Lecture/Demonstration: Afro-Brazilian Music and Dance of Backlands Bahia

Lecture/Demonstration: Afro-Brazilian Music and Dance of Backlands Bahia

Speaker: Mestre Cláudio Costa

In this lecture-demonstration, Mestre Cláudio will introduce participants to Afro-Brazilian music and dance practices of his region, the backlands of Bahia. He will also discuss the significance of black popular culture to the black resistance movement in Brazil. No dance or music experience is necessary. Come prepared to move and participate!

Mestre Cláudio, born in 1966, is known as one of the greatest living master-teachers of capoeira Angola, a fight-dance-game played to music and song. He hails from Feira de Santana, a market hub in the interior of Bahia, Brazil. There in the early 1980s he founded his group of capoeira Angola, called the Angoleiros do Sertão (Capoeira Angola Players of the Backlands), which today has satellite groups across Brazil and Europe. Mestre Cláudio has dedicated his life to mastering, teaching and sustaining black cultural expressions of his region. His distinctive movement aesthetic and singing style have made him a much sought-after teacher, and today he travels the world giving workshops of capoeira Angola and rural samba, a singing-dancing-drumming form.

(photo credit: Elzinha de Abreu)

 

This event is co-sponsored with American Culture Studies and the Department of African and African-American Studies.

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