SALVADOR BAHIA CENTRAL
Festas in Bahia
The Sacred & the Profana

Walmir Lima at the Lavagem do Bonfim (or on his way out there, rather)

Festa da Ribeira

...or Segunda-Feira Gorda (Fat Monday), the Monday immediately following the Lavagem do Bonfim.  The barracas (drink stands) around the Igreja do Bonfim pull up and move down the way to the neighborhood of Ribeira, where there is another huge party along the waterfront.

Festa de São Lazaro (Saint Lazarus)

January 25th through 28th.  Celebrated at and around the Igreja de São Lazaro in the neighborhood of Federação.  São Lazaro is syncretized with Omolu -- the orixá governing sickness and health -- and during mass inside the church worshippers receive a banho de pipoca (popcorn bath), a ritual common in candomblé.

Lavagem de Itapoan

Big. Trio elétricos. Takes place in Itapoan (or rather, it stretches along the seacoast from Piatã to Itapoan). This is the last lavagem before Carnival (and it can be rough).

Lavagem de Santo Amaro

Celebrated for over 200 years (originally by slaves) in the town of Santo Amaro, in the Recôncavo (73 km distant from Salvador), this festa is historically set on the first Sunday before the Festa de Nossa Senhora de Purificação, but has grown to encompass the week or so before that Sunday and several days after.  Lots of samba de roda.

João do Boi and his wife Nicinha at the Lavagem de Santo Amaro, 2010

Festa de Yemanjá

February 2nd.  One of Salvador's most beloved (and beautiful) festas, and another exemplar of Salvador's melding of the sacred and not quite profane.  The morning of the 2nd is announced with the sound of fireworks (at 5:00 a.m.), and the faithful arrive early to the seaside neighborhood of Rio Vermelho, bringing flowers and other gifts for Yemanjá, Yoruban goddess of the salt waters.  The offerings are left in the Casa do Peso (the weighing house used by the local fisherman) after the givers have endured the long lines leading up to the repository, the gifts to be gathered up and placed into boats which at 4 p.m. or so will make their way 6 miles out into the waves to place floating, gift-bearing baskets upon the water.  Offerings which do not return to shore are deemed accepted.

Abençoado

This all takes place to the accompaniment of wandering troupes of drummers, street capoeira, and general merriment and abandon.  As the day wears on the festa becomes more and more carnivalesque -- thousands of people pouring in -- inexorably evolving into a dancing, surging street party of gargantuan proportions.

A Festa da Yemanjá

A Festa da Yemanjá (and no, she's not about to sneeze, as my young daughter suggested)

A Festa da Yemanjá

A Festa da Yemanjá

Carnival

... begins on March 3rd in 2011.  This king of festivals is deserving of its own section and is covered here.

Festa de Arembepe

...takes place in Arembepe, 42 km to the north of Salvador, on a determined date during the month of February.

The Bembé do Mercado
in Santo Amaro, Bahia

The Santo Amaro feira, across the street from...

The public terreiro in the market square, prepared for the Bembé.

The Bembé in full swing, on May 13th, 2010

Santo Amaro is here, at the north end of the Baía de Todos os Santos.

The origin of the name is polemical...some say it's a deliberate corruption of candomblé, meant to disguise the fact of what was actually happening in the market square. Another take is that of ethnolinguist Yeda Pessoa de Castro (per Luzia's book below), which is (my translation):

"Bembé is a word which could have two etymologies. One is Fon (Yoruba/Nagô), Bembé meaning "drum"... It could also be of Bantu (Congo/Angola) origin, in this case meaning a religious ceremony, praise, a prayer, as with the word candomblé itself..."

Why the 13th of May? Because it was on that date in 1888 that slavery was abolished in Brazil, by the signature of Princesa Isabel, Princesa Imperial Regente. And it was on the 13th of May in 1889 (some say it was several days earlier) that candomblé priest João Obá stood by the Subae river just off of Santo Amaro's market square and began to play a rhythm which when played in a house of candomblé was/is meant to call down a deity.

