De banzo e de esperança: contranarrativa teológica afrodiaspórica nas músicas do álbum Missa dos Quilombos

Abstract

In 1982, the singer and songwriter Milton Nascimento released the album called “Missa dos Quilombos”, named after the liturgical event that had taken place a few months earlier, in Recife, for which the repertoire of the record was specially created. Its theme lies in the articulation between a Catholic rite and a symbol of a Black social and political organization against colonization and racism, which also refers to a memory of slavery. In this sense, the songs suggest the existence of a Black identity that is crossed by the Christian devotion and at the same time politically compromised with the anti-racist fight. Assuming that the work in question not only reproduces but proactively contributes to the social and religious imaginary of the Black Christian and anti-racist community, my general aim is to analyze the album “Missa dos Quilombos”, seeking to identify the discourses conveyed through music that potentially generate an Afro-diasporic theological counternarrative resulting from the articulations between the anti-racist fight and the Christian messages. In order to carry out this analysis, I turn primarily to the British sociologist Paul Gilroy and his theoretical elaboration of the Black Atlantic, considering the cross-cultural and transnational formation of social and cultural Afro-diasporic experience. Initially, I tried to locate the record “Missa dos Quilombos” in the Black Atlantic circuit, connecting the work to similar subjects and narratives from a variety of historical contexts, especially in the post-abolition period. After that, I investigated the process of composition of the album in question, analyzing its importance and its Afro- diasporic, cultural and political aspects, considering the relation of its musical repertoire to the social context of the immediately preceding period and its circulation in the following years in the Brazilian society and in the transnational circuit. Lastly, I examined the music tracks in “Missa dos Quilombos”, emphasizing the production of an Afro-diasporic theological anti- racist and anti-colonial counternarrative, that anticipates some elements and assumptions of Black Brazilian theological reflection.