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As soon as shops close their doorsin its central region, the Salvadorof 2007 seems more like a cityunder curfew. Important thor-oughfares like avenida Sete deSetembro and rua Carlos Gomesare quickly vacated,whereas bot-

tlenecks form close to the areas whereshopping centers are concentrated at theregion of avenida Paralela giving rise totraffic as chaotic as the traffic jams in SãoPaulo. Everyone seems in a hurry to gethome.While the city’s subway developmentworks have, at last, started once more, thecity’s inhabitants convey the impression ofbeing uneasy, cornered and distressed.

Apparently, the leading motive is theday-to-day violence that confines dwellersof all ages and classes to their homes lim-iting their leisure to the shopping malls,which have sprung up like slot machinesthroughout the city. On the last Saturdayof May, for example, while the city’s beach-front was almost deserted at around 09:00p.m., at Shopping Iguatemi, the city’sbiggest mall, it was almost impossible toobtain a ticket to watch a movie or to makeit to an empty table at one of its count-less snack bars or fast-food restaurants.There are those claiming that violence hasbecome a public-calamity problem in thecity, although the number of hold-upscannot yet be considered on par with SãoPaulo and Rio de Janeiro. It was not bychance, that a survey on a local TV stationincluded the question of how many timeseach interviewee had been held up.

According to Professor Antonio Al-bino Rubim, from the Federal Universityof Bahia, the end of carlismo , brought onby the election of governor Jacques Wag-ner, has given rise to the expectation, atleast, of the beginning of a break with whathe call “the dictatorship of joy”. The ex-pression embodies several meanings. Itis related, for example, to the supposedlyinnate flair typical of the Bahian citizenwhich has been intensely exploited by thetourism industry, by music and by Carni-val for nearly 20 years. Or somewherewhere television has the strength to im-pose the idea of a place of non-stop fes-tivities and where it is possible to be hap-py forever .A condition symbolized by thelyrics of anthroposophical songs like “Weare Carnival, we are reveling, we are theworld of Carnival, we are Bahia”.

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Intellectualsdefend changesto save Bahia’smost traditionalcelebration:Carnival

It should be said that the idea of Sal-vador as the “Land of Happiness”– mod-ernized to the “Land of Joy” – is not new.Back in the nineteen thirties, Ary Barrosoavailed himself of an expression to com-pose the classical Na Baixa do Sapateiro,whose lyrics glorified the beauties of theBahian woman and that of the “Boa Ter-ra”(“The Good Land”) of Senhor do Bon-fim (Our Lord of Bonfim). But what oneis experiencing in 2007 is anchored ona more updated concept of “Bahianism”,which the anthropologist Goli Guerreiro– author of the book A trama dos tam-bores – A música afro-pop de Salvador(The Plot of the Drums – Salvador’s Afro-Pop Music) (Editora 34) – claims one maydepict links between politicians, artists,members of religious orders, intellectu-als, advertising executives and tourismmanagers which meets with acceptanceamong several social classes.

The dictatorship of frolicking, contin-ues Rubim, might also be attributed to theclose ties,which the carnivalesque and mu-sical markets enjoy with the state and mu-nicipal powers by means of Bahiatursa andEmtursa, companies that promote tourism.A complicity,he claims, that would end upbeing connected with the figure of AntonioCarlos Magalhães,who,on reassuming thegovernorship of the state 1990, knew howto capitalize on the phenomenon of theBahian music that was emerging at the time– and that would be pejoratively labeledas axé-music – in order to transform it in-to a product for tourists.

Carnivalesque Blocks – According to theresearcher, at the same time that it provid-ed artists,producers and block leaders withinfrastructure and sponsorship the ACM(Antonio Carlos Magalhães) group gavethem all ample freedom for managing theCarnival.As a result, he completes the con-cern of several groups with regard to theWorkers’ Party (PT) ascension to power.Wagner (the current governor) might killtwo birds with one stone: weaken the gripof the carlista group on the city’s culturallife and bring to an end the omission ofpublic powers, which have permitted Car-nival to be manipulated detrimentally tothe tradition of the festivity.

Bahia, observes the anthropologistAntonio Risério, sells many myths that arenot true.Author of Uma história da cidade

GO NÇALO JUNIOR

>HUMANITIES

Published in June 2007

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da Bahia (A history of the city of Bahia)(Versal), he cites several: one states that itis a sunny city, when in fact it rains tor-rentially throughout the year. “Caymmifostered the idea that one does not work,however, the Bahian is very hardworking”,he observes. The vision of the joyous city,reckons Risério, contrasts with the namesof ancient sites, such as Largo dos Aflitos(Park of the Distressed), Praça da Piedade(Park of Mercy) and Ladeira do Desterro(Slope of the Banished), among others.“One implanted a bizarre image, wherenobody has the right to be sad, but youonly have to talk to people, in order to en-counter a lot of loneliness.”

