There are women in Macumba, Yes, Sir!

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyse partially the afro-brazilian religions known as macumbas cariocas (from Rio de Janeiro) and the presence of women in them by consulting journalistic materials from the endings of 19th century and beginnings of 20th century. The corpus covers 18 journals circulating between 1871 and 1921, provided on internet by the Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro. Preliminary results point to macumbas as religions with the presence of women, but that is not all. They also point to macumbas as means of musicality incorporated to the day-by-day of different social classes that persists through decades, as the Carnival blocks named Chora na Macumba and Melhorzinho na macumba. Its presence is also marked as lounge music played at clubs since 1884, such as Clube Olympico Guanabara, Clube da União dos Amadores da (unreadable – observation of mine) Orgânica, Clube Internacional de Regatas, Clube Progressistas e Fenianos. It also appeared in chronicles and poems released in newspapers. The macumba that we have found presents itself as little defined rituals and a musical style exhibited at lounges of clubs, both with the presence of women. The theoretical framework of this papers is based on the hermeneutics of suspicion of Elisabeth Fiorenza, which has enabled the finding of women explicitly, but also implicitly, in the text; on Joan Scott, with an indication of a non-literal reading of sources through a historical point of view from the question of gender; and on Perrot, searching for women in the silences of the told history.