Books About Brazil

Product Description
Capoeira is a unique music-dance-sport-play activity created by African slaves in Brazil, and Candombl‚ is a hybrid religion combining Catholic and African beliefs and practices. The two are closely interconnected. Capoeira and Candombl‚ have for centuries made up a coherent form of Brazilian life, despite having been suppressed by the dominant cultures. Now they are not only widely recognized in Brazil, but have become popular in North America and Europe as a new blend of sports, dance, and holistic approach to many facets of life. For Western audiences, Capoeira performance and Candombl‚ services are fun to watch and participate in, but difficult to understand. Both have apparently familiar elements, but this seeming conformity with the dominant cultures was for 400 years a strategy of resistance by Brazilian slaves. The author offers his own reflections about Capoeira and Candombl‚, combining personal experiences with anecdotes, historical facts, and research as well as religious and philosophical interpretations, both Western and non-Western. The result is informative and entertaining, a description and analysis that allows readers to get a feeling, understanding, and even experience of the spirit of Capoeira and Candombl‚.

Lowest price @ Amazon.com $24.95
Amazon Average Rating 3.0/5.0

Capoeira and Candomblé: Conformity And Resistance In Brazil

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Product Description
Candomblé, an African religious and healing tradition that spread to Brazil during the slave trade, relies heavily on the use of plants in its spiritual and medicinal practices. When its African adherents were forcibly transplanted to the New World, they faced the challenge not only of maintaining their culture and beliefs in the face of European domination but also of finding plants with similar properties to the ones they had used in Africa. This book traces the origin, diffusion, medicinal use, and meaning of Candomblé’s healing pharmacopoeia–the sacred leaves. Robert Voeks examines such topics as the biogeography of Africa and Brazil, the transference–and transformation–of Candomblé as its adherents encountered both native South American belief systems and European Christianity, and the African system of medicinal plant classification that allowed Candomblé to survive and even thrive in the New World. This research casts new light on topics ranging from the creation of African American cultures to tropical rain forest healing floras.

Lowest price @ Amazon.com $18.50
Amazon Average Rating 5.0/5.0

Sacred Leaves of Candomblé: African Magic, Medicine, and Religion in Brazil

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...