Imaginary and Pretos Velhos – Adaptation of a Brazilian Symbol in European Contexts

This article seeks to show, through an examination of music and Pretos Velhos1 entities, the transnationalization and the adaptation of an Afro-Brazilian cult of possession (Umbanda) in a French, Belgian and Swiss contexts. By analysing songs, dances and rhythms, I focus on the diacritical characteristics from Pretos Velhos entities in Umbanda and on the discourses of mediums (during and after possession), to emphasize the representation of these entities in their adaptation society. The purpose of this article is to show how the Pretos Velhos, and also music (rhythms and dances), are one strategic point of adaptation of Afro-Brazilian cults. The work of imagination (here conveyed by music), shows the transcendence of a historical symbol by a European romantic symbol (the storyteller) that will create this new area where the Umbanda can adapt to the European contexts.

For this study, I worked with Temple Guaracy in France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels) and Switzerland (Geneva) from 2014 to 2017.Temple Guaracy was the subject of Viola Teisenhoffer's thesis, in which she focuses on the New Age aspect of this Umbanda temple.2For my case, I concentrate only on the music and the relationship between symbols which are carried in lyrics, rhythms, dances and the appropriation of them by European mediums. 1 The Pretos Velhos are a representation of old blacks slaves.I will develop further on the specificities related to these entities.Argyriadis,3 Rossbach de Olmos, 4 Bahia, 5 and Bahia and Vieira 6 have already stressed the importance of music in the transnationalization of the Orisha religion in Europe.Indeed, music (as well as travel and mixed marriages) has allowed Europeans to come into contact with the religion.However, I would like to go a little further by showing that music also helps to re-appropriate symbols that are deeply rooted in Brazilian society.It becomes a "trading zone" 7 where language (the speeches of entities) makes it possible to grasp (at least to touch) this work of imagination.
In this article I would like to study the cardinal aspects of music (lyrics, dance and rhythms) in the transnationalization of Umbanda in Europe: the transmission of social stereotypes and the performance of the Brazilian imaginary beyond the borders through songs dedicated to Pretos Velhos.Indeed, in the possession cults, the music structures the ritual and the songs are mytho-poems telling the histories of the entities.In Brazil, the image of the Preto Velho is not only that of a religious figure, it is also a "character" already present in the "dominant" culture with a concomitant evolution towards various representations of the "Black" according to socio-historical periods.This representation of slavery has the quality of highlighting social discussions: nationalism, and the relationships among race, slavery and national identity.However, once integrated in Swiss, Belgian or French cults, Preto Velho conjures an imaginary closer to a European imaginary about old people (like that of the old storyteller) than national debates.
Thus, through the songs, rhythms and dances related to these sounds, I would like to emphasize the idea, the speeches and therefore the imaginary summoned in Switzerland, Belgium and in France as regards the Pretos Velhos.

Origin of a Brazilian entity
The Preto Velho (literally "old black man") is a common entity in Umbanda, the Afro-Brazilian possession cult which arose around 1920 in Rio de Janeiro. 8Umbanda was borne from encounters among Kardecism, popular Catholicism, Amerindian religious practices and Afro-Brazilian religions.The cult is based on the Yoruba pantheon, as Candomblé and other cults come from the religion of Orisha.The African gods lead the "phalanxes" and "lines" of work.Thus, in the Yemanjá line, entities such as Pretos Velhos "work."In this pantheon, entities are ranked according to whether they are "spirits of light" (such as caboclos, Amerindians) or "spirits of darkness" (such as Exu).
In the 1930s, the white intellectual elites who practiced the cult sought to make it a national religion linked to racial democracy, thus claiming an "ideal of reconciliation." 9Nevertheless, the history of this entity is inextricable from the representation of the "Black" in Brazil.Indeed, the Preto Velho is a typical figure whose origin can be traced back to the first abolitionist writings of the eighteenth century by the Jesuit António Vieira (1608-1697) and the Portuguese poet Gregório de Matos Guerra.However, the expansion of the Black in Brazilian literature took place in the nineteenth century with the emergence of romantic nationalism and social issues, including slavery.In this literature, it is essentially dualism and caricature that characterize the Black and his relationship to the White: the servile, affective and passive slave on the one hand, and the paternalistic and friendly master on the other. 10In the twentieth century, literary production (including Gilberto Freyre 11 ) presented the Black man as a storyteller and guardian of collective memory.
