As a DJ and record collector, I’ve had the opportunity and privilege to travel around the world to work on music with other professionals in the field. I’ve seen the spirit of the African Diaspora manifested in many different places and bodies, and I’ve been able to notice and appreciate their similarities and differences.

In São Paulo, I grew up surrounded by this culture in my backyard, and when I first came to places like New York or Havana, I felt at home despite the many structural differences. There was this feeling that remained intact throughout my time there - it was difficult to explain, yet very accessible for those accustomed to it. The feeling is present in the way of talking, walking, playing, eating, and, prominently, comes through in relation to music. This way of being is crucial for the construction of the collective identity for a given region. As an observer of this way of being, I learned about a favorite musical repertoire of many Afro-descendants; specifically, tracks that acquire a ritualistic character when experienced in contexts such as clubs, cars or even radio programs. I started to pay attention to how Afro-Brazilians consume Afro-American music, through looking at the details that made these particular songs unique expressions of the Black people of Brazil as well.

It’s known that capitalism and imperialism push mass entertainment so, naturally, in the 1960s and 1970s, American music was present on radios and TV stations in Brazil. However, through the curatorial efforts of DJs and promoters of Black events (such as Dom Filó from Equipe Soul Grand Prix, Paulão from Equipe Black Power and Luizão from the Chic Show Team) to bring special tracks to light, songs favored by the ghetto that were not showcased on the radio became party anthems specific to Brazil, in cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Afro-Brazilians' awakening of Black Power and the creation of Brazilian Hip Hop, in part, due to these daring ones who faced the military dictatorship and structural racism in a third world country to bring self-esteem to a population that has always lived very close to miserable circumstances, by way of featuring these tracks. Many of these leaders developed an entire community by organizing through groups called “Equipes de Baile,'' which would later become Brazilian correspondents to the Sound Systems of Jamaica.

Equipes de Baile are entertainer groups that promote parties with their own collection of records, equipment and DJ crews. These parties, like the ones promoted by the notorious Equipes Chic Soul in São Paulo and Soul Grand Prix in Rio de Janeiro, had tens of thousands of people on the dance floors. At the height of this movement, these teams brought international attractions based on the demand of their audience; names like Betty Wright and Jimmy Bo Horne are among the biggest stars who performed in the past. The respective shows of the Equipes de Baile marked the lives of many of the attendees, with the origins of these dance parties dating back to the mid-1920s and 1930s, mainly in São Paulo.

It should be noted that these meetings happened approximately 50 years after the decree for the abolition of slavery in Brazil, the last country in South America to do so. São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, was the last city to abolish slavery as well. The extremely racist context of the country required high resistance and a very latent sense of community. Few families had their own houses and, in big cities, many families lived in tenements. Some political and social organizations held parties in rented halls, where small orchestras could be heard. With the arrival of LPs in the 1950s, some DJs would hide behind the theater curtain and call themselves Invisible Orchestra.

As these parties became more popular, DJs started to perform at gatherings hosted at multi-family dwelling backyards, called festas de quintal, or yard parties.These are very similar to house parties or rent parties in the USA. The most extreme difference between yard parties and house parties here is that we are talking about DJs, rather than hired musicians, as was more common in Brazil in the 1960s.

As Soul music expanded both its market and influence in the United States, this spilled over into young Black Brazilians who were deeply inspired by the styles that they saw on record covers, or in rare magazines and videos. Brazilians would blend local fashion, like shorts and sandals, with the African American style - it was beautiful. With the arrival of equipment and the spread of Brazil’s own Black power movement, Movimento Negro Black Power in Brazil, some community leaders began to assemble dance teams for Black youth at these Festas de Quintal. These parties would start to be treated as businesses and, collectively, a movement. It was a risky action because Brazil was in the midst of a revolving door of military dictators, and the far-right government associated Brazil’s Black power movement with the struggle for civil rights in the United States.

The abyss promoted by social inequality in Brazil is immense and the dream of traveling to places outside of Brazil is very distant from the minds of the Black Brazilian population. Back in the 1970s, this dream was even further and those who were in the magazines or records importation business did not prioritize the Black audience at all, based on purchasing power and aesthetic prejudice. However, resistance was always the only option and once anyone from the community would get a copy of any interesting record or publication, they would share it with the entire group. Often, the person in charge of providing fresh information about Black American culture was a friend who worked at the port or a flight attendant who would travel abroad more frequently. Occasionally, those friends would assume an informal role of English teachers or translators within the community.

