Bahian cuisine has been strongly influenced by its rich African history. The cuisine that developed in the region is also popularly known as “oil food” based on the heavy use of dendê (palm) oil, which is extracted from the pulp of the fruit of the palm tree. Different types of hot peppers are another frequent ingredient in Bahia cookery, especially the Capsicum pepper and sauces made with red peppers. Some of the Bahian cuisine of African origin include delicacies such as bobó de camarão (shrimp), calf’s foot, carurus (made with okra, fish, shrimp, chicken, peanuts, cashew nuts, and seasoned with oil and peppers), vatapá (shrimp, fish or chicken with a flour base, seasoned with coconut milk and palm oil), moqueca (a seafood stew made with coconut milk, shown above), mingaus (porridge), pamonha (cake made of green corn, cinnamon, etc., rolled and cooked in cornhusks), canjica (corn mush), acaçá (corn meal and rice flour mush cooked in a banana leaf), acarajé (dish made with black-eye peas seasoned with salt and onion and fried in palm oil, then served with pepper sauce, dried shrimp, vatapá, tomatoes, and green pepper), ubobó (dish made from beans, bananas, manioc, and seasoned with palm oil), coconut rice, coconut beans, angu (mush made of corn meal), and aloá which is a lemonade drink mixed with honey and other ingredients.
Mãe Menininha do Gantois
Maria Escolástica da Conceição Nazareth was one of the most important mães de santo (iyalorixá or priestess of orixá) of the Afro-Brazilian religion, Candomblé. She was born in Salvador, BA in 1894 and for 64 years, she led the Candomblé house Ilé Ìyá Omi Àse Ìyámasé, located in Salvador in the neighborhood of Gantois. Mãe Menininha do Gantois, as she was called, became nationally known and well-respected for her kindness and affection. Her fight for the legalization of the office based religion and the consequent integration of religion in national society also made her respected by all. At the time that she inherited the position of mãe de santo at a young age, it was not easy to lead a terreiro (Candomblé house of worship) due to the persecution the religion suffered by the authorities in those days. Menininha, however, promoted the value of the religion and its integration into local society, obtaining the license to worship the orixás in 1930. Mãe Menininha died in 1986 at age 92. Her funeral was one of the greatest processions in Bahia. All mourned the death of one of the most beloved women of Brazil. Iba e Mãe Menininha!
Lélia Gonzalez: Afro-feminist
Lélia Gonzalez was an intellectual and activist of the Movimento Negro (Black Movement) in Brazil and primarily responsible for the development of black feminism in Brazil. Gonzalez was born in 1935 and grew up to challenge the reality of social vulnerability by achieving her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, confronting racism and sexism in the social sphere, and organizing political actions while producing scholarly works. She was a member of the Unified Black Movement (MNU), an organization that changed the history of Black activism in Brazil in the 1970s. Gonzalez is credited with connecting common experiences of black women from Latin America and bringing those experiences to a national debate about the condition of black women and colonization. She was one of the few black women in Brazil who had the opportunity to participate in international discussions of the feminist movement and connect with organized Black women in Latin America and in the African diaspora as a whole. From this experience, Gonzalez advocated the construction of an Afro-feminist agenda in Latin America since Black women, in different contexts, were subjected to similar conditions of inequality and discrimination. Gonzalez’ theory of the intersectionality of race, social class, and gender as articulated categories of social marginalization is still the subject of debate in Brazil in the studies of Black women.
In 2010, the government of the state of Bahia created the Lélia Gonzalez Award to encourage public policies towards women in Bahian municipalities.
Oxente!
“Oxente” (pronounced “oh-SHEN-chi”), or “oxe” for short (pronounced “osh”), is an exclamatory expression that has no direct translation in English and, although the meaning sometimes depends on the situation, it is generally used to express surprise or disbelief about something like how English speakers might exclaim “what???!!!” at some news they just heard. It is a colloquialism that has become a cultural identifier of Bahia as it considered regional slang that is only used in the Northeast of Brazil. For example, a conversation using this expression might go:
Maria: Oí João, do you have my Batala CD that I loaned you a week ago?
João: Oh no, sorry. I forgot to return it to you again. In fact, I’ve been loaning it out to all my friends who also love Batala’s music.
Maria: Oxente!!! João, I need my CD back. How do you expect me to survive another day without grooving to my Batala tunes?!?! Oxe! (sucks teeth and rolls eyes at João in utter annoyance and disbelief)
Now that you’re ready to falar baianês (speak Bahian slang), let us know in the comments below how you would use the word Oxente.
Check out another use of Oxente in this song by Bahian singer Jauperi.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- Next Page »