In the nineteenth century, a "multiracial" national identity discourse also emerged, whose postulate dealt with a Brazilian people based on a mixture of whites, blacks and mestizos. 12The past from which the "Black" figures are drawn is today the result of a consensus between the "dominant" (Whites) and the "dominated" (Blacks).Thus the figure of the Black is reworked from period to period, according to imaginary and social concerns.

The Pretos Velhos in Umbanda
Umbanda integrated the Pretos Velhos entities when its alleged founder Zélio de Moraes, a kardécist then visiting the macumba groups, fell in love with the Pretos Velhos, the latter being considered as good healers. 13The origin of the Preto Velho (as 9 an entity) is assumed to lie in the first magical-religious cults of slaves; it could then be a spiritual category resulting from the collective experience of slavery.14It could also be the continuation of an ancestor cult. 15For Santos,16 the presence of the Pretos Velhos in the Umbanda is to be understood both as the consequence of an African matrix of worship and as the reflection of a supposedly national culture idealized by Brazilian intellectuals.
The Pretos Velhos have been the subject of numerous studies17 through which I have been able to observe diacritical traits, invariable from one Umbanda tradition18 to another:19 they are old, exhausted, curved, humble and attentive to their "children" (filhos), a name given by these entities to visitors and mediums.These diacritical traits are tangible through four elements: songs, dances, rhythms and speeches.The songs, dances, rhythms and speeches that will provide the raw material for this article concern three Umbanda temples, one each in France, Belgium, and Switzerland.In France, the followers (mediums or members of the audience) are mostly Brazilians who have been living in France for several years.The Swiss temple is frequented by French-speaking Swiss and some Brazilians are part of the assistance20 and mediums.In Belgium, only Belgians participate in the ritual and are mediums.These temples have the specificity of being linked to a parent company located in Brazil, in the state of São Paulo.Many songs are common to three temples, but these cantos are also found in Brazilian popular culture, which itself carries many symbols related to Afro-Brazilian religions. 21o the songs, their words, convey the symbols linked to the entities.These words are sung by the mediums, but also by the members of the audience.In the three temples, the audience is essentially comprised of middle-class women working in 199 liberal professions.In France, the majority of the assistance are Brazilian.In Switzerland, we find a majority of Swiss natives and some Brazilians; and in Belgium, only Belgians.The members of assistance (except Brazilians) do not yet speak Portuguese (the ritual language) and sing "phonetically." 22Nevertheless, when we look at the words of these cantos, we can guess the inherent diacritical features of the entities and we can trace the invariables from one temple to another (even from one country to another since the songs come from the Brazilian temple).
I give below some examples of the pontos gathered during my fieldwork between 2014 and 2017.The following songs come from the French temple's songbook (carnet de pontos), which a medium gave to me during my ogã (musician) apprenticeship.The songs as they are in the carnet de pontos are transcribed below.I think it is important to keep this transcription because it makes tangible the importance of symbols rather than master of ritual language.When a member of the assistance wants to be a part of medium corpus, he becomes an abiã.At this moment, he starts to learn pontos with the book and without knowing, as he has not mastered Portuguese, he learns it the wrong way.Again, the most important aspect of the pontos are the symbols (which are shared through the translations, the dances, the clothes 23 and in the ritual in general), not the language in itself.Under the straw is an old man Warrior and wise, yes lord There is the búzios there is the straw atoto Atoto Obuluaié And old Obuluaié, he is old Obuluaié And old Obuluaié, atoto Obuluaié 22 Some of members of the assistance told me that they can understand some worlds but the songs itself still be abstruse.The others told me that the meaning of the songs is not important, they prefer "feel the energies." 23 Depending on entities.
