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The way of Alabê - Rhythms of the orixás and the Brazilian music" taught by Vitor da Trindade and Elis Trindade

The second edition of the course on culture and university extension entitled The way of Alabê - Rhythms of the orixás and Brazilian music, promoted and held at the Sound and Image Laboratory in Anthropology (LISA) and at the Popular Theatre Solano Trindade (TPST), with support from the Department of Anthropology at USP. The course was coordinated by Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji, professor at USP’s Department of Anthropology (DA-USP) and coordinator of LISA, and taught by Vitor Israel Trindade de Souza, musician, master in ethnomusicology from the School of Communications and Arts (ECA) of USP, president and artistic director of Teatro Popular Solano Trindade, and by Elis Sibere dos Santos Monte Trindade de Souza, Afro-Brazilian dance teacher, choreographer and cultural coordinator of Teatro Popular Solano Trindade.

The activities took place between 12/09 and 14/11 in a face-to-face manner and were based on the Raquel Trindade method, which is born with the ancestors of the Trindade family and unites theory and practice, and the motion proposal, sound and well-being as epistemology. The course addressed the rhythms of orixás, dances and manifestations, as well as the influence of these elements in Brazilian musicality, with reference to instrumentalists and priests of the orixás. 

Ogans and Musicality

Vítor and Elis addressed the functions of the ogan, instrumentation, sound and dances in rituals, parties and ceremonies. The communications were based, especially, on the role of music and the ringtones in the cult to the orixás, its importance, particularities and complexities around the different sonorizations, ways of playing and occasions. Among the roles highlighted, there is the ogan alabê, which gives name to the course and also the book Oganilu, The Path of Alabê and O Ogan Alabê, Priest and Musician, authored by Vitor da Trindade. The Ogan alabê is responsible for the maintenance and conservation of sacred instruments, as well as for playing in moments of rituals and festivals.

As Ogan Alabê Omoloyê of the Ilê Axé Jagun, with the help of Elis, Vítor demonstrated some orixás touches, their sonority, particularities and representative forms of dances. Besides highlighting the uniqueness of the atabaque in ceremonies, because it is he who gives the course and rhythm to the cult, should be played only by specialized people and be careful and prepared for each type of event.

The initiative supports the dissemination of ancestral knowledge and African matrix, institutionalized by Law 10.639/03, which makes compulsory the teaching of "Afro-Brazilian History and Culture" in elementary and high school.

For more information about the activities, visit the site: https://sce.fflch.usp.br/node/5676. To know more about the Popular Theatre Solano Trindade, visit the social networks of the theater by link: TPST.

It is with great satisfaction that we communicate that the doctoral thesis "Ijã Mytyli: The Manoki and the Mỹky in their new audiovisual-stories" of the researcher André Luís Lopes Neves, under the guidance of professor Renato Sztutman, received the USP Outstanding Thesis Award in the area of knowledge of Innovation.

André defended his PhD thesis in Social Anthropology at the University of São Paulo (USP) in 2023 and, since 2008, has been researching and working with the peoples Manoki and Mỹky, in the state of Mato Grosso. In addition, since 2011, has been conducting audiovisual workshops with five other indigenous peoples of Brazil, with activities involving production, filming, editing and directing videos in a shared way. 

During his doctoral research, André produced two feature films and five short films co-directed by indigenous people, which are part of his thesis. Besides method, the use of audiovisual resources was a form of mediation of the study and presentation of its results. The researcher chose to use audiovisual tools so that the research could be better shared with groups, as well as to offer a form of counterpart for communities. 

The methodological proposal of the study was to displace the principle "evans-pritchardiano", according to which the anthropologist should study what he finds in the field, to choose to study and deepen in the topics that indigenous filmmakers choose to film in the field, above all the elements that are edited and included in the films. Several subjects were topics of the anthropological research, such as the 'ãjãí' parties, which are the ball games (a new theme in the ethnographic literature), and the rituals of initiation of boys to the house of the spirits Jeta.

With the increase of interest of young people in audiovisual production, during the research was created the Ijã Mytyli Collective of Cinema Manoki and Mỹky, as a way of continuity and dynamization and indigenous protagonism of the activities that were already happening, above all the training of new filmmakers within the communities, directors who tell their own stories with their equipment of capture and editing. 

The film 

The uses, meanings and agencies attributed by the Manoki and Mỹky to audiovisual resources have shown that they operate as amplified cosmopolitical mediators of interspecific relations. The cinemas (in plural) made by indigenous peoples have offered a viable way to get to know their worlds closely and learn how to better care for our relations between humans and non-humans that co-inhabit our planet.