When the DJs of these Equipes obtained imported records that had not been released in Brazil, they automatically became the highlight of each Equipe, and those tracks they played became references to the quality of that Equipe. Many people crossed the city to hear a track that they knew would only be played at that specific party by that specific DJ, because he was the only one who owned that record. In this way, each party acquired its own, almost specialized profile. There were those teams that invested in Raw Soul, others more connected to Disco music, others played Slow Jams, and others made a great selection of Brazilian music based on a style of dance original to São Paulo called Samba Rock. Some examples of teams are Black Mad, Zimbabwe, Chic Show, Tranza Negra and Os Carlos. Many times, the public, as well as the other Equipes, didn't even know the name of a track they heard, nor the artist who performed it, and even less, the record that contained it. DJs kept this mystery under lock and key. Some would take the album without a cover to the parties and even damage the label in order to prevent some onlookers from discovering which album it was. This practice was common in similar underground music scenes throughout other parts of the diaspora, like Jamaica, Panamá, Colombia and New York.

Exclusivity has always weighed heavily within these communities - which reveals the trust that the public had towards those DJs (since DJs were trying to expand their sound outside of the pop charts). The building and consolidation of this kind of DJ set happens in a very experimental way. This empirical art, based on testing tunes on the dance floor in real time, led to the development of a style of music known as “O Som Dos Bailes” (The Sound of the Balls), which is similar to “Cook Out Music” in Black American communities.

One of the movement’s legends, Natanael Valêncio, had a mind blowing set where he played a trademark of the São Paulo sound: the live version of ‘Devotion’ by the Earth, Wind and Fire, one of the main references of this scene. This song is actually only well-known as a live version in Brazil. The studio version of ‘Devotion’ on the 1974's Open Your Eyes LP was never released in Brazil while the live version, on the 1977's Gratitude LP, made it down, carrying with it a higher BPM that would fit perfectly in Equipes’ parties. The Gratitude version has the anthological chorus in the break: "Clap your hands tonight, say it's okay ... Yeah Yeah Yeah ..." which is an emotional highlight of Black parties in Brazil; everybody sings along, dancing together.

CBS executives met the ghetto DJs after noticing how popular the live version of “Devotion” was getting and they were aware of how expensive the Gratitude double album could be, so the executives decided to release an exclusive 7" with Singasong and Devotion (Live) in 1977, only for the Brazilian market, as advised by ghetto DJs. Nowadays, it's a really rare record to find. Even though the live version is more popular than the studio one in the U.S. as well, Natanael made this song an anthem in Brazil, which has been embedded very deeply in Brazilian culture since the 1970s. Three generations grew up with this song. 

After a while, the record companies started to hire people to go to the parties, and even the DJs, to identify good selections to release in the Brazilian market. The power of taste making shifted - DJs from the ghetto now influenced multinational companies and executives, who would then try to sell that culture to the masses - not the opposite.

Today, the songs that we recognize as belonging to this O Som Dos Bailes have consolidated themselves into regional classics. Many of those tracks are not as well-known in the US as they are in Brazil; they have a huge role and high demand at the so-called Nostalgia Parties, where DJs promote a flashback to that time by revisiting these specific tracks. This is a culture closely linked to the ghetto and the fringes of the mainstream radio and concert circuit. These parties and the musical selections have become the legacy of the Equipes de Baile. Despite not being featured on radio, TV or regular media, this music functioned as a soundtrack for countless memories; romances, marriages and friendships that still pulsate in the affective memory of Black communities in São Paulo.

This is strikingly similar to how all diasporic communities absorb music. Music is a tool that reaffirms narratives of affection within these communities, whether Brazilian or US, and often serves as a refuge that brings once fragmented homes and relationships together through these sounds of the Black experience. How this process differs for Brazilians from the one that takes place in the United States is the prominent informal way in which these tracks are curated; nearly negating the industrial chain that establishes and spreads the records and artists through the market. The resilient approach in which artists and the public devote themselves to utilize music, dance and other cultural expressions as a safe space within adverse circumstances shows us how identity and the sense of community can enchant some entertainment industry products, bringing a deeper level of power to them and revealing the real meaning of the word Soul: an actual manifestation of the spirit of diaspora felt from cookouts in New York to the Bailes of São Paulo.