The Afro-Sampas website is a meeting point for the universe we discovered in the streets, stages and cultural spaces of São Paulo: a new African musical and artistic presence that is creating spaces for performance, building relationships with the São Paulo music scene, and provoking audiences to broaden their vision and hearing to recognise the creative diversity of a continent.
In recent years, Brazil has received an unprecedented migratory flow that has transformed its cultural landscape. Since 2016 we have accompanied some of these migrants, in particular African musicians and artists who have been performing and making their way professionally in the city of São Paulo, affectionally known as ‘Sampa’.
Playing with the name of the 1966 album in which Baden Powell “Rio-fied” candomblé with the Afro-sambas he composed with Vinícius de Moraes, we named this research project on the African creative diaspora AFROSAMPAS.
Here we bring together the films we make with African artists in their encounters with the São Paulo scene – Tabuluja (Wake Up!), Woya Hayi Mawe(Where are you going to?), and Afro-Sampas – photographic essays, an archive of sounds and images of concerts, performances, interviews and clips with the artists.
We also present the artists and researchers who make up this scene, Africans in São Paulo from countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Angola, Togo, São Tomé e Príncipe, Brazilians who live in Sampa, and a British man who lives in Italy.
Senegalese and Congolese living in the UK and Burkinabes in Italy make up the network of the creative diaspora that we have been following beyond Brazil in recent years. The AFRO-SAMPAS website is another point of encounter where we have been discovering the streets, stages and cultural spaces of São Paulo: a new African musical and artistic presence has created spaces for performance, built relationships with the São Paulo music scene, and provoked audiences to broaden their vision and listening, recognising the creative diversity of a continent.
AFRO-SAMPAS comes from the project “Making African music and cultural heritage in São Paulo”, developed with the FAPESP Thematic Project “Local Music: new pathways for Ethnomusicology” (2016 / 05318-7), with the support of the Pro-Rectory of Culture and Extension at the University of São Paulo through the 5th Santander / USP / FUSP EDITION to Promote Culture and Extension Initiatives.