The sociologist Paulo Miguez couldnot agree more.“In Salvador one is not al-lowed to be sad and if this never happens,the individual becomes deeply distressed,because sadness is a dimension of humanlife that should not be disregarded”, he ob-serves. In his doctorate thesis “A organi-zação da cultura na cidade da Bahia”(Theorganization of culture in the city of Bahia),Miguez presents revealing conclusionsabout Salvador’s musical and carniva-lesque industry. “Depression, low spir-its, all this, from time to time, enriches us.A population that is permanently happybecomes boring, given that it is not pos-sible to construe happiness on a daily ba-sis within a city of serious social inequal-ities.” According to his viewpoint, a “fan-

tasy island has been created, although, attimes, such a circus comes to end, as onthe occasion of the police-officer strike [inJuly 2001], when the population becamehostage to the city’s criminals.”

To understand the complexities of Sal-vador and to defend a broad and urgentdiscussion with regard to the city’s wayforward, has been an almost exclusiveconcern in Bahian academic circles in thepast few years. Primarily at the Center ofMultidisciplinary Studies in Culture/Cult,the Post Graduation MultidisciplinaryProgram in Culture and Post-Culture So-ciety, at the UFBA. The seminar took placebetween the 23rd and 25th May at the 3rd

Meeting of Multidisciplinary Studies inCulture (Enecult), which brought to-gether almost two hundred researchersfrom Brazil, Latin America and Europe.

Carnival – The researchers claimed thatany planning for sustainable growth in Sal-vador must include the elaboration of aproject for the re-evaluation of the role ofthe state and the municipality at Carnival,to save Bahia’s most important popularfestivity. This implies, taking it out of thehands of small group of entrepreneurs,who for more than two decades have dic-tated the rules and granted privileges onbehalf of what they call the “professional-ization”of the “world’s most democratic”Carnival. In practice, however, this appa-ratus has privatized public spaces andstrangled the traditional popular events orthose associated with the afro culture.

Although one claims that Bahians arefriendly, the fact is that the fear of violencehas scared both tourists and inhabitantsaway from the festivities. Carnival 2007 re-flected, according to Rubim, the crisis inthe Carnival model and served as onemore warning: the hotels were below max-imum occupancy and it was possible topurchase fancy dresses (abadás) withoutdifficulty and during the festivities. “Onehas to create ways forward, a market log-ic that is not submissive, predatory, insearch of immediate gains, in order to givemargin to innovation”, he recommends.

A respected communications theorist,Muniz Sodré, one of the lecturers atEnecult,point out that both the Bahian car-nival and music must be rethought.“Pop-ular culture has been carried out by Sal-vador’s media,primarily due to the strengthof TV. However, it continues to have, onthe part of the population, various appro-

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priations and in different places.” For thisreason,he believes that the concept of placeis imperative to define diversity,“becauseit is not the place of the media, but thatof small communities, from the hinterland,with their own form of expression”.

Bahia,observes Sodré,has already beenthe place where, all of a sudden, these dif-ferentiated symbolic expressions made itto the top, but soon became commercial.If, on the one hand, the music market gaverise to a certain identity that previously hadbeen repressed, on the other hand it wasimmediately taken over by the entertain-ment industry and by the state as a tourismattraction.“I believe that, at the outset, thishad a very important political role and theproblem is to verify whether this radiationhas already ended. Personally, I believethat this influence is on the wane, giventhat it has not concerned itself with con-tinuity to a great extent.”

If it gave rise to the emergence of somegroups, Carnival, he states, has great eco-nomic limitation and does not touch up-on the issue of inequality. “The carniva-lesque blocks, which had a sense of free-

dom, are today cordoned off.” In thismanner, the concept one witnesses on thestreets during the festivities, favors the ideaof a Dionysian, free Carnival. The old ide-ology of patrimony predominates amongentrepreneurs, artists, the state and themunicipality in his opinion.“It is the ide-ology of illicitness, of favoritism. Thecountry continues to be like this, and ir-respective of how leftist the culture mightbe, one cannot infringe this logic, whichestablishes territories. It is stronger thanany leftist or rightist ideology.”

Injustice – For the journalist and revelerBob Fernandes, Carnival is just one moreof the grave phenomena that has markedBahia’s `evident`social injustice over fivecenturies of history.“A street carnival go-er”, as he defines himself, he claims thatit is not demagogy that proposes to discussthe festivity, but those that defend its con-tinuity from the comfort provided by theboxes and official grandstands.“I hang outin the middle of the people and am awarethat to meddle in the scheme is not go-ing to solve Bahia’s apartheid problem, but

it may signal the opinion of the public au-thority in this regard. If not, at least expandthe number of`` owners` of this business.``

The first step, he suggests, is to doaway with the cordons.“The cordon is thebludgeon, it is the sale of public space andthe imposition of prejudice and segre-gation.”Fernandes believes that the futureof the festival is going to depend on thecapacity of the new administration to im-pose, to discuss and to carry out somekind of a project for the city. “Salvadoris the jewel in the crown and it is not pos-sible to refrain from an in-depth debatebefore the forthcoming year’s Carnival.Given its nature as a great popular fes-tivity, a more enduring and fair policyshould be established.”

