CANDOMBLE and CAPOEIRA

Candomble

The ancient Brazilian religion brought over from Africa with the slaves. They have many gods called Orishas. Orishas are said to be the ssence of a persons personality, but also seen as divinized ancestoral gods. The main god Oshala is the creator of the world and Lemanja who is queen of the ocean is mother of all the orisha. For many hundreds of years the slaves were not allowed to practice their Candomble and forced to practice Catholicism. The slave owners thought it would make the slaves easier to deal with. In order to continue to practice Candomble, the Africans used the Catholic religion to hide. They had the saints represent their orishas and had many covered/impersonating rituals. But at the same time, belief in catholic religion is sincere. There are not central figure who hold the religion together, rather a number of charismatic leader. There is a hierarchy of understanding and knowing all the practices that are completely secret. People gain acces to the secrets by being initiated into the Candomble. The Candomble is mostly made up of women who are atleast 45-50 and older. You must be at least 45 or 50 to be initiated in. The people believe that the orishas can possess you at certain rituals. It is said that is is more common for women to become possessed by their orishas. They use the human body to communicate between both worlds. There is no hell or devil figure in Candomble. There is a trixster god and if you miss behave you are punished. The Candomble color is white and you can find their temples and places of worship because they have white flags and the women wear all white. Friday is their big day of festival and worship. Each orisha has specific foods they like and at the beginning of the ceremonies the gods must be fed before anything else. Eventually as the initiates mature and grow older, they learn how to enter the possessed state to communicate to their orisha.

On the trips in Rio and Cachoeira I was able to meet and see the Candomble women. They give out these ribbons in all different colors and tie them around your wrist making three knots. These represent three wishes and once the wishes come true the bracelet is supposed to fall off. Very interesting and the women are very humble.

Capoeira

Street dancing that looks like fighting. The slaves we not allowed to fight so developed this “dance”. Mostly boys part take in the street and people have team or gangs and compete in the streets. Some do it publicly but there are those that are secretive about it. It is very cool to watch and really look like they are fighting they are sooo close to each other but have perfected the dance to get as close as possible and still don’t touch eachother.