Arts and Sciences in African Perspective

ISSN: 2446-6549
|Seção: Artigo|
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18764/2446-6549.e202040
ARTS AND SCIENCES IN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE: thoughts on

the unfinished African Revolution
ARTES E CIÊNCIAS EM PERSPECTIVA AFRICANA: reflexões sobre a
Revolução Africana inacabada
ARTES Y CIENCIAS DESDE UNA PERSPECTIVA AFRICANA: reflexiones

sobre la Revolución Africana inacabada
Kamai Freire
M.A. in Musicology from the UNESCO Chair for Transcultural Music Studies at the Weimar-Jena
Institute of Musicology (Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar; Friedrich Schiller Universität
Jena). Bachelor in Composition from the Music Department at the University of Brasília.
kamaifreire@gmail.com / http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1721-346X
Recebido para avaliação em 20/08/2020; Aprovado para publicação em 28/12/2020.
ABSTRACT
This article results from a master thesis in Musicology (Panafricanism and African Revolution in
Brazilian Music), which analyzed the role of Music within the anti-racist and anti-colonialist struggle
in Brazil. Among numerous conclusions, from more broader remarks to more specific ones, the
bottom line of the analyses is that Music, although crucial to the anti-colonialist efforts in Brazil, is
still generally situated under the epistemological frameworks of the European colonizer when it
comes to the hegemonic societal structure and dynamics. In short, the revolutionary individuals and
collectives – who, more or less successfully, retain or reclaim their African ancestry as to the holistic
inseparability between arts, sciences, spirituality, philosophy, pedagogy, medicine, economy,
politics, and daily life – have been long buried under the hegemonic structure of European
episteme. Under such euro-colonialist episteme, Arts and Music cringe into mere embellishment
luxuries and commodities that gradually strangle their original African potencies and potentials,
often undermined by invisibilization, appropriation, folklorization, commoditization, co-option,
and annihilation of its physical and cultural bodies. This article offers some insights upon this grave
issue galvanizing such debate and, most of all, pointing out how the Academia in general and the
Social Sciences in particular should tackle the responsibility for decolonial changes (or colonialist
maintenance) in this paradigm.
Keywords: Epistemology; Epistemicide; Social Sciences; Music; Decoloniality; African Revolution.
RESUMO
Este artigo resulta da tese de mestrado, Panafricanismo e Revolução Africana na Música Brasileira,
que analisou o papel da Música na luta antirracista e anticolonialista no Brasil. Dentre numerosas
conclusões, das mais amplas às mais específicas, um ponto importante nestas análises é que a
Música, embora crucial para os esforços anticolonialistas no Brasil, ainda está, em geral, situada sob
os esquadros epistemológicos euro-colonialista quando se trata das estruturas e dinâmicas societais
hegemônicas. Em resumo, os indivíduos e coletivos revolucionários – que, com mais ou menos
sucesso, mantêm ou recuperam sua ancestralidade africana quanto à inseparabilidade holística entre
artes, ciências, espiritualidade, filosofia, pedagogia, medicina, economia, política e cotidiano – estão
desde sempre soterrados sob a estrutura hegemônica da episteme europeia. Sob esta episteme euro-
colonialista, as Artes e a Música se reduzem a meros enfeites de luxo e mercadorias que
gradualmente estrangulam suas próprias potências e potenciais originais africanos, comumente
Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 1

|Arts and Sciences in african perspective: thoughts on the unfinished African Revolution|
|Kamai Freire|
mitigados pela invisibilização, apropriação, folclorização, comoditização, cooptação, aniquilamento,

e esvaziamento de seus corpos físicos e culturais. Este artigo oferece algumas ideias sobre esta
grave questão, galvanizando o debate e, acima de tudo, propondo como a Academia em geral e as
Ciências Sociais em particular devem assumir responsabilidade pelas mudanças decoloniais (ou
mantimentos colonialistas) neste paradigma.
Palavras-chave: Epistemologia; Epistemicídio; Ciências Sociais; Música; Decolonalidade;

Revolução Africana.
RESUMEN
Este artículo es el resultado de la tesis de maestría, Panafricanismo y revolución africana en la
música brasileña, que analizó el papel de la música en la lucha antirracista y anticolonialista en
Brasil. Entre las numerosas conclusiones, desde las más amplias hasta las más específicas, un punto
importante de estos análisis es que la música, aunque sea crucial para los esfuerzos anticolonialistas
en Brasil, sigue estando generalmente situada bajo los escuadrones epistemológicos
eurocolonialistas cuando se trata de estructuras y dinámicas societales hegemónicas. En resumen,
los individuos y colectivos revolucionarios – que mantienen o recuperan con mayor o menor éxito
su ascendencia africana en lo que respecta a la inseparabilidad holística entre las artes, las ciencias, la
espiritualidad, la filosofía, la pedagogía, la medicina, la economía, la política y la vida cotidiana –
siempre han quedado enterrados bajo la estructura hegemónica de la episteme europea. Bajo esta
episteme eurocolonialista, las Artes y la Música son reducidas a meros adornos de lujo y mercancías
que gradualmente estrangulan sus propios poderes y potenciales africanos originales, comúnmente
mitigados por la invisibilización, la apropiación, la folklorización, la commoditización, la
cooptación, la aniquilación y el vaciado de sus cuerpos físicos y culturales. Este artículo ofrece
algunas ideas sobre esta grave cuestión, galvanizando el debate y, sobre todo, proponiendo cómo la
Academia en general y las Ciencias Sociales en particular deberían asumir la responsabilidad por los
cambios decoloniales (o por los suministros colonialistas) en este paradigma.
Palabras clave: Epistemología; Epistemicidio; Ciencias Sociales; Música; Decolonialidad;

Revolución Africana.
INTRODUCTION
This paper derives from the analyses of the master thesis in musicology entitled
“Panafricanism and African Revolution in Brazilian Music” (FREIRE, 2020b), which
investigated the use of Music within the anti-racist and anti-colonialist struggle in Brazil.
The investigation ultimately applied Kwame Ture’s understanding of the difference
between mobilization and organization (CARMICHAEL, 1971; THELWELL, 2003) as an
analytical paradigm to propose archetypes of how Music has been utilized in the African
Struggle. The result was: the theorization of four archetypes of music as mobilizing force
(affirmation, awareness-raising, counter-intelligence, counter-humiliation) presenting Luiz
Carlos da Vila, Candeia, Lazzo Matumbi, Racionais MC’s, and Bia Ferreira as examples;
and one archetype of music as organizing force (total organization) presenting Bloco Afro Ilê
Aiyê as example.
One of the main remarks throughout these analyses was that absolutely none of the
central issues of the anti-racist/anti-colonialist struggle was to any extent absent in

|Kamai Freire|
Brazilian music. For the reader less acquainted with the intricacies of this Struggle, it might
seem that there is not much to unearth nor to discuss when it comes to racism and
colonialism, but those who know better know that there are dozens of aspects, facets,
factors, vectors, processes, dynamics, challenges, and obstacles to be thoroughly
investigated and broadly debated if one wants to help anyhow in forwarding the historic
efforts to undermine the racist-colonialist structure (CLARKE, 1979; 1991). An important
contribution of this research was to verify that every fact and concept underpinning the
anti-racist/anti-colonialist agenda – which abound in academic, political, social, and military
works in different epochs worldwide – has been somehow dealt with through Music in
Brazil. Although this research focused solely on the Brazilian context, one can conjecture
that, to a certain extent, the same is true to Music and Struggle in any African “nation”
within both the African continent and the Diaspora due to the many sociological
similarities between territories of continental and diasporic Africa.
In plain words, the aforementioned practical and conceptual pillars of the anti-
racist/anti-colonialist agenda are: public policies of affirmative action; social precariousness
and systematic exclusion in general; stigmatization; impoverishment; unemployment;
socioeconomic and socio-political sabotages; educational obstacles; miseducation;
epistemicide; identity issues; cognitive ruptures; colorism; self-esteem and empowerment;
cultural assimilation and appropriation; autonomy and self-determination; culturalist
approach versus political approach; reformism versus revolution; deconstruction of the
Brazilian cultural identity implemented by a modernist-eugenist agenda; state terrorism;
mass incarceration; genocide; police brutality; nationalism (separatism); quilombismo
(marronage); inter-racial relationship (pejoratively nicknamed palmitagem); opportunism and
co-option by white leftism; political sabotage (disarticulation of the struggle); armed
struggle; non-pacifism and legitimacy of counter-violence; and so on, among so many other
issues. All these facts are duly present to certain extent in different genres of Brazilian
music (FREIRE, 2020b, p. 143). One might initially (and pretentiously!) assume that all
these complex facts and concepts are present in Music because they came from the
Academia “down” to politics, and from politics “down” to the public, and from the public
“down” to music products. But as a matter of fact, many of these concepts actually
circulate quite horizontally and simultaneously between all these social spheres, and some
of them even travel the other way around, being the Academia actually one of the last ones
(if not the last) to join the discussion.
Having understood that Music has the same strategic relevance that – if not more
relevant than – the Social Sciences have within the Struggle, it becomes actually clearer that