The most serious issue in his opinion,resides in the power that the blocks haveestablished over the organization of thefestivity. “It is a Carnival of persecution,with an objective limited strictly to halfa dozen men, boys and girls. Persons thatdo well in a scheme invented as a giganticlie created to sell the event: that of Sal-vador welcoming a million tourists in five

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days.”How can this be possible, he asks, ifthe city has only 27 thousand hotel beds?“There are no houses or apartments forrent to accommodate such an amount ofpeople.” According to his estimates, if 30blocks should parade at the same timewith approximately 90 thousand dancers,the number of people on the street couldnot be more than 500 thousand.

Bob Fernandes identifies serious prob-lems of a cultural and political nature thatmight turn the Bahian capital into a placeunfit for living, in the medium term. Thesymptoms are already present in the chaot-ic traffic in the city’s main thoroughfares,as a result of the concessions granted toshopping malls and deluxe-condominiumconstruction companies. “Currently andat any cost, they are intent on increasingthe beachfront buildings to turn it into amodern-day Copacabana, damaging theenvironment and the quality-of-life whichwill affect the whole city.” In addition, heemphasizes his concern with regard to acertain “moral cowardice” on the part ofthe population that witnesses the takingover of public property without reacting.

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“The Bahian adores to enter the fray on hisown, but has shown himself incapable ofreacting collectively against the actions ofthese small groups that do as they please inthe city”, he provokes.

Challenges – The secretary of cultureMárcio Meirelles, five months in office, isaware of the challenges and of the reformshe must carry out. One of the renovatorsof the Bahian theater during the past twodecades, he speaks out cautiously with re-gard to the challenges facing him. Amonghis priorities is the decentralization of cul-ture towards the hinterland, in order topreserve or revive rich traditions threat-ened by the steamroller which the city’smusic and carnival have become.

Meirelles laughs prior to speakingabout the hornet’s nest, into which he in-tends to put his hand: the exchange of fa-vors among Bahiatursa and Carnival en-trepreneurs and artists.“When there is nolonger a relationship with a political lead-er or colonel, things have to change.” Ac-cording to him, “there are many peoplestamping their feet because they are los-

ing their privileges. It is that old story: he,who feels threatened, reacts. And this iswhat we are beginning to witness: the at-tack of the privileged”.

Another aspect of the Bahian culturethat has awakened interest in the academyis the importance of Afro-Brazilian mu-sic, which left the ghetto to become suc-cessful on radio and on TV and to animatecarnival during the eighties. Furthermore,it brought on deep transformations, suchas the break up of the barriers of prejudiceand re-locating the blacks to their ownspace in a city where 70% of the popula-tion is of African origin. This is the posi-tive side of a predatory industry, punc-tuated by equivocacy, as Rubim explains.

Miguez emphasizes that the cutthroatcompetition for Carnival-goers had a pos-itive aspect: it led to the noncompliancewith racial and beauty parameters.“Cur-rently, I am convinced, the screening ofcarnival-goers gives priority to the eco-nomic issue.”Even the plan for setting upan agenda for off-season carnivalsthroughout the year – the micaretas –,which fill up the timetables of carniva-

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lesque blocks and artists, seems vulnera-ble in its lack of innovation.

Rubim points to the university prop-er as responsible, to a certain extent, for theonset of the afro culture valuation, such asthe creation of the Center for Afro-Orien-tal Studies (Ceao) in the 1960 decade.An-other relevant aspect, he emphasizes wasthe industrialization of the Recôncavo withthe creation of the Camaçari petrochem-ical complex and the Aratu IndustrialComplex in the seventies, which led to theappearance of black groups more con-scious of their rights and of the importanceof their culture,with new needs and in tunewith the American Black Power movementand with black music, primarily reggae.This awakening brought forth the Ilê Aiêafro block,conscientiously recalling the val-ue of the black in Bahia.

Caetano Veloso – The third element wasthe engagement of a group of composerscoming from the middle class in the 1970decade and led by Antonio Risério, Cae-tano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. The latteronly discovered the strength of black cul-ture after his experience as an exile andwith his engagement in the Sons of Gand-hi block. They would sow the seed of whatwas to become axé-music.

Risério agrees with Rubim and takesover his role in the story. He recounts thatthere was a clear political investment forwhat happened in Bahia to “a great blackturnaround, with the population beingtreated respectfully, “given that what wasinteresting in the local culture was of blackorigin”. This effort became apparent, forexample, in the recording of Beleza Pu-ra, by Caetano; and in the afoxé beat, thatMoraes Moreira managed to extract fromhis guitar. “We played a few notes andhelped transform black culture into ahegemonic ideology.”The anthropologistrecalled that with Caetano he would at-tend various events linked to black musicpromoted by blocks, such as Badauê, IlêAiê e Zamzimbá, among others.

To curious observers, the expectationremains of how the ritual of praising thepoliticians by a number of importantsingers will take place. ■

The images illustrating this article are re-productions of the book O capeta Cary-bé, published by Berlendis & VertecchiaEditores Ltda.

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