicides and citizens killed by the police in 2022 and 2023, (Anuário Brasileiro 2023: 65; 2024: 14). As indicated below (Figure 1), more people were killed by police in Bahia alone than people killed by police in the entire U.S. (Mapping Police Violence 2023, 2024). The majority of those killed in Brazil were young Black men, which was 83.1% in 2022 and 82.7% in 2023 (Anuário Brasileiro 2023: 65; 2024: 14).     

The Brazilian government’s census data from 2022 verifies a total population of 203 million people (Brasil Censo 2023), 130 million people fewer than than the U.S. population of 333 million people (U.S. Census Bureau 2022)—making this chart’s statistics all the more devastating. Amidst this police brutality, Blocos Afro continue to protest anti-Black violence in Bahia and Brazil as a whole. Since the establishment of Ilê Aiyê in 1974, Blocos Afro have fought for Black Power, unity, and pride to combat this anti-Black violence, as conveyed in my short film. 

My audiovisual project is deeply related to this journal issue’s theme of “Diversity and Activism in Ethnomusicology.” First, I pursued a high-quality audiovisual medium to more professionally and accurately portray the music, voices, and ideas of Black resistance by Bloco Afro musicians and directors. Second, the film explores imbrications of racial and gender discrimination in Brazil by presenting some similarities and differences to racial discrimination in the U.S. Third, I practiced activism by working for the the Blocos Afro and sharing all my footage with the coordinators; this process involved filming, transferring, converting (to smaller, more accessible files), and uploading files to a OneDrive cloud within two days of recording each event. The three Blocos Afro organizations contain copies of all raw and converted files amounting to 500GB+ of high-quality HD and stereo sound recordings of their performances. I am happy to see my audiovisual work uploaded to the Bloco Afro YouTube and Instagram accounts. My dissertation provides many more details on these collaborations. 

The short documentary is bilingual with subtitles in English and Brazilian Portuguese for my friends, colleagues, and collaborators in Brazil to follow—further modeling the decolonization of ethnographic fieldwork through the simple idea of a constant troca. Throughout the preparations, fieldwork, and follow-up communications, I learned to be more respectfully conscientious of my positionality (or lugar de fala) as a white American ethnomusicologist. One day, after filming the Black Consciousness Parade for six hours on a small Carnival float (upon which I struggled to maintain balance while dodging power lines and telephone wires), another Bloco Afro director, Paulo Roberto do Nascimento, turned to me. He said, “Agora você faz parte da resistência.” “Now, you take part in the resistance.”

References

Brasil Instituto de Geografia e Estatística. 2023. “Panorama do Censo 2022.” https://censo2022.ibge.gov.br/panorama/. Accessed on August 23, 2024.

Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. 2023. 17º Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. FBSP, 2023. https://publicacoes.forumseguranca.org.br/items/6b3e3a1b-3bd2-40f7-b280-7419c8eb3b39. Accessed September 29, 2024.  

Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. 2024. 18º Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. https://publicacoes.forumseguranca.org.br/items/f62c4196-561d-452d-a2a8-9d33d1163af0. Accessed on September 29, 2024.  

Police Violence Report. 2024. “Mapping Police Violence.” Annual reports for 2022 and 2023. https://policeviolencereport.org/2022/, https://policeviolencereport.org/2022/. Accessed on September 29, 2024.   

U.S. Census Bureau. December 22, 2022. “Growth in the U.S. Population Shows Early Indication of Recovery Amid COVID-19 Pandemic.” https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/2022-population-estimates.html. Accessed on November 13, 2025.

Interviews

Dos Santos, Antônio Carlos. 2023. Salvador, Brazil. April 5, 2023.

Gentil, Marcelo. 2023. Salvador, Brazil. May 12, 2023.

Portela, Adriana. 2023. Salvador, Brazil. May 12, 2023.