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Music is indeed a Social Science. And once faced with this understanding (and knowing it
to be non-correspondent to the place of Music and Arts within the euro-hegemonic
Academia), it is imperative to seek epistemological constructs in which the assertion that
“Music is a Social Science” might be true, and then seek to comprehend how this holistic
music-episteme has been buried under euro-colonialist worldviews and ontologies –
knowing the Academia,1 of course, The House of the hegemonic euro-colonialist Social
Sciences par excellence, to be the main client and perpetrator of such epistemicide crime,
both historically and contemporarily. In this sense, to cite only a few, the writings of Nzewi
(1991; 1997; 1999; 2020), Agawu (2016a; 2016b), Mukuna (1979; 1997; 2020), Kizerbo
(2005), Fu-Kiau (2001), Somé (1999), Ani (1994), Asante(1991), Nkrumah (1970), Nyerere
(1974) on African epistemes are deeply insightful to comprehend the holistic constitution
and dynamics of African epistemologies, which in turn sheds light on the role of Music in
such contexts and on how such heritage has been retained/reclaimed by African peoples
worldwide despite being constantly, violently smothered by euro-colonialist epistemicide.
As such, this paper helps once again to comprehend why the epistemicide has been always
so crucial to the colonialist agenda (CARNEIRO, 2005), or as Calonga (2020b, p. 32)
sharply summarizes it, why is “the colonial body a being endowed with two arms: one
stronger, called genocide, and the other longer, called epistemicide”.
In the hope of inciting fruitful debates over these problematics, this paper discusses
briefly some of the socio-musicological evidences that Music has been long operating as a
Social Science in Brazil, and then some of the ontological evidences that such episteme is
typically African, and as such, constantly menaced and assaulted by the colonizer to obtain
major conquests in the Cultural Warfare of the colonialist all-out war (NOBLES, 1972;
ASANTE, 1991; WILSON, 1993).
MUSIC IN THE STRUGGLE
As discussed in previous works (FREIRE, 2020b), milestone authors such as

Frantz Fanon (1952; 1961), John Henrik Clarke (1979; 1991), and Marimba Ani (1994)
explain very accurately the psychological and psychosomatic – and one can conjecture, by
1 It is important to point out that, here, every criticism upon the hegemonic Academia – its episteme, its
processes and outcomes and its role within the colonialist machinery – does not apply in general to the
efforts of establishing an anti-colonialist Academia, or as Sueli Carneiro often calls it, “the insurgents”
(CARNEIRO, 2005; BARBOSA, 2020). Be it major global networks such as the Afrocentricity International
and suchlike, be it minor local efforts of decolonial discourse/praxis, any revisionism upon the insurgents must
be woven in a completely different manner, withholding due proportions, ideally calculating how prone they
are to “go for the extra mile” in terms of anti-colonialism, and how much have they achieved or may achieve
in terms of revolutionary organization (CARMICHAEL, 1971).

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extension, the epigenetic effects – of (neo)colonialist violences. Multiple works by Amos

Wilson, Wade Nobles, Ama Mazama, and so many other researchers from the most diverse
areas2 have been indicating evidences of a collective transgenerational (non-mutational)
impact generated by excessive and continuous violence, shedding light on deep
scarifications that centuries of genocide (NASCIMENTO, 1978; BORGES, 2019), epistemicide
(CARNEIRO, 2005) and structural racism (MILLS, 2014; ALMEIDA, 2019) cause in the
constitution and dynamics of cognitive, self-pedagogical, psychosocial, socioemotional,
sociocultural, socioeconomic, and sociopolitical intricacies of an individual and of a people –
and most of all, the giant snowball created as each of these factor aggravates all the others.
In other words, the body, the psyche, the integral health, the peace of mind, the satisfaction
of an individual and of a collective – that is, the whole of resources for self-determination and
prosperity of an individual and of a collective – are severely impacted/determined by the
traumas suffered by the mother during pregnancy, in the first place, which are aggravated
by violence, insalubrity, daily harassment, and introjected inferiorization in childhood and
youth, which are further aggravated in adult life (now more difficult to reverse!), and which
generates all kinds of unspeakable atrocities and inhumanities of nefarious proportions on
a social-national-global scale. Several psychologists, neurologists, pedagogues, and social
scientists have highlighted the depth of the impacts – structuring of an individual and of a
collective – of a society that naturalizes violence (SILVA, 2007), and continuously
perpetuates and multiplies dysfunctional families/communities – which, like most products
of social injustice, fall more heavily on non-white populations, and often even worse onto
Africans and their descendants. Under such understanding, like Bia Ferreira often says and
so many scholars echo, it is obvious that Music in itself is a revolutionary weapon,
independent of the thematic or even the presence of any textual message at all – due to its
therapeutic powers (NZEWI, 2020), and most of all, due to its centrality in the generation
and administration of collectivity. Achille Mbembé (2019) and Felwine Sarr (2016), for
instance, explain in depth the importance of Music and Arts to the survival and rebuilding
of African peoples, as today as it has always been. The very concern of the colonialists to
deprive the enslaved of their musical practices and cultural traditions proves once again the
2 Kenneth Onwuka Dike, Cheikh Anta Diop, Molefi Kete Asante, Charles Mills, DeReef Jamison, Cheryl
Grills, Colita Nichols Fairfaix, Alex Pieterse, Amanuel Elias, Vonnie C. McLoyd, Kate Azuka Omenugha,
Nhlanhla Mkhize, and countless other scientists around the world have highlighted the uniqueness of
colonialism as (what is here called) a regime of holistic and continuous violence and its immeasurable historical-
contemporary consequences, as well as some particularities of these consequences for African peoples.
Equally in-depth researches – from Sueli Carneiro, Kabengele Munanga, Katiúscia Ribeiro, Renato Nogueira,
Acácio Almeida Santos, Juliana Borges, Suzane Jardim, among many others – have attested to the
particularities of these same processes in relation to African people in Brazilian territory, pointing out
possible paths to be followed in order to remedy the scabs of colonialism.

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immeasurable power of this artistic-cultural arsenal. Music, the Arts, the forms of
expression, the exercise of creativity, the rites and means of congregation/communion in
general are clearly the main weapons for both the resistance and the advancement of
African peoples worldwide (HALL, 1997; GILROY, 1993; SODRÉ, 1998).
In this sense, it would be, on the very least, incoherent to turn a blind eye to all
evidences of how Music has been vital in all levels of human experience and social
experience in general, and how it has been crucial in all levels of the African Struggle in
particular. Nonetheless, the focus of the discussion here is not quite the relevance and
uniqueness of Music in general, but rather the effective function and functioning of Music
as a Social Science in Brazil, which can be proven by different repertoires in different
contexts, but here takes the Panafrican revolutionary music as a proof of concept. In these
analyses, “Panafrican revolutionary music” refers to all artists (individuals or collectives)
who invest their work in favour of the African Struggle, regardless if the artists themselves
do self-identify with this term or not (FREIRE, 2020b). This term encompasses, of course,
not only musical productions of commercial origins or commercial ends. It covers every
form of music operating within the Struggle, including the musical creations of candomblé,
capoeira, jongo, maracatu, bloco afro, samba de roda, nego fugido, etc., as inevitable in any effort of
epistemological regeneration such as the one proposed here.
KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION/TRANSMISSION THROUGH MUSIC
Focusing on the matter in question, of Music as a Social Science, one can visualize
many data and many analyses, reflections, propositions, theorizations – abundant in
academic works from different fields – that only reached the courtyard of Academia’s
palacet very recently, although the same or similar analyses/propositions had been around
in many other societal spheres through many other means/methods. In the African world,3
Music and Arts have been one such means since the dawn of times to this very day
(FREIRE, 2020b).
One particularly emblematic example is the enlargements and resignifications of the
concept of quilombo in Brazilian sociology, anthropology, and humanities in general.
Quilombo is the African-Brazilian word for “marron town”, being quilombismo, quilombagem,
and aquilombamento some broadly used concepts satisfactorily translated as marroning,
3 Continental and Diasporic Africa (CARMICHAEL, 1971, p. 194).

