Abstract: A música no candomblé: etnomusicologia no Ilê Axé Opô Aganjú, Bahia, by Angela Luhning, investigates the musical elements in the candomblé terreiro Ilê Axé Opô Aganjú, in Bahia. The work, which is of primary relevance due to its pioneering detailed musical analysis and historical contextualization, also reproduces information that is now relativized or questioned.

Keywords: Candomblé, ethnomusicology, and religious music.

In the book A música no candomblé: etnomusicologia no Ilê Axé Opô Aganjú, Bahia, published in 2022, Angela Luhning takes an ethnographic approach to the musical elements present in candomblé, focusing her research on the terreiro whose name makes up the title of the work. By conducting a process of participant observation on site between 1984 and 1989, Luhning seeks to understand the insertion of music in the ritual context of this Afro-Brazilian religion, particularly in the Nagô-Ketu terreiro. The book makes an in-depth analysis of the repertoire of songs associated with Ilê Axé Opô Aganjú, exploring the vital importance of music in structuring religious practices in candomblé. The preface, signed by Reginaldo Prandi, and the presentation of the Brazilian edition, by the author herself, contextualize the work and present it as a valuable contribution to ethnomusicology and studies on Afro-Brazilian cultural manifestations.

Luhning has a PhD in Ethnomusicology from the Free University of Berlin and is a retired full professor at the School of Music of the Federal University of Bahia (EMUS/UFBA). The book is a translation of her doctoral thesis, defended at the end of 1989 and published in Germany in 1990. At the time, Candomblé religious practices were already experiencing some significant political advances in Bahia and Brazil, although they have remained a structural target of discrimination and persecution to this day. Redemocratization in Brazil, strongly marked by the first free and direct election for president in the country in 1989, is conceived from the establishment of a new federal constitution the previous year, which stipulated the inviolability of freedom of conscience and belief, as well as setting out to ensure the free exercise of religious cults and the protection of their places of practice.

The book is structured in 11 chapters, each subdivided into between 2 and 6 sections. The first chapter deals with the historical process of the constitution of Candomblé in Brazil, in its continuities and particularities in relation to the religious practices in Africa that served as its matrix. The rites and foundations of the religion, sedimented after a long process of decantation in Brazilian lands, are also covered, with emphasis on their musical characteristics and the ritual correspondences they engender. Chapter II portrays objective and symbolic elements related to the field of research. A brief description of the history and spatial organization of Opô Aganjú precedes the details of its hierarchical structure, the positions held by those initiated into candomblé and the cycle of celebrations in the terreiro during 1988, which the author followed in its entirety.

The third chapter is dedicated to a detailed description of a party for Oxum, the orisha that manifested itself – at the time of the field research – most frequently in the terreiro taken as the locus of the research. Luhning, however, first gives an account of the history of this saint (an emic term used to refer to divinities), his characteristics and the way in which the myth that particularizes him is evoked during the preparatory rituals (matança and padê) and also during the public event, which she followed during the fieldwork. In the sequel (Chapter IV), the author begins the discussion with questions commonly asked by non-initiates about the rituals associated with candomblé: “And what does all this mean? What do you get out of it?” (p.75). She goes on to address various aspects of the religious system to which she refers, such as the ritual relationship with deities and ancestry, explaining the relevance of its constituent elements – earth, blood and plants, leaves and herbs, for example – and native concepts often evoked by practitioners of the religion, such as “axé” and “fundamento”.

Addressing the so-called initiation, also referred to by the epithet feitura, the fifth chapter provides a deeper understanding of the religion’s structuring hierarchies. The process is seen as a watershed in the life of the non-initiated, being responsible for fixing the orixá in her head and also in an “assentamento”, a place she must go to when she needs to ask the saints for help. Next (Chapter VI), Luhning focuses on understanding the continuities between the individual’s personality and that of their orixá. He points out that there is a tendency towards parallelism between the personal characteristics of both, which can come into conflict with the personality of a second or third saint sharing responsibility for the initiate’s head. He also notes a tendency towards growing convergence between the personalities of the saint’s daughter and her orixá as the years go by, a phenomenon that may be related to the decrease in the number of trances they go through.

