The magic of Candomblé
This post will be dedicated entirely to describing our experience at the Candomblé ceremony, as well as I can do. Unfortunately, cameras are not allowed, so as not to make a tourist spectacle out of a religious ceremony, which I can totally respect, so there aren’t any corresponding photos. I may have mentioned this before, but we waited specifically for this woman to take us to a ceremony, as there is word of a lot of tourist operators putting on phoney ceremonies, and I really wanted to witness the real thing. When the woman showed up, we piled into the van as she introduced us to the others inside, all by places of origin. I, therefore, became Chicago and Vanessa became Australia. With us we had Couple from France and Pair from Finland, and were soon joined by New York Lady and Group from Greece. As the lady shut the van door, going around to the drivers side, I noted, “I thought she would be black”, to which those who were not shy about it agreed. This was, afterall an Afro-Brazilian tradition, and this woman was very white with a hint of Latina blood.
We were taken to the house where the ceremony was to take place. It was a house; there are no formal churches or things like that. These ceremonies stemmed from the slaves practicing their African religions against the will of their oppressors, so you can imagine there was no formal place of worship. The ceremony was for the orixa (god) Ogum, who is the God of War. This is the orixa who the priest represented; it was his big night. This particular house held four ceremonies a year, each for different gods; this was one of the four. While there are a lot of followers of candomblé, there are only a certain number of people in each family. From what I understand, it is these family members that participate in the ceremony and the others that watch (although I think I may have gathered that a few of the older ladies in the crowd were in the family, so I could be wrong about this). It is the family members that only really know the meaning of every ritual; most of the things go unknown by the rest of the followers (including, besides us, the majority of the people in the crowd, and our guide). People become family memebers by a long initiation process. Once initiated, it is a very huge, time consuming commitment.
Each of the people participating in the ceremony is represented by an orixa (again, this is a god). At some point during the ceremony, the people will go into a trance, at which point the orixa enters their body and takes over. Ribbons are then tied around their bodies to keep the spirits in. The ceremony then continues until the orixas leave the bodies.
We stood waiting on the patio of the house for quite a long time – about an hour. Our guide wanted to make sure we were there on time – one never knows when these things really start. After about an hour, people started to take a seat – women on the left, men on the right. Not sure why on that one – forgot to ask.
The room was decorated, with a paper cross on the ceiling (again, this religion has ties to Christianity, as the slaves were forced to practice it), long, slim tree leaves covering the floor, shredded palms adorning the windows and door, and African-looking (will you accept that poor description?) plant arrangement hanging on the walls. In the front of the room were 3 large congo-like drums.
The house has roots from tribes in Nigeria, so most of the language (languages? I can’t tell the difference) used stemmed from there. It started with firecrackers on the porch. (Incidentally, we have been hearing these firecrackers all over the place in Brazil – they really like them, and they’re all the same…a whole bunch of bangs with one loud one at the end. Apparently it’s called “Kill your Mother-In-Law”. That’s why there’s so many of them – to make sure she’s dead.) Then the drums started up…three drummers (one a little boy) with a guy clanking some metallic sound device every once in a while and one singer.
And then they entered…7 women and 2 men, all dressed in African-looking clothes, cloths wrapped around them in all sorts of ways. Two of the girls were fairly young – in their teens, one was older, maybe 50s, and the others in between; the two guys were probably in their young twenties. And they danced, for quite a long time…nothing extravagant, a slow, rhythmic step to the beats laid down from the front of the room. It soon became obvious that 2 of the women were just helpers, as they helped adjust costumes and didn’t fully participate in all the movements, such as touching the floor occasionally and kneeling in front of the doorway.
The march of the white people
Just as things started to get going, in came a tour group of about 15 white kids (and one darker muslim girl), maybe in their very early 20s. Now, we were also a tour group and some of us were white (though well tanned, others, like the Greeks, much darker skinned), I will not deny. However, we had an ‘in’ with this lady who knew the people…this group must have come from a tour agency off the street. They were oh so very white, both literally and figuratively – pastey pale white in all their khaki glory. The Bahian people (Bahia being this particular state of Brazil) are very welcoming, and they brought extra stools for them to sit down, inviting them to witness the ceremony. Now, I only had a look at the guys, because they sat at the other side of the room, but they all looked scared, with eyes wide open like a deer in the headlights sort of thing, as if they were witnessing the most evil thing they’ve ever seen. I thought one guy was going to start crying, seriously. And, after about 15 minutes, they left. That was it.
Back to the ceremony…
The priest finally entered…remember I said this was his orixa’s ceremony. He entered with a helper woman, and started dancin’ a mean dance,with the drums picking up the pace and intensity. He was all over the place. He kept it up for a little while and then, it appeared that he was going into his trance. He started grunting, snorting, almost growling, and his eyes were closed. And he went even wilder with his dance. People standing around the edges of the room, putting their hands up in front of them, as if to almost keep him inbounds or something, make sure he didn’t fly into the crowd. I followed suit, playing along, guessing as to when I should be standing or sitting by trying to follow the others. I later learned they put their hands up to absorb the energy from the orixas; maybe I got some too.
As the priest (and the others) went into their trance, the helpers tied the large cloths around their busts, as I learned earlier, to keep the spirits from escaping. The priest had his final dance and left the room, grunting and growling the whole way, and more fireworks on the patio as he left. At this point, all the remaining orixas in the room had a little solo dance they did, with the music changing with the characters of each of the orixas (of course, I had no idea who they were or what they represented). After their dance, they bowed out of the room, leaving the next one to go. I never saw this, but someone mentioned they saw one of them open their eyelids and their eyes were rolled back in their heads! Serious stuff.
By the time the last orixa left the room, it had been about 2 hours since everything had started – it was now 11pm. The drummers were dripping in sweat, giving each other breaks every once in a while (can you imagine drumming for 2 hours straight?). As we left the room, back out onto the patio, our guide told us that was the end of the first part. The first part!
We made a collective decision to stay for a little bit of the 2nd part, where they would come back, dressed in the costumes representing their respective orixas. (The Group from Greece actually bowed out and took a cab home). I thought this was great and wouldn’t leave for anything. During the break, they brought out drinks and all sorts of typical, traditional food. To be honest, I didn’t like all of it…there were some fishy sort of mushy concoctions that didn’t win my heart, but they did bring out a huge plate of food for whoever wanted it.
After a little while, the fireworks went off again and we filed back into the room. The drumming started again and the orixas entered again – dressed in all sorts of fancy costumes. And then the priest entered – Ogum, the God of War. He had chains around his chest and was weilding a (thankfully) blunt dagger. And this is where he really went off, dancing wildly and grunting some more. I say thankfully blunt because he was waving that thing around like nobody’s business, dangerously close to the crowd. At one point, someone pulled one of the guys from our group out of the way (even though he was smack up against the wall). The music was loud and intense now…this was the God of War.
We stayed only for about 15 minutes into this part…who knows how long they would be going for, our guide said. It was already midnight. They go until the orixas leave the bodies. I suspect it went on for a long time, being the night of the priest’s orixa – his night to shine.
Tags: Brazil, candomblé, Salvador, Tag Index
Tania
February 7th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Sorry, I was just reading over this and just wanted to note what a totally stupid title for this blog post, but I will let it stand.