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marronism, and maroonage.4 Abdias do Nascimento (1980) and Maria Beatriz Nascimento
(1985), in their milestone academic works, established a broader and deeper understanding
of quilombo, which from then on, became an almost unanimous base or reference for
academic writings in different fields of humanities in Brazil. As Abdias (1980) postulates it:
From this reality is born the urgent need for Blacks to defend their survival and
to ensure their existence. The quilombos resulted from this vital need of the
enslaved Africans, in an effort to rescue their freedom and dignity by escaping
from captivity and organizing a free society. The multiplication of the quilombos
makes them an authentic, broad, and permanent movement. Apparently a
sporadic accident at the beginning, it quickly turned from an emergency
improvisation into a methodical and constant experience of the African masses
that refused submission, exploitation, and the violence of the slavery system.
Quilombism was structured in associative forms that could be located in the
middle of forests with difficult access that facilitated their defense and their own
social-economic organization, or they assumed models of permitted or tolerated
organizations, frequently with ostensible religious (Catholic), recreational,
charitable, sporting, cultural, or mutual aid purposes. No matter the appearances
and the declared objectives: fundamentally they all fulfilled an important social
function for the Black community, playing a relevant role in sustaining African
continuity. Genuine focuses of physical and cultural resistance. Objectively,
this network of associations, brotherhoods, societies, clubs, fraternities, terreiros,
centers, tents, afochés, samba schools, and gafieiras were and are the quilombos
legalized by the dominant society. However, both the permitted and the “illegal”
ones were a unity, a single human, ethnic, and cultural affirmation, at the same
time integrating a liberation practice and taking charge of its own history. This
complex of meanings, this Afro-Brazilian praxis, I call quilombism. The easy
verification of the enormous number of organizations that called themselves in
the past and call themselves now Quilombo and/or Palmares, testifies to how
much the quilombist example means as a dynamic value in the strategy and
tactics of survival and progress of the communities of African origin
(NASCIMENTO, 1980, p. 255, our translation, emphasis and italics).
In a similar direction, Beatriz (1985) asserts:
It was at the end of the 19th century that the quilombo received its meaning as an
ideological instrument against forms of oppression. Its mystique will feed the
dream of freedom for thousands of slaves of the plantations in São Paulo, most
often through the abolitionist rhetoric. This passage from institution in itself to
symbol of resistance once again redefines the quilombo. (…) It is as an ideological
characterization that the quilombo inaugurates the 20th century. The old regime
having ended, with it went the establishment of resistance to slavery. But,
precisely because for three centuries it was concretely a free institution parallel
to the dominant system, its mystique will feed the national consciousness
longing for freedom. (...) we could not forget the heroism so intrinsically linked
to the history of the quilombos. As it could not be otherwise, the figure of the
hero is enormously highlighted, especially the figure of Zumbi, and this more
than anything else in this period gains a representation capable of, alongside
4 As discussed in previous works (FREIRE, 2020b, p. 30), “according to Kabengele Munanga (1996), in the
pre-diasporic context, kilombo is a socio-political-military institution – predominantly nomadic, with roots in
lunda, luba, mbangala, kongo, mbundu, ovimbundu, mundombe, among other related or neighboring peoples
– which was decisive in the demographic dynamics of various settlements and kingdoms on the African
continent, especially around the territories now called Angola and the D.R. Congo, around the 16th century
(possibly before) until around the 19th century, when the configuration of the continent was drastically
modified by pure evil of European colonization”.

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very few, have the image of this chief confused with a new national soul. It is
not an exaggeration to say that between 1888 and 1970, with rare exceptions,
the Brazilian Black man could not express himself through his voice in the
struggle for recognition of his social participation. It is interesting that such an
expression comes at a time when the country was suffocated under a strong
repression of free thinking and freedom of assembly. This was the time of the
1970s. Perhaps because they were an extremely submissive group that did not
offer an immediate danger to the so-called established institutions, the Blacks
were able to inaugurate a social movement based on verbalization or discourse
conveying the need for self-affirmation and recovery of cultural identity. It was
the rhetoric of the quilombo, the analysis of it as an alternative system, that served
as the main symbol for the trajectory of this movement. We call this the
correction of nationality. The absence of full citizenship, of effective
vindicatory channels, the fragility of a Brazilian consciousness of the people,
implied a rejection of what was considered national and directed this movement
to the identification of the heroic historicity of the past. As before it had served,
indeed, as a reactive manifestation to colonialism, in 70 the quilombo turns as a
code that reacts to cultural colonialism, reaffirms the African heritage, and
searches for a Brazilian model capable of reinforcing ethnic identity. All the
historical literature and orality about quilombos drive this movement, which
aimed at revising stereotyped historical concepts (NASCIMENTO, 1985, p. 46-
47, our translation, emphasis and italics).
In short, the analyses and theorizations from Abdias and Beatriz mark the academic
change of paradigm from the strictly geographic-historiographic conception of quilombo to a
deeper and more holistic understanding of quilombism in a cultural-ideological-emotional-
political-spiritual perspective. From that point on, thousands5 of academic works took this
understanding as epistemological-ontological basis or reference for further investigation,
data collection and interpretation, reflections and theorizations in sociology, anthropology,
philosophy, historiography, and many other fields of the humanities. Although this
conceptual turn became recently crucial to the cogitations and creations of Brazilian “soft
sciences”, this understanding of quilombo has long been the very spirit of samba and of many
other musical forms of marronage and quilombism – as well as of many other forms of
aquilombamento (marronage) in which Music plays a central role, such as capoeira, candomblé,
jongo, and the likes of them.
MUSICAL MARRONAGE OR MUSICAL QUILOMBISM
O samba é o tesouro maior que se deixa na vida

O samba é a liberdade sem sangue e sem guerra
Quem samba de boa vontade tem paz nessa terra
(Candeia, A Flor e o Samba)6
5 Here was taken into consideration the average “H Index” from Google Scholar®, which automatically
quantifies the number of citations of each author/publication available in the web. Departing from this index,
one can conjecture approximately the amount of works that cited a given author/publication. Also important
to bear in mind that, for authors/journals/publishers from the Global South and from outside Academia’s
financial centers, such amount in reality is often significantly bigger than suggested by this index (NOBLE,
2018; ROVIRA et al., 2021).
6 Song “The Flower and the Samba” from Candeia: “Samba is the greatest treasure left in life. Samba is
freedom without blood and without war. Whoever does it in goodwill has peace on this earth”.

