The beer-soaked samba session was drawing to a close and, as usual, the crowd was preparing to vent its spleen.
As percussionists from one of Rio’s top samba groups hammered their tamborins and tantãs, revelers raised their glasses and let out loud, cathartic cheers demanding the removal of a president they despise. “Fora Bolsonaro!” jeered the sweat-drenched throng. “Bolsonaro out!”
The explosion of dancefloor dissent was nothing new to Renascença Clube, a storied association in north Rio that has been a potent symbol of black pride and resistance since it was founded by black Brazilians in 1951. In recent years – as public anger at Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has intensified – Renascença’s weekly Samba do Trabalhador (Worker’s Samba) hootenanny has hosted metronomic displays of anti-government rage.
Yet last week’s protest prompted an unusual and incendiary reaction from the club’s management that has scandalized the world of samba and exposed the rancorous political fissure that has opened up in Brazilian society during Bolsonaro’s three years in power.
The morning after the 24 January show, a statement signed by Renascença’s president, Alexandre Luiz Xavier Alves, appeared on its social media accounts, declaring that club statutes forbade “any kind of party-political demonstration”.
The pronouncement appalled progressive sambistas and fans – with many attributing it to pressure from Bolsonarista board members trying to silence criticism of their embattled leader. “He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it,” one infuriated music lover wrote on the club’s Facebook page, quoting Martin Luther King Jr.
Many saw the club’s perceived fealty to Bolsonaro – who has a long track record of hostility towards Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous people and culture – as a betrayal of its 70-year history as a cauldron of black resistance.
“Here’s a club that was created to embrace people who were excluded from society – a club that was born to fight an oppressor – taking the side of the oppressor. It just makes no sense,” said Gabriel Cavalcante, a cavaquinho player and singer who is one of the Samba do Trabalhador’s nine members.
The musicians hit back at the club’s communique, declaring themselves “tireless enthusiasts of freedom of speech”.
“I felt furious – we all did,” said Cavalcante, describing how samba had emerged in early 20th-century Rio as a profoundly politicized form of expression for marginalized black Brazilians who had only recently escaped slavery. “There’s no such thing as samba without politics – samba is politics.”
Cavalcante quoted a lyric from Candeia, a legendary 20th-century sambista, to explain the genre’s role as an outlet for protest and pain: “Samba is sorrow, it is suffering, it’s the flight of my woes.”
The outcry forced Renascença’s directors to backpedal. They deleted their controversial statement and issued a second, insisting the “politically neutral” club was not responsible for political protests from artists or audiences.
The president, Alves, claimed the first statement had been mistakenly published after pressure from conservative members who accused him of “complicity” with the attacks on Bolsonaro.
Alves said club rules meant he could not say whether he supported Bolsonaro or his leftist rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who looks poised to win this year’s election. However, he insisted Renascença was open to politicians of all stripes and opposed censorship. If concertgoers wanted to pillory the president at the next week’s show, that was their democratic right: “We’ll be there to hear the voice of the people.”
Four days later, on Monday afternoon, security had been stepped up as the people poured on to the club’s rectangular patio to send a defiant message to Bolsonaro and the board.
Their outfits suggested little affection for Brazil’s rightwing leader. One spectator wore a T-shirt carrying the initials of Mexico’s Zapatista Army of National Liberation; another a cap honouring Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement. A third sported a red jersey with the slogan “Make Brazil 2002 again” – a reference to the year of Lula’s historic first election.
Band members also joined the demo, donning T-shirts featuring kaleidoscopic Lula portraits and the phrase: “They’ll never stop the arrival of spring.”
As his group warmed up, Moacyr Luz, the celebrated sambista who leads the Samba do Trabalhador, said he wanted rid of a president who had wrecked Brazil’s international reputation and clobbered Black culture. “Brazil can’t take this any more,” Luz complained over a late-afternoon Aperol spritz. “Bolsonaro is humiliating Brazil.”
Two hours later, after the band played a succession of politically charged sambas, the first cries of “Fora Bolsonaro!” erupted, followed by screams of support for Lula: “Olê, Olê, Olê, Olá, Lula, Lulaaaa!” A huddle of Bolsonarista counterprotesters tried to retaliate, bellowing anti-Lula insults, but were quickly drowned out.
Night fell, cups emptied, bodies swirled and a white Fora Bolsonaro flag was unfurled before the show reached its climax: an emotionally charged rendition of Apesar De Você (In Spite of You) – a dictatorship-era anthem that foresees an explosion of public joy after the collapse of the military regime. “In spite of you, tomorrow will be another day,” the audience chanted as several disgruntled Bolsonaristas glared at the floor.
More than 50 years after that song was written, Luz voiced optimism that Brazil was approaching a moment of similar euphoria. “We must not retreat,” the sambista said. “All this discomfort is because they know their days are numbered.”