24 Búzios are small shells (cauries) used for divination (Ifá).In these songs, we can see several elements guiding us on the representations of the old black man: the relationship to the earth (which can also be Mother Earth, that is to say Africa), Christianity, and old age.
26 Guinea is a plant, Petiveria alliacea, and it's also been refer to the African Ouest country. 27Aruanda is the imaginary place where the entities come from. 28This term underlines the ambiguity of the entities: they are advisors but also have the reputation of being good healers, even witches; M. Rougeon, op.cit., p. 306.First of all the notion of "earth" is tacitly found in the hymns of the Pretos Velhos.For these songs, we first find the straw (palha) and búzios linked to the Omolu entity, the god of disease and rot, itself linked to the earth and the great age.Then comes Aruanda, the imaginary place from where the entities located in Angola come.I must also emphasize that the Pretos Velhos are entities related to Iemanjá, the goddess of salt waters and an allegory of Mother Earth (Africa).But more widely, references to Africa can be made through group names (nagô), plants and odor (that of Guinea, Petiveria alliacea, either ojusaju in Yoruba) or other imaginary places located in Angola such as the kingdom of Sambuê. 29n the hymns dedicated to Pretos Velhos, many words are linked to Christianity: lord (senhor), prayer (demanda), faith (fe) and father (pai).The piety can be related to the forced conversion of slaves by the Portuguese, 30 and the interpenetration of African and Catholic cults that formed this palpable syncretism through songs where the names of the Orisha meet the facts of Christian language.
The term mirongueiro is of notable importance because it refers to a typical aspect of these entities: the care.As Rougeon notes, the Pretos Velhos are at the same time ancestors, slaves and healers. 31The mironga refers to magical knowledge that was practiced by Pretos Velhos, and it is also represented by an amulet. 32It is also important to emphasise the accessories related to the representations of old age: here the pipe, but some songs refer to their canes. 33It is, once again, the panoply of the romanticized old black, which finds its roots in the literature of the nineteenth century.
The symbols representing the old age of these entities are accentuated by the rhythms (toques) played during their cantos.In the Umbanda practiced at the Temple Guaracy (European temples and the mother house in Brazil) 21 rhythms are used by the ogãs.The Pretos Velhos have three toques: Opanije, Ijexa and Arrebate.
The Opanije is a rhythm inherent to Omulu (which is mentioned in some hymns), the Orisha of the great age and disease associated with the Pretos Velhos.The Opanije is a very slow rhythm, like the Orisha representing old age. 34The Ijexa is a toque of water, very slow, and not linked with a specific Orisha, it connects with an energy. 35he Ijexa is played on a 4/4 bar with a regular rhythmic character on the first two beats, then taking a syncopated character on the last two beats, giving an impression 29 I could further unfold the relationship among the Pretos Velhos, slavery and mythical places through songs, but for reasons of space, I limit myself in this article to superficially emphasizing this link.

31
M. Rougeon,op. cit. 32 The mirongueiro is the person who provides care; mironga refers to the magical knowledge and the amulet.

33
The pipe and the cane are also the symbols of mediumship. 34T. de Oliveira Pinto, Making Ritual Drama: Dance, Music and Representation in Brazilian "Candomblé" and "Umbanda", "The World of Music" 1991, vol. 33, no. 1, p. 78. 35 Some toques are based on the idea of energy as it is thought in the Xirê (the cycle of life).In this case, "Ijexá" refers to the "nation" of the same name and its link to water. of slowing, similar to a triplet36 passage.Finally, it is the rhythm of the Arrebate, slow and appeased, that comes to represent the quietude of the Pretos Velhos.This toque has the characteristic of being built on a four beat measure; a more stable rhythm than the Ijexa, it does not allow polyrhythmic construction.However, the rhythm of the first three beats is based on a syncopated shift imparting an interesting rhythmic momentum: this tension created by the rhythmic shift seems to be resolved on the last beat, which seems to close the rhythm by giving it a fixed character (always in opposition to the Ijexa).