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The evidence that samba has been long nurturing this quilombo-episteme is flagrant
in songs and sayings of great sambistas7 like Clementina de Jesus, Aniceto, Dona Ivone Lara,
Geraldo Filme, Candeia, Wilson Moreira, Wilson das Neves, Martinho da Vila, Mussum,
Bigode, Nei Lopes, Jovelina Pérola Negra, among many other less famous contemporaries,
and naturally, among those who came before them whose name were not printed in
history.8 One particularly powerful synthesis of this quilombo-episteme was eternized by
Luiz Carlos da Vila in 1988 with Kizomba, A Festa da Raça (Kizomba, the Fest of the Race),
as transcribed bellow – the samba that yielded first place for G.R.E.S. Vila Isabel in
commemoration of the centenary of the so-called “Abolition of Slavery”, which was also
the year the country’s Constitution was being refurbished after the military dictatorship
(time of great hopes and promises of democratic progress).
As discussed in previous works (FREIRE, 2020b, p. 53), Kizomba, in different
languages of Bantu people, means the likes of “party” or “confraternization” or
“exaltation”. Quizumba or quizomba in Brazil is a common word (also dictionaried), used in
the sense of “confusion” or “mess” or “quarrel” or suchlike. In this context, it is likely that
the composers revered the African Kizomba more directly, but knowing that they would be
communicating a certain intersection between African “celebration” and Brazilian “chaos”
– that is, a reverence for carnival itself, for samba, for the samba school.
This song categorically reaffirms the understanding of samba as musical quilombism
and the inseparability between culture, arts, music, spirituality, collectivity, liberty, justice,
unity, and Panafrican struggle. Such cosmovision is consecrated, for example, in verses of
an almost proverbial sensibility and wisdom, as: “It has the strength of Culture, it has Art
and Bravery, and a good waistband-game [swag/wit] that make your ideals count”; or in
“Oh oh, Black Mina! Anastácia did not let herself be enslaved! Oh oh, Clementina! The
Pagode [music style/culture] is the Popular Party!”; also in “Our headquarters is our thirst
for the Apartheid to be destroyed!”; and above all, “This Kizomba is our Constitution!”
(ibidem, p. 54).
7 One can conjecture about the same or similar quilombist mindset of composers from previous generations,
like João da Baiana, Heitor dos Prazeres, Donga, Ismael Silva, Silas de Oliveira, Wilson Batista, among others
from even older generations, but it is hard to confirm it properly because of the racially-politically-
ideologically biased curatorship of audio, video, and written records of their époque. It is even reasonable to
conjecture that, like today, in those times, most of the sambistas and African-Brazilians in general who were
true quilombists (who fought most ardently and uncompromisingly against the racist agenda, and who most
frequently called attention to “racial tensions” in all instances of Brazilian private and public life) were the
ones not recorded at all or most overlooked by music industry and academics in general (crucial aspect in
establishing the “myth of racial democracy”).
8 Insightful accounts of samba’s historical-sociological dynamics can be understood on the writings of Sodré
(1998), Lopes (2003), Buscácio (2005), Lopes & Simas (2015), e Alcântara (2017), among others, either in
regards to its quilombo-episteme or to its cooption/white-washing by the non-African and anti-African
sectors of Brazilian society.

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In this song, the conceptual and pragmatic inseparability between the anti-racist
struggle, the affirmative sentiments of African heritage, and the concept of samba school as
quilombo is very clear. In other words, the strength of these verses lies precisely in
extrapolating the conception of the material/geographical territory of the quilombo by
emphasizing its psycho-political/spiritual territory: the most important “place” of the
School, the headquarters, is not only the physical space of the barracks, but the ideological-
cultural-sentimental space of anti-apartheid Resistance and Revolution: this Kizomba is the
very constitution of this people, its main weapon, the headquarters of its troops (p. 55).
It is important to highlight the poetic potency of “our headquarters is our thirst for
the Apartheid to be destroyed”, when synthesizing a whole epistemology out of a very
pragmatic fact: the samba school had been without its barracks (headquarters) for a while
due to a flood close to Carnival season, but the community organized itself – even in such
adversity, rehearsing in the street – and won the championship with a memorable
performance. In this verse, there is also an interesting ambiguity around the word
“apartheid”: on one hand, it reaffirms the uninterruptible spiritual-cultural connection
between Brazil and Africa, calling for the end of Apartheid in South Africa, which would
come to be revoked (on paper) three years later; on the other hand, it refers to Brazil and
all countries of the African world, synthesizing a basic understanding of the anti-racist
struggle, which is, to denounce and mitigate the structural apartheid which is, as a rule,
maintained even after legal appearances of the ending of segregation (idem).
It is worth remembering that the term and the debate around the Constitution was
very heated at that time, with the National Constituent Assembly working between
February of the previous year and September of that year. Therefore, the poetic game here
is to emphasize this Kizomba as an elementary constituent of its people, but also as a major
constituent of its ethical and aesthetic statute, its highest Law (idem). In this sense, it is
clear that, for the composers, for the whole community involved in this composition, and
for anyone who immediately connects with this song in a deep, overwhelming way, quilombo
is samba, as samba is quilombo, which means: quilombo cultivates samba because samba is what
produces it and is its own existential reason; samba cultivates quilombo because quilombo is
what produces it and is its own existential reason (ibidem, p. 59).
Kizomba, a Festa da Raça9

Luiz Carlos da Vila; Rodolpho de Souza; Jonas Rodrigues
9Live recording of the composer, Luiz Carlos da Vila, accessed on July 30, 2020, at 17:22, available at:
<https://youtu.be/ELJpqxL3SWI>. Official recording of the Samba School, accessed on July 31, 2020, at
16:34, available at: <https://youtu.be/pYFemPjfcF8>.

|Kamai Freire|
Valeu Zumbi Thanks, Zumbi!

O grito forte dos Palmares The strong cry from Palmares
Que correu terras, céus e mares That ran through earth, skies and seas
Influenciando a Abolição Influencing the Abolition
Zumbi valeu Zumbi, thanks!

Hoje a Vila é Kizomba Today the Vila [samba-school] is Kizomba!
É batuque, canto e dança It is drumming, chant, and dance
Jongo e Maracatu Jongo and Maracatu
Vem, menininha, pra dançar o Caxambu Come, little girl, to dance the Cashambu!
Vem, menininha, pra dançar o Caxambu Come, little girl, to dance the Cashambu!
Ô ô, ô ô, nega mina Oh, oh! Oh, oh, Black Mina!

Anastácia não se deixou escravizar Anastasia did not let herself be enslaved!
Ô ô, ô ô Clementina Oh, oh! Oh, oh, Clementina!
O pagode é o partido popular The Pagode [musical style] is the Popular Party!
Sacerdote ergue a taça Priest raises the cup

Convocando toda a massa Summoning the masses
Nesse evento que com graça In this event that congraces
Gente de todas as raças People of all races
Numa mesma emoção In the same emotion
Esta Kizomba é nossa Constituição! This Kizomba is our Constitution!

Esta Kizomba é nossa Constituição! This Kizomba is our Constitution!
Que magia What a magic

Reza, Ajeum, e Orixá Prayer, Ajeum [food], and Orisha
Tem a força da cultura Has the strength of Culture
Tem a arte e a bravura Has the Art and the Bravery
E um bom jogo de cintura And a good waistband-game [swag/wit]
Faz valer seus ideais Make your ideals count!
E a beleza pura dos seus rituais And the pure beauty of its rituals
Vem a Lua de Luanda Come Luanda’s moon

Para iluminar a rua To light up the street
Nossa sede é nossa sede Our headquarters is our thirst
De que o Apartheid se destrua For the Apartheid to be destroyed

|Kamai Freire|
As mentioned before, this quilombo-episteme is the very spirit and substance of

samba since its immemorial origins, as it is in different music genres/styles/cultures of the
Panafrican revolutionary music worldwide in all époques (ibidem, p. 39). Although the example
transcribed above is from 1988 (thus, posterior to the aforementioned works from Abdias
and Beatriz), this song represents actually the inherited quilombist soul of samba and of
many other African-Brazilian music heritages that had been administering the survival and
advancement of African peoples in Brazilian territory since decades (and even centuries)
before any modern formulation of music styles, also long before any technological means
of sound recording and its respective industry that made it possible today to trace many
forms of musical marronage back to at least the turn of the XX century. Kizomba presents
in recent times the quilombist function of Music that had been counter-attacking the racist-
colonialist structure since day one of colonization, as an episteme that Luiz Carlos da Vila
received from his predecessors, who learned it from their predecessors, who learned it
from their predecessors, all the way back to continental Africa where Music had long been
physical, spiritual, and social medicine in a universal healthcare system (NZEWI, 2020, p.
100-108).
Such quilombist lineage is unfortunately one of the main targets of euro-colonialist
epistemicide (BUCK-MORSS, 2000; CARNEIRO, 2005; SILVA, 2007; TORRES-
SAILLANT, 2012). Therefore, as mentioned above, it is not an easy task trying to outline
the genealogy of musical quilombism in Brazil (nor in any territory of the African world).
On the one hand, due to the fact that audio, video, and written records of music and
cultural practices – until very recently produced exclusively by white/whitened, racist-
colonialist people and institutions – tend to erase, rule out, or deemphasize the political
potencies of quilombism altogether. On the other, due to the fact that the best method for
tracing back the quilombist lineage (which is knowing first-hand the many forms of
aquilombamento/marronage) has been progressively hindered from each generation to the
next one, as cultural heritages have been constantly and heavily eroded by predatory
globalization, urbanization, and more recently (and more despairing!), by Neo-Pentecostal
religious imperialism, among many other capitalist-neocolonialist mechanisms of cultural
colonization and hegemony maintenance.
Nonetheless, from the surviving, struggle-forwarding strongholds of quilombism,
one can reasonably conjecture about how ancient the quilombo-episteme actually is, as
inferred from sambas like Kizomba, as well as from academic works like Abdias Nascimento
(1980) and Beatriz Nascimento (1985). Not only in sambas-enredo but in many contexts of
African-Brazilian music in general and of different strains of samba in particular, the most

