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Maracautu is a royal court.

The coronation of the king and queen of the Congo.

We have the king and the queen,
the prince and the princess.

The Dama do Passo,
who carries the calunga,

which symbolizes all the
spirit of our nation.

It protects the nation.

Then there are the Catarinas
who protect the court,

Then there are the agbés.

Then the drums: the snare,
the gonguê, the alfaia.

Maracatu is a court
and a procession.

The drums of freedom

In elementary school,
I spent every recess

either locked in the classroom
or the bathroom.

People pulled my hair.

My mom would put my hair
into a bun on the side,

and I hated it because
kids would pull it so much.

They cursed me:
burnt banana...

ape...

ugly, stuff like that.

I thought I was stupid.

Incapable.

That's all I heard.

The teachers said, "she can't learn."

"She's stupid. You're stupid."

You start to see yourself that way.

When I was six, in first grade,

The teacher talked about cultures.

So there was a German boy,

and she said his culture was German.

And a girl whose grandparents
came from Europe,

and that was her culture.

I didn't think I had a culture.

When you live in the favela,
they look at you strange.

The police can only see
the bad side.

We're black, in favelas,
we practice African religions.

When I was a kid, I would
dance at home.

But black bodies are so sexualized,

that I spent half of my teenager years

closing myself off so I
wouldn't be attacked.

Some days, I'm just so bummed out.

I walk on the street and say to myself,
"Wow, am I sad!"

And then I get to the maracatu
or to the escola de samba,

And people are so happy.

The shine.

The beautiful clothes.

It animates me.

I get happy again.

We do some dances where we
play, spin, jump.

Sometime we throw the agbé
in the air and then catch it.

And then we spin and spin...

I just feel... freedom.

So, what's cool about playing and instrument
in the maracatu,

is to be connected to the
ancestral spirits.

And with the orixás of
the African diaspora.

It's like I'm saying "hi",

From here.

"Here I am, representing you."

I had been taught to demonize
afro-Brazilian religions.

"That's witchcraft!"

Maracatu helped me to presignify
that relationship

with African religion and the orixás.

Maracatu brought me that negritude,

that love...

I don't even know the word.

To be able to recognize myself as black.

To recognize the cultural practices
of my ancestors.

Maracatu breaks those prejudices!

We can mold these kids through culture.

Their minds and their spirits.

Maracatu brings that:

That you free yourself.

Hey everyone from Tamboritá!

Time to get here to the Barra to play!

I started to play drums when I was five.

The maracatu was based out of my house.

Estrela Brilhante rehearsed in my backyard.

Our play was in that world.

I was playing drums in the rituals
by the time I was eight.

It's a community.

Everyone grows up together.

We look after the kids together.

A mom can't make it to pick
up the kids at school?

Someone else does it.

Everyone helps with homework...

It's because of the sense of family.

If I think about my support network here,

It's who I met in the Maracatu.

I don't have a problem with being a mother.

I have a problem with the way
we're forced to live maternity.

Maracatu gives me to chance to
live another kind of motherhood.

To think motherhood in a way that
isn't based only on solitude.

Being a mother is hard.

Mothering a teenager
is even more complicated.

And if you don't have culture,
music, other people, other voices...

it's even harder.

Andressa doesn't always find answers with me.

But she will find it in music,
instruments, dance.

It literally changed my life.

I'm now coordinating the agbés
in the Nação Guarani samba school,

here in the city of Palhoça.

First I went to talk to the president
of the samba school.

Then the artistic director.

They said I could try to introduce the
abgé into the samba.

So then I researched the instrument.

How to make it. It's history.

I called everyone I could think of,
brought them to rehearsals.

And the day the whole thing came together,

here I show up with a huge crowd.

We took it on the avenue.

It was judged the best part of the procession.

I felt so satisfied!

I'd always been interested in directing,

but I never wanted to direct this group.

So when I started to direct,
without the strict hierarchy,

without imposing myself.

The result is I'm often questioned.

That doesn't happen with men.

I ask other women musicians
and they say the same thing.

Men feel comfortable to challenge everything.

Sometime in the moment you're playing!

One time I was playing
on a big stage downtown,

when some due shows up and says,

"Hey, I play that drum!"

"You need to use the second
drumstick more!"

I think about my niece Andressa.

She's very shy.

I used to see her shoulders curved in.

I'm still shy, but it used to be much more.

I wasn't able to meet new people, make friends.

But Maracatu is a collective.

It allows me to let go.

You get together with people you know

but you also meet new people
from new places.

They come from far away,
and you meet them.

My mother is a maid.
Her whole life.

And when I would come home empowered

and explain how I would set limits,
say "no",

and refuse to accept that everyday oppression,

she started to see herself in me.

And she changed her behavior.

My niece is the same.

The gonguê is the only instrument
that circulated through the percussion.

I sing and dance to show
"This is Maracatu"

"We're here to show who we are!"

"We're smiles, we are joy!"

I think about my nephew.

When he was elected prince of the maracatu,

he showed up at school and told everyone.

"I'm a prince!"

and now he doesn't even have to say it

He loves himself without
saying he's a prince.

One day in pre-school,
the teacher was talking about black people.

So I told her about maracatu,
which is full of black people.

So she asked me to bring the agbé.

So I could show it to everyone.

She asked me to go with the
clothes from the maracatu.

Everyone was amazed!

They didn't even know what to say.

They asked me what my favorite song was.

I I said it was the one about the staircase.

Go down the staircase
on 21st street,

Flag waving,
The Brilliant Star calls me.

Star, star, you speak like thunder.

Star, star, you are my battalion.

And then it goes.

Adrielle used to say, "I'm not black."

And I said, "Your skin isn't
exactly the color of mine,

but you are black like me."

As many times as I explained,

she didn't understand.

But in Tamboritá, there are
so many other people.

They don't need to say anything.

But my daughters see it.

They live it.

Today, my daughters can talk with you
about racism,

about what it means to be black.

I only started to like myself at 30 year old,

as a black woman.

How much I suffered until then!

Imagine a like spent not liking yourself.

I learned to enjoy walking
in a long skirt.

I started to like myself.

To like my black features.

I saw that the problem wasn't mine.

Maracatu showed me that the problem
was in society.

It wasn't my fault.

I can be a Catarina,
circling the percussion.

I can even slide through it.

If I don't get in the way of others:
the alfaias, the agbés.

If I don't impede others from playing.

Isn't life and society like a procession?

People had never looked at me
with admiration or respect.

Identification.

Other people started to look
at me diffeerntly

when I learned to look
at myself differently.

They communicated with me in a new way.

They started to listen to
what I had to say.

That's why isn't so important

to show African cultural
practices to kids.

So they don't have to suffer what I did.

So they can like themselves from the beginning,

to like this culture.

When we access Maracatu,
we begin to love ourselves.

It's like you're a bird.

You spend your childhood in the nest
learning all of those things,

and now you can fly.

When I play,
I feel like I'm in the clouds.

Today I know my origin
is Yoruba.

Yoruba, Yoruba,
I know it.

I know where I'm from,

but where will I go?

I see art as a way to piece bubbles.

Through the songs, we learn our history.

I never learned it I school textbooks.

Through black culture:
maracatu, jongo, axé, capoeira,

we get to know our history.

We make it possible to be
who we want to be.

When empowered black children,
making black culture,

put themselves in a different place
in society,

different from what my mother or I lived,

it gives hope that in the future,

we'll have a society
that's at least a little different.