The award included theses defended between January 1 and December 31, 2023, which within their areas of expertise, dialogue with the areas distributed in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Some of the films produced are available on LISA’s website

Directed by Aurélio Prates and Kelwin Marques, the short is the first editing exercise based on images taken in São Paulo and Recife. In the royal processions of the Nations of Maracatu, in the middle of the 20th century, the figure of the Baiana began to be occupied by transvestites, chickens, and other bodies for which femininity was not presupposed. The film seeks to present the relationship of the Bahianas Ricas do maracatu with their ancestries, which can occur both from the memory of the older Bahian women, as well as from contact with more-than-human females such as the Yabás, the Mestras de Jurema, Pombagiras, etc.

Kelwin is a master's student in Social Anthropology at the University of São Paulo (USP), supervised by professor Sylvia Caiuby Novaes, and a researcher at the Visual Anthropology Group (GRAVI). He has experience in the areas of photography, visual anthropology, anthropology of Afro-Brazilian populations and ethnomusicology.

The award event takes place between November 11th and 14th, 2024 as part of the John Monteiro Anthropology Journeys at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP).

In the 2024 edition, the Journal of Audiovisual Ethnomusicology (JAVEM) magazine presents a curation of five films that explore the multisensory dimensions of the interaction between music, culture and multimedia, in addition to standing out for the search for interactive methodologies, the exploration of sensory experiences and of the complex socio-political worlds in which music is present. Among the selected works, the new edition of JAVEM features two productions carried out by researchers from the Musical Anthropology Research Group (PAM) at the University of São Paulo (USP).

Open Gasy presents the challenges a Malagasy musician faces in the French World Music scene, the complexities of the work, the need for adaptation and the complexities of musical authenticity. Directed by Yuri Prado, the film is available on the website of the USP Image and Sound in Anthropology Laboratory (LISA). Yuri Prado is a postdoctoral student in Social Anthropology at USP, supervised by professor Rose Satiko Hikiji, having completed a research internship at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), in Paris. Graduated in Music (Composition) from the Department of Music at USP, he has a Direct Doctorate from the same institution, with a research internship in ethnomusicology at Université Paris VIII.

The film Toré, directed by Alice Villela, presents a visceral experience of spiritual and community practices, working on the role of indigenous cultural identity and its resistance strategies through musicality and dance and the strengthening of community ties. Alice Villela completed her post-doctorate in Social Anthropology at USP, also supervised by Professor Rose Satiko. He worked for more than ten years with the Asuriní people of Xingu, in Pará, developing master's and doctoral research on image and shamanism. Currently, he is carrying out research linked to the struggle for land and the music of the Kariri-Xocó, an indigenous people from Alagoas. Researcher and director of documentary films with indigenous peoples, she works as a collaborator at the Cisco Laboratory, having directed several documentaries such as Acontecências (2009), Toré (2022) and Na Volta do Mundo (2022).

Based at LISA, since 2011, PAM has been dedicated to studying the dialogues between anthropology and music within the scope of the research line “Expressive Forms and Regimes of Knowledge” of the Department of Anthropology at USP. The line of research deals with the relationships involved in different regimes of knowledge production and aesthetic expression.

From October 3rd to 7th, 2024, the University of São Paulo (USP) and the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) hosted the "International Study Symposium - The Techniques of the Body: 90 Years of Marcel Mauss’s Essay."

Coordinated by Guilherme Moura Fagundes, professor at USP's Department of Anthropology (DA) and vice-coordinator of the Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA), along with Rafael Antunes Almeida from the University for International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (UNILAB), the event marked 90 years since the publication of Marcel Mauss’s renowned essay "The Techniques of the Body." It also saw the launch of the Anthropology, Environment, and Biotechnodiversity Collective (CHAMA), a study group at USP's Department of Anthropology led by Professor Guilherme Moura Fagundes.

The symposium featured three prominent specialists on the "technological" dimension of Mauss's work—focusing literally on the study of technique: Perig Pitrou, researcher at CNRS and director of the Maison Française d'Oxford research center; Carlos Sautchuk, coordinator of the Laboratory of Anthropology of Science and Technology at the University of Brasília (LACT/UnB); and Nathan Schlanger from the École Nationale des Chartes (ENC, Paris).