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crucial strategies and tactics of African anti-colonialist resistance were maintained, fortified,
and replicated throughout the country since immemorial times – which is exactly the
concept coined here as musical marronage or musical quilombism, also in previous works
(FREIRE, 2020b) defined as “artistic efforts of cultural, spiritual, and intellectual
abolition”.10
Through the first method of tracing back this quilombist lineage by means of audio,
video, and written records, one can easily find quilombism and musical marronage as far as
1928, on the very least,11 in folklorist archives such as the Cantos dos Escravos (Slave Chants)
recorded by Aires da Mata Machado Filho, presenting labor chants and vissungos12 from the
region of Diamantina, Minas Gerais, which were witnessed again by Dias & Manzatti
(1997) in the 90’s and later by Andrade (2013, p. 10) in 2011. If one hears/reads these
“Slave Chants”13 from 1928 as reasonable half-way landmark between the musical
quilombism from old times (XVI to XIX centuries) and the musical quilombism from
modern-contemporary times (Vargas Era to post-Vargas), one realizes that both the
musical identity traits and the verbal content of those chants are present in other forms of
musical quilombism, from old times as well as from modern-contemporary times.
More importantly, one realizes that, from centuries ago to this very day, although
such music cultures had been significantly modified, even through all changes they
experienced, all of them had been somehow managing different manners to: 1) withhold
their ancestral languages; 2) nurture their gods; 3) experience/revere their inseparable
physical-spiritual body; 4) experience/revere their inseparable individual-collective body; 5)
10 Samba-enredo is fairly translatable as “samba-plot” or “samba-story”, the style typical of the world-famous
mainstream Carnival from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, which is exactly the musical style and context of
Kizomba, transcribed above. Since 1946 in Rio and 1956 in São Paulo, the sambas-enredo ceased being
improvised to be previously composed and competitively assessed. By that time, when the governments – still
during Vargas’ legacy – started sponsoring the Carnival parades, “national motifs” became imperative in the
sambas-enredo (AUGRAS, 1993, p. 8-9). Although massively buried under ill-intentionally fabricated symbols
and heroes of the official history, occasionally some insurgent moments timidly revered facts, persons,
sorrows, and victories of the African resistance (SOUZA, 2020, p. 2-4), but initially such reverences were still
heavily tainted by the extremely deceiving white version of history (a fact that changed significantly during the
60’s and the 80’s, and keeps changing to this very day). Indeed, samba was violently coopted by the fascist,
anti-African Brazil of Vargas Era, but outside the major spotlights of the modernist-eugenist cultural industry,
it was always African (re)existence: it was always quilombo.
11 Important to bear in mind that Pelo Telefone (first “samba” ever recorded) is from 1916, when quilombist
gatherings were already known to take place in Tia Ciata’s house (SODRÉ, 1998, p. 15-16). On the latest, the
quilombist samba is documentally mentioned since 1838 in Pernambuco (IPHAN, 2006, p. 30), since 1864 in
Bahia (idem), similar description in 1803 in Bahia (p. 29), and the close relative – generically called umbigada –
was already mentioned by Gregório de Matos during the XVII century (idem). Therefore, the ancientness of
musical quilombism in Brazil is widely attested beyond any shadow of a doubt.
12 More about the complex concept of vissungo and the holistic functioning of music in African/African-
Brazilian music, watch Sérgio Pererê – Idiomas Ancestrais, accessed in 18/02/2021 at 08:42, available at:
<https://vimeo.com/343068919>.
13 LP recorded in 1982 with Clementina de Jesus, Tia Doca, and Geraldo Filme, with arrangements of the
“Slave Chants” up from Aires da Mata’s transcriptions (1928-1938) and Luís Heitor Corrêa de Azevedo’s
phonograms (1944) of the vissungos, accessed in 18/02/2021 at 07:44, available at:
<https://youtu.be/gil3Mw32OnU>.

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celebrate life (individual/collective survival and advancement; integral health, community

health); 6) revere their tales, practices, and symbols; 7) pray and administer forces of nature;
8) revere the quilombos; 9) unburden, unleash, or denounce complaints, sorrows, and rage;
10) communicate encrypted strategies/tactics; 11) administer social/societal dynamics; 12)
pass on proverbs, wisdoms, and sayings; 13) teach how to perform the very thing being
performed. In essence, from jongos to maracatus, from labor chants to congados, from sambas
to candomblés, vissungos, capoeiras, batuques, calundus, macumbas, brincadeiras, terreiradas, escolas de
samba, blocos afro, musical forms of African-Brazilian quilombism had always met some or all
of these demands, when not executing them directly, then at least revering them as
humanning14 fundamentals of one’s ancestry.
This holistic function and functioning of African-Brazilian music, for instance, is
precisely the quilombo-episteme in question, which Abdias (1980) and Beatriz (1985)
introduced into Brazilian human and social sciences, but had been all along the soul and
substance of samba and of many other African-Brazilian musical heritages. If one believes
that the Music itself is too ambiguous or too abstract or epistemologically too fragile to
serve as proof of concept of this quilombo-episteme (an episteme which in Brazil, as
already mentioned, has always been present in Music and in other spheres but only recently
entered the Academia), then the explanations of the quilombists themselves might help to
close the case.
As a summarized effort here, presenting only one example of a conceptual turn that
entered late into the human and social sciences, and presenting only one musical example
of the epistemological issue in question, also only one quilombist – Candeia, one of the
greatest – will suffice to finish up the argumentation. Not to mention all songs that he
wrote to get his message across (such as A Flor e o Samba, A Hora e Vez do Samba, Dia de
Graça, Lamento de Uma Raça, Luz da Inspiração, and others, all of which somehow elucidate
or revere the power of samba in struggle, in human/social transformations, in ancestral
continuity/fulfillment, and in the quilombist essence of African-Brazilian heritages),
Candeia with Wilson Moreira, Neizinho (Nei Lopes’ son), and Mestre Darcy do Jongo
founded in 1975 a samba school called G.R.A.N.E.S Quilombo (Grêmio Recreativo Arte Negra
Escola de Samba Quilombo), meaning “Recreational Guild Black Art Samba School
Quilombo”. Important to notice that all other samba schools by that time did not have
Arte Negra (Black Art) in their names. This complement was part of their manifesto against
14Meki Nzewi (1997, p. 23), become human, turn into human. The humanning forces are in the case of
African peoples even more important than they are to any other people, given that Africans suffered and still
suffer the worst under dehumanizing/depersonalizing processes and mechanisms of European colonization
(FANON, 1952; 1961).

