It’s an early call from the Yawanawa people, over the river in the Amazon basin, welcoming the visitors to the village for their annual Yawa Festival. “This was the song of our creation,” the chief of the tribe, Bira, said.

To which the Xavante reply with some of their sacred chants for the Wai’a ritual, coming deep from their Roncador region in Mato Grosso. Announcing the times to come maybe, as any shamans around saw it coming.

The fireworks announce an invasion—the world of the white man is crossing the seas to impose Catholic rules over the lands. The largest Catholic procession in the world, the Cirio de Nazaré in Belém, sounds like a noisy background for some more subtle Christian based explorations, like the fascinating Spiritist doctrine, mainly imported from France, where it almost disappeared through the 20th century.

Brazil, the largest Christian country in the world, is also deeply something else, always. The first colonies were often post-Pagans rejected from Europe, and the pilgrimage to Padre Cicero in Juazeiro do Norte amongst others popular processions still showcase it—a unique mix, a religion of the people for the people, sometimes.

The prayer of a Catholic “benzedeira” gives room to the oracle of a ‘mãe de santo’—it’s the African slaves suddenly taking over, in a different manner—not in materiality, but in the minds, in the spirits, in the rhythms. 

The Afro-Brazilian cults have merged, constituting a new path, who is slowly infusing all of Brazil. From Olinda to Cachoeira, from the suburbs of Rio to the interior of Maranhão, the ‘terreiros’ of Candomblé and other variations on Afro-Brazilian celebrations are everywhere—even in the Evangelical cults, although they deny it. 

Since the beginning of the 20th century, it’s the European Spiritism that has been integrated into this cauldron, to create the most Brazilian of all “religions”: Umbanda. We find it in the experimentations of some groups around São Paulo, merging various shamanic beliefs and techniques with sounds coming from around the world—like this trance from the Reino do Sol using the taiko method of drumming from Japan...

Brazil never stops to open windows on the invisible, to welcome new gods, to mix and merge and push it forward. And while the intense drumming of a Congado ensemble in Ouro Preto performs for the Virgin Mary, it’s an actual homage to Lemanja, the Sea Goddess, under disguise.

The circle keeps getting larger and larger, the dance is unstoppable. The spirits are in the streets! It’s time for Carnival along the alleys of the small towns of Pernambuco, taking people into a popular trance that is laughing at any separation between sacred and profane. It’s screaming, it’s beating, it’s joyful—it’s happening!

And Brazil always stops by at some point, to pay its respect to Lemanja, on a beach, early in the morning of the 2nd of February...

Some new rhythms keep appearing. It’s a unique new event—the encounter between the Catholic cult and a shamanic plant, Ayahuasca... The church of Santo Daime, received in visions in the 1920s, is now spreading fast, offering to Brazilians and many abroad another relation to the Christ—maybe re-opening the original path of early Christianity. Men beat the vine, women pick up the leaves, they gather them together to cook them and sing along for hours. Trance meets Jesus. 

A young group of Belo Horizonte follow that line and takes us deeper, into an entire night exploring the new potential of spiritual gatherings. It’s the hybrid, the great mix. African spirits with a psychoactive plant, and the Christ in the middle. At some point they all turned into animals. We were there.

Another cycle, another day and another night, the rainforest talks again. The final chant, Bira Yawanawa is not alone anymore. He is accompanied by the young ones, from his tribe and from the global tribe. Learning from each other, opening the dialogue, welcoming a new civilization. 

That’s Brazil on some days, chaos and magic all rolled into a spaceship heading towards the origins of the future.

Text and sound by Vincent Moon.

www.hibridos.cc