Luhning then devotes the next two chapters (VII and VIII) to understanding trance, highlighting aspects that impact on its manifestation, including those linked to acoustic work. The author understands trance as a broad conditioned behavior, through which the connection between a person and their orixá is identified. In candomblé, she identifies a complex network of elements that influence the phenomenon, especially music, which is deliberately evoked in order to call the orixá (to the incorporation).

Chapter IX is dedicated to the formal analysis of the aesthetic-musical elements that particularize the songs of the terreiro, with special attention to those evoked during the aforementioned Oxum festival. Luhning conducts a detailed analysis of the rhythmic cycles and the musical and cultural structures that give them ritual meaning, identifying the rhythmic structures that accompany the songs. She then goes on to analyze the melodic structures, the musical forms, the functional types of songs, the relationships between the latter and the rhythmic patterns played by percussive instruments and the melodic recurrences she identifies in the songs. Important conclusions emerge from the analysis undertaken, such as the verification of the form of accentuation as a key element for the particularization and distinction between melodic structures and repertoires, regardless of the maintenance of rhythmic elements, scales and interval sequences evoked in a performance, expressing parameters divergent from those most commonly used in modern Western music to make similar classifications. Another relevant finding is the recurrence of two or more poles of tonal attraction in the repertoire evoked during religious rituals, if not their complete lack of definition, on certain occasions she observed.

In order to further highlight the relationship between music and the ritual elements with which it is intertwined, Luhning sets out in Chapter X to analyze the lyrics of the songs, approaching them from a historical perspective. To this end, she makes use of approaches with the daughters of the saint, in order to establish a proposal for the transcription and dialogical translation of the repertoire evoked in the ceremonies of Ilê Axé Opô Aganjú. From there, she establishes a network of explanation based on the lyrics that involves considering, in addition to the textual element, the mythology, the dance and the beats played on the largest (and lowest register) atabaque present in various candomblé rituals – the rum. The final chapter of the book (XI) deals with processes of change in candomblé, a debate that was already very much in evidence at the time Luhning’s thesis was written. The author highlights the changes perceived during the fieldwork, which concern the time it takes to make a feitura, which is now shorter than in the past; the rigidity of the obligations, with a growing degree of flexibility; the loyalty of the daughters of saints to the terreiros, their disconnection to create their own candomblé houses; the number of festivals, with less extensive cycles of events; the presence of caboclo candomblé, which is increasingly evident; the tempo of the ijexá chant in ritual contexts, which is gradually decreasing due to influences resulting from the dialogue with profane music; the scalar changes structuring the chant, with a greater presence of diatonic scales; the phenomenon of forgetfulness, linked to collective memory, resulting in a gradual reduction in the repertoire available to adherents; among many others.

In “A música no candomblé: etnomusicologia no Ilê Axé Opô Aganjú, Bahia” (Music in Candomblé: ethnomusicology at Ilê Axé Opô Aganjú, Bahia), Angela Luhning makes important contributions to research into the religion, especially with regard to its musical elements. The analysis, contextualized from a single terreiro located in the metropolitan region of the capital of Bahia, has much to contribute to those interested in further studies on Candomblé music in general, especially those linked to the Nagô-Ketu nation. Great concern is shown in the use of native (emic) concepts, terminologies, assumptions and working processes/methodologies to analyze the melodic, textual and – to a lesser extent – harmonic (when treating polyphony in the ritual context, for example) and rhythmic elements of candomblé, as well as to understand them in the light of their inevitable connections with the religious elements to which they are imbricated. It is also worth highlighting the presence of 84 transcriptions of chants that Luhning came into contact with during his field research, attached to the published material.

Given the time gap between the ethnographic writing period (late 1980s) and the publication of its contents in book form (2022), it is possible to verify some information that is now relativized or questioned in relation to the analyses carried out by the author, many of them highlighted by the author herself in the introduction to the Brazilian edition of the material. I would also highlight a reproduction of the now questioned chronology of the formation of candomblé terreiros in Salvador, when she refers, in chapter II, to Casa Branca as the terreiro where the split that resulted in the formation of Gantois took place (see, for example, CASTILLO, 2017).