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the cooption, degeneration, and whitewashing of samba and Carnival since the beginning of
that century.
The very choice of its name stands their ground in regards to the quilombist nature
of samba. This quilombist essence was so sacred and irrevocable that, during the previous
decades, facing the whitewashing cooption and mercantilization of samba (subversion of
Carnival, commoditization of African-Brazilian physical and cultural bodies), many of the
most important sambistas abandoned their samba schools (or founded new ones), as
pointed out by Buscácio (2005, p. 109-128). Anyone who can access or imagine the pain
for a sambista to abandon their samba school, can understand how psychologically-
spiritually violent was this process of denaturation of samba’s and Carnival’s quilombist soul
by white, capitalist, anti-African sectors of Brazilian society.
The unequivocal description of what exactly means this “quilombist essence” is
explained by Candeia in several occasions. Beyond G.R.A.N.E.S Quilombo’s manifesto
wrote by the founders, Candeia wrote many songs, co-wrote a book (CANDEIA &
ISNARD, 1978), and gave several interviews presenting his critics, perspectivations, and
propositions. For example, Candeia and the Quilombo rejected the recently established
samba school business model where huge financing started to flow from outside the
community, and with it, came vertical decision-making from tyrant funders and corrupt
directors who tossed away communal creativity/manufacturing, who replaced communal
creativity/manufacturing by millions-earning, outsider carnavalescos15 demanding extremely
expensive and exogenous materials, who imposed thematic for the samba-enredo and
censored lyrics, who installed capitalist mechanisms for enormous inflow of white rich
people replacing the African-Brazilian lineage, which resulted in exclusion of community
people (even prominent figures) from the parade to give room for expensive-paying
tourists (BUSCÁCIO, 2005, p. 109-128), along with an immense money-laundry structure,
amid many degenerations that completely smothered the very soul and existential reason of
samba and Carnival.
For Candeia and many other sambistas, a samba school has to be a quilombo, where
the sense of communalism steers every step of every enterprise, where African cultural and
physical bodies are sacred, invulnerable, and inalienable, where all community people are
safe, self-regulated, and mutually supportive, where all activities – from the most ludic to
the most serious – are designed for cultural protectionism (as well as racial and social
protectionism), for awareness raising, for individual and collective empowerment, for
15Professional designers or art directors in charge of the samba school’s aesthetic and complete visual
composition.

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political education and organized struggle, for nurturing integral health; that is, for holistic
dynamics of greater increasing and better sharing of means for collective prosperity.
Therefore, the Quilombo not only vindicated the proper model of samba school from old
times (in organizational terms as well as in poetic-musical content), but also fostered closer
dialogues with anti-colonialist scholars for lectures, conferences, debates, cine-clubs inside
the community (ibidem, p. 23), hosted African-Brazilian dance groups like jongo, caxambu,
capoeira, maculelê, afoxé, samba de lenço, samba de caboclo, lundu and maracatu (ibidem, p. 22), and
so forth. As Candeia asserts:
To speak of Samba we have to speak of Black, to speak of Black we have to speak of

their arduous struggle throughout many generations, raising their cry against the
prejudice of race and color, inheritance of slavery. The Black, with their
struggle, comes from way back, from the Quilombos and the slave insurrections. If we go
back into national history, we will find their presence in all sectors of our social life
(CANDEIA; ISNARD, 1978, p. 4-5, our translation and emphasis).
For him, any samba school should be and the G.R.A.N.E.S was indeed:
(...) a resistance movement. Not a resistance specifically against the many whites
who are swelling the contingents in the schools. The resistance is only against
the total loss of character of the thing. To avoid that, in a few more years, no
one will know exactly what a samba school was, what a sambista was, and how
and why they got together, sang and danced, using their own traditional rhythm.
(…) Our objective is to safeguard the essence of the origins of our samba
(RANULPHO, 1978 apud BUSCÁCIO, 2005, p. 25).
As the Quilombo’s Manifesto states:
(…) I come with faith. I respect myths and traditions. I bring a Black chant. I
seek freedom. (…) Wisdom is my support. Love is my principle. Imagination is
my banner. (…) I am People. No more complications. I extract beauty from the
simple things that seduce me. (…) I synthesize a magical world (VARGENS,
1997 apud BUSCÁCIO, 2005, p. 17, our translation and emphasis).
As such, the samba school that retains or reclaims its quilombist africanness takes
forward the anti-colonialist struggle through proper means and methods inherited from its
immemorial ancestry. The samba school as a quilombo “synthesizes a magical world” in
which all instances of individual and collective life are inseparable, where its ethics is its
aesthetics, which in turn, is the result of a holistic continuum of spiritual-intellectual-
corporeal social-political forces. As synthesized by Luiz Carlos da Vila, “this Kizomba is our
Constitution”. As mentioned above, this quilombo-episteme – nurtured by Luiz Carlos da
Vila and Candeia and many others – was not invented by any of them, was actually learned
from their predecessors, who learned from their predecessors, all the way back to

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continental Africa. The manifestation and strengthening of this episteme had peeks of
unleashing and marching forward, indeed, but one way or another, it was always present in
innumerous forms of marronage and quilombism in Brazil: a humanning force that was
never invented, never annihilated, always (re)existing.
In other words, in this quilombo-episteme, Music was never what it is for
European worldview, as samba and Carnival were never what the white, capitalist, anti-
African sectors of Brazilian society made of them. Music is the primordial enchantment,
the primal spell of transmutation, the energy handler. As Candeia taught it echoing many
other African masters, samba and all forms of musical quilombism were not only the
panacea of physical, spiritual, and social needs for basic survival and advancement of
African peoples in diaspora. They were and still are the main weapon for their political
struggle towards cultural and intellectual abolition.
MUSIC AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
Here was taken the epistemological turn in regards to the concept of quilombo in
Brazilian Academia to exemplify how Music has long been underpinned by understandings
that only recently reached the cogitations of academic human and social sciences. It is not
unimportant to remind that African-Brazilians themselves – heirs to this quilombo-
episteme – only reached the courtyards of Academia also very recently, being such
institutions either explicitly forbidden for them during the vast majority of history and
socioeconomically distanced from most of them to this very day. It is first from the XXI
century onwards – and more so from 2012 on, since the Lei de Cotas (Quotas Act) came
into force to compel the entrance of non-white and so-called “lower class” people into
public higher education – that a timidly more significant contingent of African-Brazilians
started to produce knowledge within universities and research institutes in Brazil. In this
sense, it is clear that Abdias (1980) and Beatriz (1985) were not the firsts to experience –
much less to invent – the quilombo-episteme in question, nor were they the first African-
Brazilians to fight from the inside universities, but they were indeed some of the first
revolutionary souls who were brave enough to propose an African-Brazilian
epistemological-ontological regeneration inside the institutional machinery of academic
human and social sciences in Brazil.16 One can conjecture that, precisely because African-
16 It is worth noting that African-Brazilians had been present before in academic or adjacent positions,
including some of the abolitionists from the second half of the XIX to the first half of the XX centuries, but
they were rare exceptions to the rule, constantly suffered all kinds of persecution, and were far from
implementing any glimpse of African epistemologies into European institutions.

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Brazilians had their access to universities first utterly impeded and later socially hindered,
Music and other forms of musical quilombism had always been their own means and
method to observe society, interpret data, and communicate their understandings of the
paths they came from, the path they stand, and the paths they are or should be heading to.
This particular paper departs from the example of the quilombo-episteme to
present this argumentation due to the profound and intense implications of this case in
regards to these analyses, which made it the best possible demonstration of the issue in
question. But many other examples might be investigated in the same direction. For
instance, in previous works (FREIRE, 2020b, p. 63-83) was discussed the musical strategy of
awareness-raising taking the reggae 14 de Maio from Jorge Portugal and Lazzo Matumbi, and
also the musical strategy of counter-intelligence (ibidem, p. 84-95) taking Cota Não É Esmola from
Bia Ferreira. Both the strategies of awareness-raising and the counter-intelligence through Music
are perfect examples of how African-Brazilian poets and musicians have been observing
society, interpreting data, and communicating critical perspectives by means of their
artistry.17 Like Lazzo Matumbi and Bia Ferreira, many other artists can be properly
understood as social scientists-musicians, such as Thaíde, Sabotage, Criolo, Emicida,
Racionais MC’s, (DELPHINO, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c), João do Vale, Itamar Assumpção,
Geraldo Filme, Leci Brandão, Aniceto, Xênia França, Doralyce, Ellen Oléria, among many
other social scientist-musicians from samba, reggae, rap, forró, funk, and other consecrated
forms of musical quilombism.
AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE
Cego é quem vê só aonde a vista alcança

Mandei meu dicionário às favas
Mudo é quem só se comunica com palavras
(Candeia, Filosofia do Samba)18
Making it very clear that the africanness of this quilombo-episteme is not at all
conjectured out of fragile evidence, one can highlight the writings from one of the greatest
African musicologists of all times, Meki Nzewi:
17 Very important to point out that, when it comes to “scientific communication” (which is the need of
scholars or journalists to try and translate for people outside the walls of Academia at least the bottom line of
the knowledge produced inside those walls), the African-Brazilian music as social science is incomparably
more efficient and more effective, as intrinsic to the very synthesis power and energetic-communicational
potency of Music.
18 Song “Philosophy of Samba” from Candeia: “Blind is the one who sees only where the sight reaches. I
tossed away my dictionary. Mute is the one who communicates only through words”.

