Henry Louis Gates celebrates Candomblé in Bahía

American scholar Henry Louis Gates makes his first trip to Bahía, on Brasil's northeastern Atlantic coast, for the start of Carnaval and celebrations of Candomblé, a Brasilian religious tradition that has retained many rites from the Ifa-based religions of Nigeria's Yoruba and Fon peoples.

Bahia is the blackest state in the blackest country outside of Nigeria. And here, the Yoruba-based gods are alive and well. The names of the gods are exactly the same, their names transformed only slightly because of language differences: Esu, the messenger of the Yoruba gods, for example, is Exu in Brazil, Echu in Cuba, and (Papa) La-Bas or Legba (a French version of Esu’s second name, Elegbara) in Haiti.

Gates' host is the seventy-something Antonio Carol Vovo, President of Ilê Aiyê, an Afro bloco that celebrates African cultural forms through re-appropriation and reinterpretation:

Not only does Ilê Aiyê, like the other Afro blocos, employ African religion, names, music, fashion, and themes, in its ceremonies and rituals, but, unlike most other Afro blocos, it maintains a strict “black only” police. (Vovo’s skin is elegantly ebony.) I asked him how, in the multi-colored mestizo world of Brazil, he could define who was “black” and how “black” an applicant had to be? Would I, for example, be black enough? “Anyone can apply,” he responded, with a wry smile. “We look into their heart, and then we decide.”

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