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Let's Make Some Noise:
Axé and the African Roots of Brazilian Popular Music
By Clarence Bernard Henry
University Press of Mississippi
ISBN 978-1-60473-082-1, hardback, $50
Brazilian music seems to be ever-rising in its popularity. But what
gives it that special spiritual tonality? Clarence Bernard Henry's Let's Make Some Noise: Axé and the African Roots of Brazilian Popular
Music (University Press of Mississippi) explores the unique unity
running through this appealing music.
Featuring 23 photographs and six musical examples, Let's Make Some
Noise is the culmination of several years of field research on sacred
and secular influences of "Bsé," the West African Yoruba concept that
spread to Brazil and throughout the African Diaspora. Bsé is imagined
as power and creative energy bestowed upon human beings by ancestral
spirits acting as guardians. The power and creative energy of Bsé is
found within both the sacred and secular realms, which often interact
with each other.
In Brazil, the West African Yoruba concept of Bsé is known as "axé"
and has been reinvented, transmitted, and nurtured in Candomblé, an
Afro-Brazilian religion that is practiced in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
Henry examines how the concepts of "axé" and Candomblé religion have
been appropriated and reinvented in Brazilian popular music and culture.
Featuring interviews with practitioners and local musicians, the book
explains how many Brazilian popular music styles such as samba, bossa
nova, samba-reggae, ijexá, and axé have musical and stylistics
elements that stem from Afro-Brazilian religion. Also discussed here
are the ways that young Afro-Brazilians incorporate Candomblé
religious music with African American music such as blues, jazz,
gospel, soul, funk, and rap.
Clarence Bernard Henry is an independent scholar living in Newark, New
Jersey. He has taught at the University of Kansas and his writing has
appeared in Journal of Caribbean Studies, Journal of Latin American
Lore, and other publications.
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