During my apprenticeship at the agôgô37 in the French temple, the ogã in charge of my teaching reproached me for playing "too fast:" he stopped me, repeating: "it is necessary to play for a very old person who suffered all his life."The rhythm linked to the Pretos Velhos seems to be attached to the image of the old black conveyed by the songs: they are almost impotent, exhausted by the years, temperate, and sagacious.These Pretos Velhos characteristics will be supported by two other dimensions: entity discourse during interviews, and dance.
In religious practices such as Umbanda, the body must be understood according to the principles of ethnoscenology, as defined as the skenos (which comes from the Hippocratic lexicon): the body as it embodies the imagination in action. 38The first external signs39 of medium incorporation are first the face: rictus mark the wrinkles on the faces, then the curved back.Each medium walks slowly, helped by his assistant (cambono) or his cane, as if each step was a pain.The body is on the border between the reproduction of the Brazilian imagination (performed through these dances) and that of the group as well as the individual.If the songs, rhythms and dances are in conformity with the romanticized idea of a former slave from Brazil, when this entity transmigrates in Europe the Brazilian imagination intertwines with that of the medium, where the Pretos Velhos remains an old storyteller, but also where allusions to slavery disappear.Indeed, the diacritical traits of the Pretos Velhos presented in the songs and rhythms are reinvested in a Western imagination where the notion of "old black" is transformed into "old," preserving only the "old storyteller" aspect of this entity.Furthermore, not all entities speak the ritual language (Portuguese), but only speak French, which is considered their original language.The fact that French could be the native language of Pretos Velhos underlines another point in the adaptation process, and also the negotiation of symbols: Umbanda as an individualistic cult within mediumship is the key of a spiritual quest. 40The entity is considered as a part of the medium (like an "avatar").In this way, it is totally logical for an entity to speak French.However, the Preto Velho is an entity capable of adapting itself to the values of the group in which it is integrated: it is difficult not to agree, or not to find an analogy with the notions of generosity, gentleness and benevolence.If the Amerindians found their counterpart in Europe thanks to the idea of nature, the former slaves found in analogy the idea of a grandfather or a grandmother guiding future generations towards a future where everyone could be fulfilled. 41e must keep in mind that one of the adaptation strategies of African-American religions is to play on what is said and what is not said, to create ambiguous discourses.These strategic misunderstandings make it possible to establish a dialogue between the actors and the religious systems: they are an aid to prepare and to facilitate the encounter with this new religious system.Thus, "consensual signifiers" are mobilized (these signifiers are words but also images); they play the role of langage neutralise (neutralized language). 42Based on Bourdieu's concept, 43 Stefania Capone uses it to underline the agreements put in place by actors or groups of actors through signifiants consensuels (consensual signifiers) like images, objects or terms, which serve to build consensus through their simplicity.But behind each signifiant consensuel, each actor puts a different meaning.The neutralized language is set up in a "trading zone" (a concept that Capone borrows from Peter Galison 44 ): a transaction zone where locals coordinate between the different sub-cultures.This a space where different partners agree locally in the exchange, even if they oppose each other in the general meaning of what they exchange. 45The figure of the Preto Velho does not escape this idea of signifiant consensuel, because even if the songs are explicit about the diacritical features of this entity (the Preto Velho is old, slow, and benevolent), European practitioners remain free to integrate any form of images.In this case, we can find European old age representations close to the romantic period of the eighteenth century, themselves taken from the image of the old man of antiquity where old age is perceived as a noble thing (with grey hair as a sign of wisdom).The image of the old man sitting in his armchair surrounded by his children and grandchildren who came to listen to his teachings began to spread as early as this romantic 204 period. 46Thus, among the Pretos Velhos of Europeans, the image of the wise old storyteller supplants that of the former slave, while maintaining the register of family and the wisdom that comes with age.

