Samba music is one of Brazil’s national symbols, combining African rhythm and European melody in a way that mirrors the democracia racial that serves as the country’s keystone myth. But as nations evolve, so do their symbols, and Brazilian women are carving out new spaces for themselves within the country’s signature musical genre.
Gabrielle Bruney talks to Tobias Nathan about his new documentary which features the women breaking into Brazil’s samba circles.
“Whenever a gringo arrives in Brazil and they’re introduced to samba, it’s always with half a dozen semi-naked women,” says samba musician Ana Priscila in Tobias Nathan’s film Breaking the Circle. “As if samba had nothing else to offer besides that.”
But things are changing, and having been sidelined for decades, more and more Brazilian women are composing and performing the nation’s most celebrated style of music, often in all-female ensembles
Tobias came across his first samba circle during a visit to Brazil in 2014, and was instantly taken with the incredible “energy, unity and warmth” he found there. But his encounter was cast in a new light when he read Shannon Sims’ New York Times article about women pushing back against samba’s male-dominated culture.
“I realized, oh that thing I thought was so beautiful is a little darker than I thought, and has some really contentious and interesting stuff buried in it.” That complexity and the bigger themes the story would touch on made it a perfect passion project for the director, who mainly works on music videos and commercials. “It was representative of a place and a people that I had just fallen in love with,” he says.[…]
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