Page 48 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

“Don’t Ask Questions, Just Observe!” 33

the Candomblé community, to the Roma Negra that is Salvador, and to his
beloved Bahia, the “blessed land of the Orixás.” Time and again, he
received a standing ovation from the audience. TV-cameras pushed for-
ward, trying to get as close as possible to the speaker. People in the audi-
ence took pictures as well.
The opening of the Cultural Week ended with a presentation of
“Xangô Awards” to people whose outstanding support for the commu-
nity of Candomblé needed to be highlighted. It turned out to be a veri-
table celebrity show as artists, scholars, actors, and TV personalities
from within the Candomblé community handed over the sculpted stat-
ues to artists, scholars, actors, and TV personalities from the society at
large.
All the while, Mãe Stella remained seated, nodding her turbanted head
appreciatively when the merits of the winners were proclaimed, distribut-
ing vague smiles to no one in particular. At one point she whispered some-
thing in the ear of Gilberto Gil, who was sitting to her right. And she also
communicated something to the mayor of Salvador, who was sitting to her
left. But that was for us to see, not to hear. For she never addressed the
audience. No word of welcome and no word of gratitude. Nothing. Not a
single word came from her lips.
“She’s very humble” is what Adilson told me when I asked him about
her not saying a word. I knew what he was talking about. People would
always tell me, time and again, that Mãe Stella is such a humble woman.
Common, plain—humilde e simples—were the terms they would use. But
that was not what I was looking at during this opening night. Amidst the
hollow phrases and worn out clichés that make up the soundscape of offi-
cialdom, Mãe Stella remained silent, Queen of an Ineffable Sacred, radiat-
ing a power and potency that far exceeded the ministers, mayors, and
academics.
In Bahia, the term Candomblé refers to multiple religious traditions of
African origin, all of which are centered on the worship of spiritual entities
called orixás. The task of individual terreiros is to oversee the initiation of
spirit mediums and to organize the yearly cycle of rituals and festivities in
honor of the orixás. In addition to such religious tasks, terreiros operate in

what Brazilian scholars have aptly called the mercado dos bens de salvação
(the market for salvation commodities): they generate an income by pro-
viding spiritual, divinatory, and curative services to a clientele made up of
both cultists and noncultists. 2
Such overall similarities among the different traditions notwithstand-
ing, the Candomblé universe is a heterogeneous field. Cultists recognize
the traditions of different nações (nations), such as Nagô-Ketu, Jeje, and
Angola, and within these traditions the autonomy of the individual terreiro