XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Somos Rainhas: Black Brazilian Women, [Black] Feminist Thought and the Contemporary Music of empowerment

• In Event: Intersections of Race and Gender in Brazilian Music

Abstract

This presentation explores the strategies of various 21st century Black Brazilian female musicians and singer songwriters to construct a space whereby they are able to develop a complex subjectivity and agency as a counter to invisibilizing national discourses that as Sueli Carneiro has noted, are part of “. . .um elenco de estratégias que têm determinado a invisiblidade do negro nas diferentes esferas da vida nacional, através dos conhecidos mecanismos socialmente instituídos de discriminação racial.” (14) From Larissa Luz’s celebration and reclamation of the power of Black female figures such as Carolina María de Jesus in “Letras negras” , to Bia Ferreira’s assertion of the Black queer female agency , Helen Nzinga’s declaration of the history of Black female subjectivity and Doralyce’s musical counter narrative to Eurocentric standards of beauty, these contemporary artists cross musical boundaries while reclaiming histories of Black Brazilian female subjectivity. The result is the creation of a lyrical and musical canvas that becomes a space where their lived experience as Black women in Brazil is placed in center stage, creating a hybrid embodiment of the tenets of Conceição Evaristo’s concept of “escrevivência” , as a reclaiming of writing and orality, “. . .onde nos apropriamos desses signos gráficos, do valor da escrita, sem esquecer a pujança da oralidade de nossos e das nossas ancestrais.: (26) , while also asserting their ‘lugar de fala’ , the rejection, as Carneiro notes, of “. . .traditional historiography and rejecting the structuring of knowledge that are a consequence of higher social hierarchies.” (64)

Author

• Lesley Feracho, University of Georgia