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To start with, indigenous Africa conceived, created and practiced the musical
arts as a holistic divine endowment to humanity intended to oversee fellow
humanity consciousness in all aspects of personal and societal living;
African musical arts is conceived and designed structurally and in public
presentation to furnish sublime mind health primarily, and thereby enable
gaining basic physiological health, interactively transacting cordial
relationships (inter-personal, intra-communal, and inter-communal); also
guaranteeing stressless daily subsistence occupations. Its functional
conception and cogitation particularly oversee the conscientious functioning
of communal/societal institutions and social organizations. Fundamentally
it orders ardent observance of religious beliefs and canons, policing morality
prescripts and superintending social equity, etc. The musical arts also caution
and sanction probity in the observance of and compliance with community
living injunctions and maintenance of the integrity of cultural ethics and codes
of conduct. The musical arts (a holistic cogitation, creation, and deployment of
sonic, choreographic and dramatic siblings) was cogitated and structurally
configured as a potent soft science of humanning, which interactively
generated functional outcomes in all aspects of living and dying unto
supernormal livingness (NZEWI, 2020, p. 100, our emphasis).
Nzewi’s postulate is perfectly in tune with the writings from dozens of African
scholars who constantly emphasize the holistic nature of African episteme and the
inseparability between Arts and Sciences, such as Nketia & Nketia (1974), Kazadi wa
Mukuna (1997), Joshua Uzoigwe (1998), and Kofi Agawu (2016), to cite only a few of the
musicologists, not to mention dozens of African historians, philosophers, anthropologists,
and sociologists who confirm the same reality. Moreover, it reinforces the understanding of
many (pan)African scholars from different fields, who assert that music and arts had always
been the main weapons for the survival and advancement of African peoples worldwide
(FANON, 1961; HALL, 1997; GILROY, 1993; SODRÉ, 1998; SARR, 2016; MBEMBÉ,
2019).
Here even more relevant is the fact that Nzewi’s formulation for the conceptual
and pragmatic definition of music in Africa reinforces precisely the understanding of
Candeia and of his many contemporary, predecessor, and successor African-Brazilian
quilombists: samba (as musical quilombism) and the samba school (as quilombo) is nothing
like the mercantilist music episteme from the global euro-hegemonic structure, and as such,
samba and other forms of musical quilombism must always fight against the cooption and
subversion of its treasures by the white, capitalist, anti-African sectors of Brazilian society.
In African perspective, music-making and human-being are almost one and the same (a
humanning force, as Nzewi formulates). Music is among the most crucial powers and
resources of individual and collective prosperity, from basic health to intellectual
development, from elementary education to organized political struggle, from (re)existing
as a person to marching forward as a people.
In this sense, one realizes that, given the historical processes and contemporary
circumstances, being African (and African descendant) is to a greater extent synonym to

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being anti-colonialist (or at least feeling the need to be), since the hitherto-prevailing
society seems to be, to a large degree, the perfect antithesis of all humanning pillars of
African existence. How each individual and collective understands what “anti-colonialist”
means conceptually and pragmatically is then the primal difficulty. But the fact that, for
example, music and spirituality, the most powerful weapons of the pan-African anti-
colonialist arsenal, have been constantly and heavily eroded, coopted, and subverted by
colonialist vectors, demonstrates that the epistemological regeneration might be the
foremost urgent need of the African world. Retain or retrieve one’s psychic constitution.
Secure or reprogram one’s self-image and self-determination. Reserve or rewrite the
narrative over one’s self and one’s history. As impeccably synthesized by Calonga (2020b,
p. 2): “what is power? (…) power is the control of narratives about one’s self and about the
other.” Thus, the most urgent commandment is:
(...) to reestablish our control over our own narratives, to reestablish our power.
This demands in part taking back what has been stolen, but also giving up
certain things that have been usurped and controlled at such a deep level that it
would be better to break with the model than to try to reform it, for example,
very sedimented Western understandings of concepts like “art” and “religion”
(...) (CALONGA, 2020b, p. 22).
This racial-cultural protectionism19 (or even, narrative protectionism) is exactly the

intended goal and achieved outcome of many forms of musical quilombism. Far beyond
music’s indispensability to human experience and social dynamics in general and to the
African Struggle in particular, what is demonstrated here is that the basic demands and
overall outcomes of human and social sciences (as prescribed by eurocentric canons of
euro-hegemonic institutions) have been also handled through music within the Panafrican
revolutionary struggle (as expected from proper African means and methods).20
Despite the fact that almost every African and African descendant has either an
intense experience or at least a faint intuition of this quilombo-episteme and usually has
some kind of connection to forms of musical quilombism (if not in its righteous place, at
least in its coopted and degenerated versions), music in general is still firmly situated under
European worldview. Although quilombists and social scientist-musicians all over the
country in all époques have been observing society, interpreting data, and communicating
critical perspectives through their music, in most situations and in the collective imaginary
music is generally regarded as mere entertainment, mere consumable product, mere silence-
breaker.
19 Mazama & Lundy (2012) present interesting reflections on “racial protectionism”.

20 FREIRE (2020b, p. 133/143).

|Kamai Freire|
In reality, one can select certain composers and songs and chants – from as far as
one can reach – up to this very day and, through this repertoire, one can learn about
absolutely all historical and sociological process and dynamics of Brazil, including different
biases and perspectives. Nonetheless, all this repertoire and these musical army do not
enjoy the credibility, the respectability, the spaces, the prerogatives nor the budgets that the
academic human and social sciences do. In other words, the Panafrican revolutionary music has
often the same starting point and reaches the same results as the social sciences, but
because it does not use the same euro-hegemonic methods (using rather African ones), it is
simply discredited as hearsay,21 as unscientific, as dispensable life embellishments, at the
most, it is labeled as “protest music” or as “politically engaged songs” – that means, it is
seen as music is seen in European episteme, instead of being seen within its righteous
African ancestral cosmoperception. One of the damages resulting from this epistemological
arrogance is that social scientist-musicians – such as Mano Brown, Bia Ferreira, Lazzo
Matumbi, and Candeia – are generally not cited as “the greatest African-Brazilian
intellectuals”, a crown often placed on the heads of Abdias Nascimento, Beatriz
Nascimento, Lélia Gonzalez, Sueli Carneiro, Kabengele Munanga, Silvio Almeida. Another
proof that this epistemological arrogance is typically European and that the quilombo-
episteme is typically African is that all these crowned “greatest African-Brazilian
intellectuals” consider Mano Brown, Bia Ferreira, Lazzo Matumbi, and Candeia to be
amongst the greatest African-Brazilian intellectuals.
CONCLUSION
We are the corporified actualization of our ancestors’ dream. 22
As discussed in previous works (FREIRE, 2020b), these analyses highlight some of

the correspondences between artistic, academic, political, social, spiritual, and military
battlefronts of the anti-racist and anti-colonialist war. By drawing up the main lines of this
war map, it is musicologically proven that the immeasurable importance of great generals
like Zumbi, Dandara, Dragão do Mar (Francisco José do Nascimento), and Almirante
Negro (João Cândido) in the sociopolitical-military field, like Abdias Nascimento, Maria
Beatriz Nascimento, Lélia Gonzalez, Sueli Carneiro, and Kabengele Munanga in the
sociopolitical-ideological field, corresponds fully to the relevance of anti-racist warriors like
21 About this issue, it is imperative to read Calonga (2020a), where she explains in detail why and how was the
European episteme sedimented over time, to the point that a written lie became more credible than the
orally-transmitted truth.
22 Almeida, Albuquerque & Calonga (2020).