Filhas de Santo at the Bembé

One by one others arrived, and began dancing the dances of candomblé in what was the first instance of these religious manifestations being conducted outside a place meant for that purpose. And so a century later the tradition continues in Santo Amaro's market square proper, on the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday incorporating May 13th (although Friday, being the day of Oxalá and a day in which candomblé is never conducted, sees a respite; the other activities which are ancillary to the Bembé, the samba-de-roda, capoeira and maculelê, continue). This year's Bembé honors the sixty years of activity of Mãe Lídia de Oxagian, of terreiro Ilê Axé Omâm, as a mãe-de-santo (head priestess; her image can be seen hanging in a couple of preceding photos of the Bembé).

Maurício Pessoa with friends in Santo Amaro

The stage in the market square sees excellent music provided by musicians in the majority from Santo Amaro, this facet of the Bembé being organized by estimable Maurício Pessoa, music producer par excellence! (Maurício is also organizing the Brazilian music for the upcoming World Cup in South Africa.)

Juliana Ribeiro, roots samba onstage at the Bembé, 2010

Santo Amaro has a famous Veloso (Caetano), but it's the non-famous Veloso there (Rodrigo, Caetano's brother) who, in his capacity as Santo Amaro's secretary of culture, is working to preserve and promote Santo Amaro's deep, wonderful, and historically important heritage. Rodrigo is the festival's executive organizer.

Rodrigo Veloso

The festa has been celebrated every year since with the exceptions of 1958 (when an explosion/fire killed 300 people) and 1989 (when the biggest flood in the history of the city took place).  The festa is now regarded as protecting the city!

Corpus Christi

The 10th of June.  Celebrated in Pelourinho.

Festa de Santo Antônio

The Festa de Santo Antônio falls officially on June 13th. But this being Bahia, it runs for the week before, in the Largo de Santo Antônio, at the far end of the bairro of Santo Antônio além do Carmo, Santo Antônio in effect being feted with beer and peanuts. The Festa de Santo Antônio is a part of the buildup to the Festa de São João. Viva!

* Santo Antônio is the patron saint of matrimony, his assistance sought by young women hoping (praying) for husbands.

São João (Saint John)

June 24th is the official date for the festa, but the buildup runs all through June. This buildup consists of forró (foHO) -- hillbilly music, sometimes of great artistry (Luiz Gonzaga, and his son Gonzaginha, both now deceased, are excellent examples) from Brazil's Northeast -- and dances to forró . The traditional instruments in a forró band are accordeon, hand-drum, and triangle, (sanfona, zabumba, and triângulo), but the music has become very commercialized and you'll hear synthed-up forró on the radio and at the big shows.  For an example of old-time forró played by the genre's giant, put on your straw hat and...

São João is a harvest festival, and in a sense it feels a lot more like Christmas than Brazil's "real" Christmas (or Natal). This is because it's a family-and-friends gathering, the tradition being to head into the interior, to the pequena cidade (small town) one or one's family hails from. If you don't have your own pequena cidade there are plenty of them in the interior promoting parties in June -- putting on shows and hosting quadrilhas (square dancing) for the general pubic. Amargosa is one of the best-known.

Traditional accompaniments to São João are foods made from corn (milho), licor de genipapo (sweet liquor made from the genipapo fruit), bonfires, and firecrackers (the latter tending to go off all during June, to the chagrin of many good citizens!).

Festa de São Pedro (Saint Peter)

This festa in honor of the patron saint of widows and fishermen, held on the 29th of June (more forró), winds up the June celebrations.

2 de Julho, Independência da Bahia (Bahian Independence Day)

The Caboclo

Anniversary of the date of Bahia's independence from Portugal, which came the year after Brazil's declaration in 1822. In the morning the Caboclos (there is a cabocla too) are pulled from Lapinha through Santo Antônio além do Carmo to the Praça Municipal. In the afternoon they are pulled up Avenida 7 de Setembro to Campo Grande, accompanied by brass bands and followed by government representatives.

Festa da Boa Morte, in Cachoeira, Bahia The Festa da Boa Morte is based in and around the date of the Catholic feast of the Assumption (the rise of the Virgin Mary into Heaven), but what makes it resonate so is less the festa's motive and more who is doing the feasting. That would be the Irmandade da Boa Morte (Sisterhood of the Good Death), a lay society founded by members of 19th century Bahian society's lowest social caste, elderly slave women, women who bonded together to help provide for each other in life and in death in a sisterhood which continues to this day. Whoever said "Age before beauty" had obviously never been to Cachoeira in mid-August.

