Page 176 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Chapter 7

Breath, Technology, and the Making of

Community Canção Nova in Brazil

Maria José A. de Abreu

Inspiration is wind becoming breath, expiration is breath becoming wind.
—Tim Ingold, Earth, Sky, Wind and Weather

In the early months of 1978 a youth group gathering for a “Seminar in the
Spirit” in the small town of Areias, State of São Paulo, witnessed an extraor-
dinary event. A priest named Padre Jonas Abib addressed the group by
asking them: “which of you would be ready to leave everything behind,
family, carrier, hobbies, in order to fulfil a mission God has placed in my
heart?” The story goes that exactly 12 people raised their hands as they
“were moved by an incredible force.” Then Padre Jonas turned to his fol-
lowers and added three other things. First, the mission would involve
working with communication. Second, it was especially addressed to youth
and third, the community would be called Comunidade Canção Nova (New
Song Community). This chapter is about the making of Canção Nova

Community, a thriving global media network of Catholic Pentecostalism
based in Brazil. Communities are often addressed in terms of a social con-
struction around the management of symbols, events, or aspirations that-
create a sense of bonding and belonging. Anthony Cohen’s “The Symbolic
Construction of Community” (1975) is a particular case in point in which
communities are understood as meaningful constructs that ground the
cultural inscription of identity. In so arguing, Cohen implies the existence
of a predetermined plane of reference against which construction happens.