Conclusion
National debates and history provide the basic materials of the Umbanda through colonization and the birth of a united Brazilian nation as a project of the republic.This imagination is preserved and reworked through possession (the archetypes), but also through songs, a true oral transmission that does not only affect those initiated into worship: pontos are inscribed in popular culture through capoeira and samba. 47hus, the Preto Velho is a "symbol character" constructed from social representations, but it also conforms to the values of the group within which it is incorporated.Moreover, it conforms to the values and representations of the medium that embodies it (social group, sex, emotional state).Thus, as Nazzi and Bairrão, 48 Souza, 49 Santos Menezes, 50 Nunes Pereira, 51 Hale, 52 and Rougeon 53 point out, the Preto Velho cannot be understood solely in a global way, that is, as part of an immutable pantheon.It is necessary to pay attention to the particularities of each Umbanda's tradition, because the specificity of the African-American religions lies in their phagocytic and flexible dynamics: 54 they are what Csordas calls "portable practices." 55These practices are capable of being restituted, 56 "indigenized" (to use Appadurai's term) and must therefore be thought of as "local."Moreover, the importance of music in the integration of these entities into the European imagination should not be overlooked: the dances and rhythms allow Europeans followers to invest these entities in the prism of their own conceptions of the "old." Stefania Capone was one of the first researchers to work on the transnationalization of Afro-Brazilian cults in Europe (with Argyriadis, 57 Pordeus Jr, 58 Saraiva, 59 Guillot, 60 Halloy, 61 Teisenhoffer, 62 and Rossbach de Olmos 63 ).In her article, Capone notes that the religious heritage of these cults is no longer exclusively reserved for Afro-descendants.Moreover, in this same article, she details two key stages in the emergence of these religions in Europe: the search for a "true religion" on the part of Europeans and the reinterpretation of different concepts through the prism of the New Age, notably notions of "nature" which become closer to ecology discourse (as well as its sacralization 64 ) and axê which is closer to holistic representation of "cosmic energy" in New Age. 65ll of this can translate to the Afro-Brazilian universe, as this is one of the adaptation mechanisms. 66Music coupled with the possibility of investing entities with a European imagination can be understood as a "religious hybridization," 67 meaning a "resymbolization process in which the memory of objects is preserved and in which the tension between disparate elements generates new cultural objects which correspond to attempts to translate or subversively inscribe the original culture into a new culture."Thus, the Preto Velho is no longer linked to his slave past but is essentially marked by his age and his experience, the entity becomes the paragon of the "old storyteller," wise and knowing many things about care for others.It is at this level that the "cultural translation" 68 takes place: if the words of the songs are explicitly turned towards references to slavery and Africa, in Europe references to old age and providing care remain the elements put forward by the mediums.
In their studies Argyriadis, 69 Rossbach de Olmos, 70 Bahia, 71 and Bahia and Vieira 72 stress the importance of aesthetics and music in the integration of Europeans into Orisha cults.Here, I wanted to underline the possibility, through music, to make the imagination migrate from one country to another and to reinvest it, by withdrawing the national or even historical aspects and by feeding common traits capable of being understood in each country where worship is established (the idea of an old person endowed with wisdom due to his age and his experiences, also a healer).In this sense it seemed relevant to me to focus, in order to understand the transnationalization of Umbanda in Europe, on the transnationalization of this entity, synthetical of the Brazilian imagination and at the same time of the capacity of being invested by other imaginaries thanks to a "working misunderstanding."This is also the work of imagination, meaning the ability of a symbol to be transcended by another and to emerge in language.It is the "semantic shock" generated by the meeting of the two meanings that will allow the construction of a new level of meaning. 73Thus, the symbol of the former black slave, which is discovered tacitly through the songs, meets the symbol of the "old," European stereotypes linked to old age, 74 giving a new symbol that will be linked to the name of the Preto Velho but which, in the end, will be linked more to the European figure of the "grandfather."This work of imagination, tangible through the speeches, makes it possible to grasp one of the central points of the adaptation of Umbanda: "no action without imagination." 75 Ponto no. 1 De baixo de palha tem um velho Gerreiro e sábio, sim senhor Tem búzios 24 tem palha atoto Atoto Obuluaié E o velho Obuluaié, é o velho Obuluaié 25 E o velho Obuluaié, atoto Obuluaié 30 R.Bastide, Poètes et dieux -Études afro-brésiliennes, Paris 2002, pp.183-221; M. Rougeon, op.cit.