Boa Morte Schedule Listen! Dona Dalva de Cachoeira August 13th (Monday) 7:00 p.m. - Mass in the sisterhood's chapel, in honor of departed sisters. 8:00 p.m. - A procession leaving the sisterhood's chapel and weaving through the streets of Cachoeira. 9:00 p.m. - The Ceia Branca (White Dinner, that is, foodstuffs without dendé, palm oil), for the sisters and invited guests. White clothing is worn. August 14th (Tuesday) 7:00 p.m. - Mass in the sisterhood's chapel. 8:00 p.m. - A procession through the streets of Cachoeira, accompanied by musicians from the city's filarmônicas. August 15th (Wednesday) 5:00 a.m. - A dawn calling with fireworks. 9:00 a.m. - An august meeting of the sisters in their headquarters with Bahia's Governor Jaques Wagner, Ministers, Secretaries, and others of their ilk. August 16th (Thursday) 8:00 p.m. - Distribution of cozido (a boiled dinner of assorted vegetables and meats) and after, samba-de-roda. August 17th (Friday) 8:00 p.m. - Closing ceremonies, with caruru (a meal built around a dish made with okra) and after, samba-de-roda!

Festa de São Roque

Celebrated on the 16th of August in the São Lázaro area of the neighborhood of Federação.

7 de Setembro, Independência do Brasil (Brazilian Independence Day)

Features a military parade down Avenida Sete de Setembro (which happens to be named for this particular date).

São Cosme e São Damião

On the 27th of September, the festa of the two Arab saints, a day when everybody eats carurú, a kind of vegetable stew made from quiabo (okra).  When people say they are having a carurú however they mean that guests are served a traditional plate including this food (and vatapá, among other things ), something representative of people coming together in family and friendship. Cosme and Damião are syncretized with the twin child orixás called Ibejis.

Dia da Baiana (Day of the Baiana)

November 25th.  Participated in by dozens of Baianas traditionally dressed in white hooped lace dresses and colored beads representative of  various orixás, Dia da Baiana opens with a mass at church Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos (Church Our Lady of the Rosary of the Blacks) on the Largo do Pelourinho...and continues with a lunch of traditional Bahian food, samba de roda and other activities at the SENAC restaurant, also located on the largo.  This festa is not traditional, having been started by state tourism agency Bahiatursa in the '80s.

Dia do Samba

December 2nd. Dia do Samba was created by the Câmara Municipal (Salvador City Council) in the 1940s to honor composer Ary Barroso (who was born on this day), the first show in commemoration of the day taking place in 1972 with the participation of Gilberto Gil. Subsequent years have included and continue to include Bahia's greatest sambistas.

Luiz Gonzaga
Born December 13th, 1912 - Died August 2nd, 1989

Rei do Baião		Rei do Ritmo
Luiz Gonzaga and Jackson do Pandeiro, the two Reis -- Kings -- of the Brazilian Northeast

It's interesting that of the two great divisions of the music of Brazil's Northeast -- samba and forró (forró being something of an umbrella term including several different rhythms) -- samba is generally considered as having links to candomblé, while forró seems to be something else entirely...

But here's an epiphany from one of the masters (and hey! If it caught Jackson do Pandeiro by surprise, don't feel bad if it catches you by surprise too!).

"Um dia, em Pernambuco, fui ver um xangô e não é que quando cheguei e fui ouvindo o batuque, eu disse, cá comigo: 'Oxente! Isso é um coco!' E era. Mas um coco com agogô, com atabaques...um coco africano. O coco é mesmo que ser brasileiro: um tem um nariz chato, o outro é preto, outro é branco, mas todos são brasileiros. Assim é o coco."

"One day, in Pernambuco, I went to see a xangô (candomblé) and wouldn't you know it but when I got there and heard the drumming, I said to myself: 'Gee! That's a coco (one of the rhythms utilized in forró)!' And it was. But a coco with agogô (rhythm bell), with atabaques (conga-like drums)...an African coco. Coco is like being Brazilian, one has a wide nose, the other is black, the other white, but they're all Brazilians. That's what coco is like."

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