An understanding of the ringtones Daró and Agabi (Chapter IX) as possible special ornamentations of rum, subordinating them to other ringtones, seems to be the result of gaps in the information obtained by Luhning during the field period or particularities about their understanding among her main Opô Aganjú informants, since both are now often referred to in their particularities by alabês and other practitioners of the religion (see, for example, CARDOSO, 2006).

Daró | Imagem: Canal Bàbá Korin

The role of women in Bahian candomblé, reinforced by the author based on her field experiences (Chapter II), proved to be another view, later relativized by authors who looked at the importance of various male personalities in structuring and consolidating Afro-religious communities in Bahia (see, for example, BRAGA, 2014). It’s worth noting, however, that the research mentioned here was published after Luhning had written his doctorate, and at the time he didn’t have access to the information covered by it.

Although, as its preface argues about the book, “in the context of candomblé, much may have changed in the three decades that separate the German and Brazilian editions, just as much has changed in society as a whole and in the universe of religions itself” (p.18), the text to which this review refers makes invaluable contributions to a better understanding of the musical practices carried out by practitioners of the religion, in ethical and aesthetic terms. By reconciling careful scientific work with the accessible language used to materialize it into a book, the work is aimed at admirers and practitioners of Afro-diasporic religions in Latin America, as well as researchers – academic or otherwise – who are currently working on the subject.

Referênces               

ARAÚJO, Samuel. Entre muros, grades e blindados: trabalho acústico a práxis sonora na sociedade pós industrial. El Oído Pensante. vol. 1, n.1 2013.

BRAGA, Julio. Candomblé: a cidade das mulheres e dos homens. São Paulo: Vento Leste, 2014.

BRASIL. Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil. Brasília, DF: Senado Federal, 1988. Disponível em: https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao.htm. Acesso em: 23 de dezembro de 2023.

CARDOSO, Ângelo Nonato Natale. A linguagem dos tambores. Salvador, 2006. Tese (Doutorado em Música) – Escola de Música, Universidade Federal da Bahia.

CASTILLO, Lisa Earl. O terreiro do Gantois: redes sociais e etnografia histórica no século XIX. Revista de História. São Paulo, n.176, p.01-57, 2017.

SCHAFER, Murray. A afinação do mundo: uma exploração pioneira pela história passada e pelo atual estado do mais negligenciado aspecto do nosso ambiente: a paisagem sonora. São Paulo: Unesp, 2011.

Summary of A música no candomblé: Etnomusicologia no Ilê Axé Opô Aganjú, Bahia

• Prefácio
• Apresentação da edição brasileira
• Introdução
• 1. Breve introdução à história do candomblé
• 2. A pesquisa de campo: estudo de caso de um terreiro
• 3. Uma festa para Oxum
• 4. O sistema religioso do candomblé
• 5. A iniciação
• 6. O orixá e a personalidade do indivíduo
• 7. O fenômeno do transe
• 8. Música e transe
• 9. Estruturas musicais e funções rituais das cantigas
• 10. As letras das cantigas
• 11. Processos de mudança no candomblé
• Considerações finais
• Posfácio
• Referências
• Apêndice A – Análise esquemática
• Apêndice B – Transcrições musicais

Reviewer

Rodrigo Heringer Costa has a PhD in Music and teaches Percussion at the Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB). He is the author of Vibrafonistas no Choro e seus processos de formação: mediações e algumas com contribuições à Educação Formal” (2015). ID LATTES: http://lattes.cnpq.br/3439337724342444; ID ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4264-0386; E-mail: rodrovas@gmail.com.

Para citar esta resenha

LÜHNINNG, Angela. A música no candomblé: etnomusicologia no Ilê Axé Opô Aganjú, Bahia. Salvador: Editora da UFBA, 2022. 50.500 Kb; Epub. Resenha de: COSTA, Rodrigo Heringer. Para tudo se canta. Crítica Historiográfica. Natal, v.4, n.17, maio/jun., 2024. Disponível em <https://www.criticahistoriografica.com.br/en/para-tudo-se-canta-rodrigo-heringer-costas-review-of-the-book-a-musica-no-candomble-etnomusicologia-no-ile-axe-opo-aganju-bahia-by-angela-luhning/>.

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Crítica Historiográfica. Natal, v.4, n. 17, May/June, 2024 | ISSN 2764-2666.