|Kamai Freire|
Candeia, Lazzo Matumbi, Ilê Aiyê, Racionais MC’s, and Bia Ferreira in the sociopolitical-
musical field of the Panafrican revolutionary struggle in Brazil (therefore referred to as Panafrican
revolutionary music).
More specifically, this paper has demonstrated that music should be acknowledged
as a social science, once proven that it serves as such with the difference of operating under
African proper means and methods. Of course, it is not at all suggesting that absolutely
every musical fact is a social science par excellence, rather presenting the evidences that
some musicians and some musical contexts (especially in different forms of musical
quilombism) certainly meet the same demands and outcomes of the social sciences (as
expected by eurocentric paradigms but through African-centered ones). As mentioned
above, it seems then that breaking free from eurocentric models and retrieving African
epistemological-ontological foundations is of utter importance to make significant progress
in the anti-colonialist all-out war, or as often said, to consummate the African Revolution.
As explained elsewhere (ibidem, p. 146-7), songs are not merely parroting nor
paraphrasing what social scientists are saying. They are actually elaborating and
communicating complete sociological postulates. Constantly confronted with the same
data, plots, demands, and challenges that confront social scientists, composers find their
own explanations and perspectivations through their own methods. As discussed above,
Music has its own way of seeing and listening the world, and its own way of
communicating its views and points of listening. From this proposition onwards, all readers
are invited to discuss possible aspects of alleged “non-scientificness” in Music, in order to
scrutinize which of these aspects do apply equally or similarly to the canonized academic
human and social sciences or not, seeking to find out exactly to what extent Music has a
legitimate claim to this Agora. For everything discussed in this paper and for many other
reasons, it is advocated here that Music can have as much scientific value as the other social
sciences – here referring to Music itself, long before any musicological endeavor.
Withholding due proportions, to say that an art form has no scientific value is as
absurd as saying that the spell from the prayer of an yalorixá is only consummated after it is
ethnographed by an academic ethnologist. As Hampâté Bâ’s proverbial wisdom states:
“writing is the photography of knowledge, not knowledge itself” (apud NKETIA, 2005, p.
324).
It is necessary to bear in mind that academic sciences work imperatively on a
descriptive rather than prescriptive basis. One needs to reflect on whether the currently-
hegemonic euro-colonialist educational model (cement building, centralized electrical grid,
blackboard, enrollment, shifts, Monday-to-Friday, grades, college entrance exams) would

|Kamai Freire|
not actually constitute to some extent a complex structure of radical sabotage against
African powers, potentials, personality, existential root, and episteme (arts, spirituality,
collectivity, ginga, mandinga, kizomba, kilombo, quilombo). Wouldn’t the “place of art” under
the colonialist episteme be a powerful weapon to empty the African Struggle off of the
typhoons and magical torrents of its own ancestry? For instance, the proper African-
Brazilian historiography, sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, isn’t it actually
Ebomi Cici, Conceição Evaristo, Carolina de Jesus, Lia Vieira, Geni Guimarães,
Clementina de Jesus, Mãe Estela, Gaiaku Luiza, Tia Ciata, Makota Valdina, Solano
Trindade, Luiz Cuti, Oliveira Silveira, Jovelina Pérola Negra, Mateus Aleluia, Cartola,
Nelson Cavaquinho, Jamelão, Candeia, Nelson Sargento, Wilson Moreira, Aniceto, João da
Baiana, Donga, Luiz Gama, Lima Barreto, and so on?
If one follows the presumptuous thought-thread of insinuating that such African
holistic episteme befits only ancient and pre-colonized civilizations, evidences confirm
otherwise. Scholars (MUKUNA, 2018) have already attested to the accuracy of what is
sung by the West African griots and the extremely relevant role of their Art in many
organizational demands of the collectivity. Newspapers in Tanzania have used rhymes and
metrics to present the news in poetic form in Kiswahili since 1910 and even more so after
1967 with the Ujamaa model (MAZRUI, 1986). Several other similar examples can be seen
in this bibliography and its unfolding references. So it seems that a hyper-segregation
between arts, sciences, politics, spirituality, and daily life is not the only way to organize
society, and perhaps it is in fact a euro-colonialist heritage that will always be a hindrance in
Africans’ path, delaying their victory until they manage to overcome this vice, this
unconsciousness once and for all.
Finally, closing this dense argumentation, it is worth to recall when the composer
and singer Lazzo Matumbi was called upon Brazil’s Federal Senate in 2016 to be laureated
for his efforts in fighting racism. Remembering that four years before that, in 2012,
renowned social scientists (of the greatness of Sueli Carneiro, Kabengele Munanga, José
Vicente, Marcos Antônio Cardoso, and Mário Lisboa Theodoro) served on the Supreme
Court as Amicus Curiae (Friend of the Court) to defend the urgency of the Quotas Act, and
the Supreme Court ended up deciding in favor of that bill, which later initiated the first
steps towards a significant change in the paradigm of access to higher education
institutions of excellence in Brazil. Having presented here this understanding of Music as a
Social Science, one is left with the following reflection: would it be too much to dream of,
to hope that one day artists like Lazzo Matumbi, Bia Ferreira, or Mano Brown will sing in

|Kamai Freire|
front of the tribune to persuade the Supreme Court into approving public policies in favor
of a more just and equal society?
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|Kamai Freire|
FREIRE, K. Arts and Sciences in african perspective: thoughts on the unfinished African
Revolution. InterEspaço: Revista de Geografia e Interdisciplinaridade, v. 6, e202040,
2020. Disponível em: <http://dx.doi.org/10.18764/2446-6549.e202040>. Acesso em: 30
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APA:
Freire, k. (2020). Arts and Sciences in african perspective: thoughts on the unfinished
African Revolution. InterEspaço: Revista de Geografia e Interdisciplinaridade, v. 6, e202040.
Recuperado em 30 dezembro, 2020, de http://dx.doi.org/10.18764/2446-6549.e202040
This is an open access article under the CC BY Creative Commons 4.0 license.
Copyright © 2020, Universidade Federal do Maranhão.

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ISSN: 2446-6549

ARTS AND SCIENCES IN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE: thoughts on

ARTES Y CIENCIAS DESDE UNA PERSPECTIVA AFRICANA: reflexiones

Recebido para avaliação em 20/08/2020; Aprovado para publicação em 28/12/2020.

Keywords: Epistemology; Epistemicide; Social Sciences; Music; Decoloniality; African Revolution.

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 1

mitigados pela invisibilização, apropriação, folclorização, comoditização, cooptação, aniquilamento,

Palavras-chave: Epistemologia; Epistemicídio; Ciências Sociais; Música; Decolonalidade;

Palabras clave: Epistemología; Epistemicidio; Ciencias Sociales; Música; Decolonialidad;

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 2

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 3

MUSIC IN THE STRUGGLE

As discussed in previous works (FREIRE, 2020b), milestone authors such as

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 4

extension, the epigenetic effects – of (neo)colonialist violences. Multiple works by Amos

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 5

KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION/TRANSMISSION THROUGH MUSIC

3 Continental and Diasporic Africa (CARMICHAEL, 1971, p. 194).

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 6

In a similar direction, Beatriz (1985) asserts:

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 7

MUSICAL MARRONAGE OR MUSICAL QUILOMBISM

O samba é o tesouro maior que se deixa na vida

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 8

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 9

Kizomba, a Festa da Raça9

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 10

Valeu Zumbi Thanks, Zumbi!

Zumbi valeu Zumbi, thanks!

Ô ô, ô ô, nega mina Oh, oh! Oh, oh, Black Mina!

Sacerdote ergue a taça Priest raises the cup

Esta Kizomba é nossa Constituição! This Kizomba is our Constitution!

Que magia What a magic

Vem a Lua de Luanda Come Luanda’s moon

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 11

As mentioned before, this quilombo-episteme is the very spirit and substance of

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 12

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 13

celebrate life (individual/collective survival and advancement; integral health, community

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 14

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 15

To speak of Samba we have to speak of Black, to speak of Black we have to speak of

As the Quilombo’s Manifesto states:

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 16

MUSIC AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 17

Cego é quem vê só aonde a vista alcança

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 18

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 19

This racial-cultural protectionism19 (or even, narrative protectionism) is exactly the

19 Mazama & Lundy (2012) present interesting reflections on “racial protectionism”.

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 20

We are the corporified actualization of our ancestors’ dream. 22

As discussed in previous works (FREIRE, 2020b), these analyses highlight some of

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 21

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 22

Rev. InterEspaço Grajaú/MA v. 06 p. 01-28 2020 Página 23

ALMEIDA, Emanuelly; ALBUQUERQUE, Valéria; CALONGA, Suelen. Pegadas

ANI, Marimba. Yurugu: An African-centered critique of European cultural thought and

AUGRAS, Monique. A ordem na desordem: a regulamentação do desfile das escolas de