Discussions compared how Mauss's essay has been received and its effects on the consolidation of the anthropology of technology in Brazil and France. This field of study seeks to understand technical phenomena from a symmetrical perspective, overcoming the dichotomy between modern and traditional societies, while addressing interactions between humans and non-humans in life-making activities. These insights are central to addressing our current ecological crisis, where human actions on the planet are often reduced to ideas like "nature's destruction" or "domination of living beings," overshadowing the paleontological continuity between technical and vital phenomena.

The first session of the symposium, hosted in the LISA auditorium, was titled "Life and Movement: Impacts and Perspectives of Body Techniques Between Brazil and France." It opened with remarks from Professor Guilherme Moura Fagundes, was moderated by Rafael Almeida, and included presentations by Carlos Sautchuk and Perig Pitrou. The session aimed to show how Marcel Mauss's essay condenses various inflections of his thought, particularly regarding materiality and the vital dimension in shaping social life, offering a research agenda that resonates with contemporary critiques of the nature-culture divide.

In addition to the opening panel, the symposium featured three lectures by Professor Nathan Schlanger. The first, titled "Techniques of the Body and Technical Bodies—Marcel Mauss on Industry and Craft," was delivered in French with simultaneous translation and moderated by Professor Guilherme Moura Fagundes. It drew on archival materials by Marcel Mauss to provide intellectual and institutional details about the context in which his thoughts on technique emerged. The second lecture, given in English and titled "André Leroi-Gourhan: From Material Civilizations to Technical Behavior," was moderated by Eduardo Neves (MAE/USP) and focused on Schlanger’s recent book about ethnologist and archaeologist André Leroi-Gourhan (1911-1986), a student of Mauss and contemporary of Claude Lévi-Strauss at the Collège de France. The final lecture addressed "Learning in the Paleolithic: Technical Gestures, Operational Chains, and Skill-Building in Prehistory," presented by Joana Cabral (IFCH/Unicamp) with moderation and translation by Chantal Medaets (FE/Unicamp).

The symposium was organized by the Anthropology, Environment, and Biotechnodiversity Collective at USP (CHAMA), the Laboratory of Anthropology of Science and Technology at UnB (LACT), and the French Consulate in São Paulo. In addition to LISA, the event was supported by the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (MAE-USP), the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at USP (PPGAS-USP), and the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at UNICAMP (PPGAS-Unicamp).

To view the event’s full program, visit the LISA website: https://lisa.fflch.usp.br/node/13058. Recordings of the symposium sessions are available on CHAMA’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Chama-USP. To learn more about the essay "The Techniques of the Body," visit USP’s Anthropology Encyclopedia: https://ea.fflch.usp.br/obra/tecnicas-do-corpo.

The film São Palco - Afropolitan City will be shown on Wednesday, October 23, 2024, at the University of Oxford.

Shambuyi Wetu, Yannick Delass, Lenna Bahule, Edoh Amassize and other Afropolitan artists occupy Sampa and the world with their diasporic creativity.

Synopsis: What do African artists who arrive in Brazil in recent years carry with them on their journey? How do the African diasporas dialogue – the new creative diaspora and the one that turned the Atlantic into a cemetery? What stages are occupied, built, filled with the performances of artists who cross the ocean? Ancestry updated in performances that construct an Afropolitan present in a metropolis where it is necessary to be bold, to color the gray. São Palco – Cidade Afropolitana presents the city of São Paulo as a meta-stage occupied by artists from Togo, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, among other African nations, in dialogue with the Brazilian population and its openings, contradictions and tensions.

On September 17th and 18th, 2024, the USP School of Communications and Arts (ECA) hosted the symposium “Corpo-archive: practices, memories and audiovisual imaginations”, organized by Delfina Cabrera, Cecilia Gil Mariño, Carola Saavedra (UzK), Peter W. Schulze (PBI-UzK/Mecila) and Mateus Araújo (ECA-USP), with the support of the Postgraduate Program in Audiovisual Media and Processes at ECA-USP and the Maria Sibylla Merian Center Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America (Mecila), a center dedicated to investigating the interactions between coexistence and inequality in Latin America. The event brought together archivists, curators and researchers to debate the role of archives in preserving marginalized stories and memories. In a scenario of growing discussions about memory, preservation and representation, the event highlighted the relevance of so-called "smaller audiovisual archives", a concept proposed by researcher Juana Suárez.

The symposium addressed the need to question hegemonic narratives and promote a transregional dialogue on archival practices in Latin America. The central proposal of the event was to investigate how collaborative practices and decolonial thinking can contribute to the reformulation of audiovisual memories. In focus were issues of circulation, access and heritage preservation policies, emphasizing the violence and absences that mark the construction of archives, as well as the possibility of reimagining these spaces through new perspectives.

The Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA-USP)  was invited to form a table next to the Edgard Leuenroth Archive (AEL), at Unicamp. Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji, coordinator of LISA, and Leonardo Fuzer, responsible for the Laboratory's collections, participated in the discussions together with Mário Medeiros, coordinator of AEL. The meeting between the two institutions provided a rich exchange on archival practices and the preservation of memories in a Latin American context, expanding understanding of the importance of collaborative projects.

Founded in 1991 by Sylvia Caiuby Novaes, LISA has established itself as a reference in the production and preservation of audiovisual materials. The laboratory has a technical structure that includes collection reserves, auditorium and editing islands, and houses collections of images, videos and sound files related to research with indigenous populations and other communities. Throughout its history, LISA has also stood out for its commitment to making its collections accessible to the public and to the populations portrayed, reinforcing its mission of collaborating with the communities involved.

The issue of accessibility of collections was one of the most discussed points during the symposium. Since 2004, LISA has been committed to digitizing its vast audiovisual collection, an ongoing process that aims to preserve historical materials such as paper photographs and reel-to-reel tapes. Currently, the laboratory's collection includes around 2,000 films (mainly documentaries, medium and feature films), 24,500 images (including photos, stickers and glass plates) and 700 hours of sound recordings (cassette tapes, records, CDS and digital files). The majority of the photographic and phonographic collection is made up of records with indigenous peoples.

In addition to its preservationist function, LISA is consolidated as a space for the audiovisual production of ethnographic films, made by researchers linked to the Department of Anthropology, from scientific initiation to post-doctorate. the. Throughout its history, LISA's audiovisual production has explored a wide range of issues, such as rituals, migrations and cultural practices, in different contexts.

At the seminar, LISA's project to reinforce collaborative approaches in audiovisual production was discussed, through support for projects developed in partnership with the researched populations. These initiatives, by promoting the active participation of communities, demonstrate the laboratory's commitment to returning the materials produced to those who are the focus of their research. The digitalization of the collection also aims to increase access to it by the populations portrayed. This way, they can access, share and reframe their stories.

The “Corpo-archivo” symposium brought a deep reflection on the transformative role of smaller archives, not only as repositories of memory, but as active tools in cultural resistance and the democratization of access to knowledge. By bringing together institutions such as LISA and AEL, the event promoted a space for essential dialogue to rethink the ways of preserving and circulating audiovisual memories, especially in the Latin American context.

LISA's participation in the symposium reinforced its pioneering role and its ongoing commitment to the production and preservation of audiovisual archives, expanding the debate on the voices and narratives of indigenous populations and other communities. The laboratory's work reflects an approach that goes beyond traditional conservation, promoting the return and active participation of communities in the construction of their own archives, in an ethical and collaborative practice.

Through initiatives such as the digitization of collections and collaborative audiovisual productions, LISA continues to position itself as an innovative space in visual anthropology, helping to shape new ways of imagining and preserving memories.

To find out more about the institutions involved, visit:

LISA-USP: https://lisa.fflch.usp.br/
AEL: https://ael.ifch.unicamp.br/
MECILA: https://mecila.net/pt/

This Tuesday, 24/09, we screened the film São Palco - Cidade Afropolitana at Usp Ribeirão Preto. On Wednesday, @shambuyiwetu and Rose Satiko participate in the @dra.francirosy course.

The August 2024 edition of Revista Pesquisa FAPESP mentions Alice Villela's postdoctoral research, carried out at the Department of Anthropology at the University of São Paulo, under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Rose Satiko, within the scope of the thematic project funded by FAPESP entitled “Local Musicar: New trails for ethnomusicology”.

The FAPESP article addresses the growth of indigenous film production in recent years in Brazil, which has inspired several studies. Among the main purposes of the productions are demands for land and rights.

Alice Villela and Hidalgo Romero directed the film Toré as part of the project “O Musicar Local: New trails for ethnomusicology”. Released in 2022 and lasting 18 minutes, the film portrays the Kariri-Xocó indigenous people, who live on the banks of the São Francisco River, in Alagoas. The group has a place of strength in its traditional songs and rituals to resist a colonial history of violence and invisibility. Stripped of their language and territory, expropriated throughout Brazilian history, in 2015 they occupied a portion of their ancestral lands, in a movement called Retomada. This film accompanied a day of immersion with the Kariri-Xocó in the reclaimed lands. They sing to keep resisting and they resist to keep singing.

The full article from Revista Pesquisa FAPESP on the website: https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/em-destaque-crescente-no-pais-filmes-indigenas-inspiram-estudos/